The Story of Dave and the Lilac Bush

Lilacs, part of the olive family, are the state flower of New Hampshire and a common feature of the suburban landscape in the greater New York metropolitan area. In fact, I first encountered the lilac as a child, in the back yard of a suburban house and my parents currently have a couple of lilac bushes growing near the red maple tree. The lilac is an early flower and a harbinger of spring, which explains its frequent presence in Easter bonnets and early associations

with colored eggs, lilacs and chocolate bunnies that taste a lot like the plastic they were wrapped in.

Popular culture representations of the lilac are, I think, rather infrequent. The first one I noticed was in the Doonesbury comic strip, where it provided a comic statement on investigative reporting--when Roland Hedly III submitted a photo of a lilac bush as strong evidence of marijuana use in communes. This was my first exposure to the possibility that the lilac bush could provide an ironic or comic value, rather than merely signifying the spring or perhaps the impending deluge of chocolate and jelly beans that meant "Easter" to me as a child.

My second unexpected encounter with a lilac came during my first semester of college. I'd chosen a school that described itself as "off the beaten track" by which, at the time, I supposed was meant "has no pavements." (They have since been supplied.)

I moved into a dormitory that had been built into a ravine on stilts and swayed alarmingly whenever there was a stiff breeze. On the plus side, there was a small waterfall outside my window, which provided soothing background noise for a restful sleep, at least when it wasn't frozen. At the time, I was not certain that it fully compensated for the fear that the dormitory could tip into the ravine, travel in the creek down to the Hudson River and be well en route to Lisbon by the time I awoke.

After my first not-so-restful night in the swaying dorm, I was at lunch with a kind woman who went on to win the women's studies prize the year we graduated. The food was a bit strange, and my tray said "tray of redundancy tray" in indelible ink on the tray. We were having a mildly pleasant conversation when the person who would become a good friend catapulted himself into a chair. He was unshaven and strangely dressed, and accompanied by a friend. They looked at us expectantly "You're new" Dave announced. His friend laughed and slapped him playfully on the arm, a fine moment in homosocial bonding (they had a lot of these).

We had an interesting lunch and I wandered off to "Set Theory" which was an interesting course. It had a lot of Venn diagrams in it.

Later that night, on consulting with my friends in the swaying dorm, I learned that Dave was regarded as a comical figure by many and that he and his friend felt it was imperative to greet all new young women, even though they were a couple (They weren't). Later that evening, while walking backward down the ravine road with another friend (we didn't have television and had to make our own entertainment), she said that Dave and his friend could be seen in their bathrobes on the wall outside the dining commons on weekends before breakfast. I also learned that he liked to talk a lot in class, especially if he had not done the reading. Little did I know that he would become one of my best friends.

A few weeks later, having seen the spectacle of Dave and his friend in their bathrobes first-hand, I was in the waterfall--not the one outside my dorm room (there were a few falls on campus)--deciding that I should put my sneakers back on to deal with the sharp rocks when Dave came crashing out of the woods carrying a huge stick firmly in his right hand. He saw me, stopped and said "would you like to see the fish?"

Well, why not? It's not every day that you get such an offer. The fish were located among the rocks just above the falls, where (I guess) they were hoping not to be dashed to bits. As I wedged my feet, now protected by Keds, between the stones, I found myself hoping that I, too, was not dashed to bits. As we hovered over a fish, Dave told me knowledgeably that it was "some sort of trout." He couldn't have known, because I really don't like to talk about it, but I had been engaged to a real outdoorsy guy and I'd spent many hours watching the sun rise over (optimistically) fish-laden waters. So, I said that it was a brook trout (because it was). Dave reacted to this bit of intelligence by nimbly hopping back to the shore, leaving me stranded in the middle of the falls. The fish looked kind of amused, but I wasn't.

That might have been the end of that, and I would have missed out on a decades long friendship with a truly lovely person who has a heart of gold, which possibly explains how he was able to win the affections of a truly lovely and remarkable woman (I'm referring to his partner).

And then came the lilacs, although there must have been some other contact or I doubt he would have stopped by that afternoon just to be pelted with information about fish. Dave found me on the back porch, reading a book against the backdrop of waterfall, flowers and trees that was the ravine that particular afternoon.

He spoke. I jumped, then turned, and Dave offered to show me "something amazing."

I could have replied that he already was, since he was dressed in his bathrobe--which he to this day insists was a kimono (although we all agree that it was blue)--which he had left open over a very impressive chest of hair and a pair of cut off shorts that was much shorter on one side and had strings hanging past his knees. They looked like they'd been cut off with a steak knife. He was also wearing a pair of hush puppies that had the soles cut off and replaced with a functional layer of duct tape. He called these his "moccasins." I would come to know them well as "those things," a name originally bestowed on them by his mother.

Oddly enough, I had been nursing a little bit of a crush on Dave before the "fish incident," so I happy trotted along behind him to see whatever amazing thing this was. we progressed down the row of swaying stilt dorms (there were quite a number of these) and found ourselves by the ruins of an old chapel. Dave passed this and waved his arms triumphantly at... a lilac bush.

It was, I suppose, rather a nice lilac bush, as lilac bushes go. But it was actually not really at all "amazing." I found myself in a quandary because there was really nothing I could say as Dave stood there beaming at having shown me something amazing (assuming he found nothing out of the ordinary about his outfit). Thankfully, he then dove into the bush, immersing himself in the blossoms and acting in a highly gruntled manner. This was truly quite amazing.

We then went back to my room and played "cootie" and Dave ate my chocolate Easter bunnies. Yes, the ones that tasted like the plastic wrappings they had come in. He bit the heads off first and got chocolate all over my ABC's comforter, but it seemed less important to me than the amazing fact that he had never seen a cootie game before.

All images from wikipedia. Lilac images are all in the public domain. Credits: Anthony Appleyard, Wouter Hagens.Trout image from the department of fish and wildlife by Eric Engbretson. Bathrobe is a public domain image by Hmwith. Roland Hedley image and Cootie game image: The copyright for these images is most likely owned by either the publisher of the comic or board game or the writer(s)and/or artist(s) that produced it. It is believed that the use of low-resolution images of a single panel from a comic strip to illustrate the copyrighted character(s) or group(s) depicted on the excerpted panel in question or low resolution images of a board game; where no free alternative exists or can be created, hosted on servers in the US without person profit qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law so long as they are without profit and do not affect the use or other value of the original.