Good Goobity Goo

When George and I were just two college kids crazy in love, we worked in one of the dining halls on campus. I know it sounds odd, but if you needed a grunt job to help pay your way through school, the dining hall was a surprisingly fun place to work. It was a great place to meet people with a wide range of backgrounds (we actually worked with a guy who had been at the 1989 Tienanmen Square protests). George and I were friends with most of our coworkers and all of the dining halls on campus combined to form quite the social network. There were intramural teams formed, picnics with sand volleyball games, great parties, and lots of couples falling in and out of love.

It was during a shift at the dining hall that I became aware of George's protective nature over me. Some weaselly newbie at the dining hall got physically inappropriate with me. Trust me, he unquestionably crossed personal boundaries. George's immediate response was to grab the guy, pin him against the wall, and  threaten to dot the guy's eye (okay, George's words were probably a little more colorful). Suffice it to say, 2 things happened in that moment: 1) The aforementioned guy never so much as even looked at me again, and 2) I discovered that I had a man who (channeling my best Darla from The Little Rascals voice complete with sigh) was my hero and who would  always do his best to protect me.

It was right around this time that George had been looking for a house near campus to rent . He knew a guy who was planning to renovate a house that even in it's heyday was probably best described as a pea green crack house. This house had long been abandoned and left sitting wide open. Yellowed wallpaper was all that was holding plaster on the walls, that is, where the plaster was still on the walls. Windows were broken out and door locks had been stolen. Refuse and filthy garments peppered the worn wood floors. Lead paint was peeling off the trim work and a  thick musty odor filled the place, but George, being a man of vision, saw only  the potential for a newly remodeled low rent house with lots of room within walking distance to his classes. So late one afternoon, George decided to take me on a tour of the house, and since there were no locks on the door, we didn't need the landlord to let us in the place. As we were walking from room to room, George was detailing the builder's plans for the much needed improvements. With George behind me, we started down a narrow hallway. I was struggling to imagine the place all spruced up with new walls and floors but I was also trying not to touch anything as I was pretty certain it had been too long since my last tetanus shot. Noticing a door ajar, I gently used my foot to kick it open. George, seeing the door swing open but not realizing I had opened it, immediately jumped 3 feet off the floor, allegedly (as we have since discussed this moment at great length) tried to grab my arm,  and yelled "GOOD GOOBITY GOO!" Seriously, those were his exact words..."Good goobity goo." Within a flash, he was gone. George was out of that house before I could even process what happened. As he was running, I  turned to see what had startled him so badly and I caught a peripheral glimpse of my long brown hair as it swung over my shoulder. Thinking my hair was a mouse scurrying across the floor, I too decided to run screaming from the house only to find George waiting for me in the middle of the yard. He was panting so hard that he could scarcely ask, "What was that? What was that? What was that?!" To which I responded, "What was WHAT?" Apparently, (now say it with me just like Darla) "my hero" thought someone of ill repute had been standing on the other side of the door and it was that someone who had opened the door.

Needless to say, we had quite the laugh at the misunderstanding, and George told me next time he yells, "RUN!" (which apparently is the English translation of  good goobity goo), I better run. I learned a valuable lesson that day in that a man's protection comes in many forms. Sometimes, you need to stand back and let your man fight the good fight and other times, you just need to be ready to good goobity goo with him.