Barbra's Brains

She remained the stuff of total male devotion. The waiter, in fact, was around her like a bee on a blossom.

Eventually, he pulled himself away to scout my wife and I a table.

His walk cleared a path that put the object of his ardor fully in my sight, and my mind turned the object of our initial introduction: Barbra Streisand.

I was not a fan but there Barbra was, gracing the cover of a movie magazine I regularly purchased.

A few days later, in class, I overheard her - the woman now before me in the restaurant - talking about Barbra's latest romantic entanglements.

Using knowledge gleaned from my magazine, I weighed in, and was soon enveloped in small talk with the Goddess of Grade Nine. I even had , I informed her, the latest publication on Miss S.

The next day, I brought the magazine to school, and handed it over like Sir Francis Drake offering his cape.

Out of nowhere, a beehive of girls showed up, completely enveloping the magazine, the drop-dead gorgeous creature holding it, and the entire area between myself and her. They swept her away to an area I knew not where, leaving me in the manner of the time's hit song: alone again, naturally.

This time, however - wife and waiter occupied with one another - I had her all to myself.

"Hi," I began. "I'm -"

Her head turned violently away, into a world of walls, plants and uninteresting wall hangings.

After lunch that day back in junior high, she shyly returned the magazine.

Barbra's likeness was scarred and torn. She was nothing special now, robbed of anything that made her attention-worthy.

It was her intelligence, I now knew after all these years, that had kept Barbra, then and now, off my list of favorites.

What's so lucky about people needing people?