Sid Bacon

My childhood dream was to be a navigator and sail around the world.  Knowing this and also being interested in sailing - Sid signed us up to take sailing lesions in Minneapolis.  It was close to my dream come true as a kid.  We did well - mostly because of Sid's natural athleticism.  But we had great difficulty capsizing - the purpose of the assignment was to teach the safety skill of being able to right the boat in case it tipped over.  Well we could not tip the boat over... we just did not have the weight. We would lean as far off the edge as we could then we would start laughing and fall in the water - boat still upright.  We made several attempts each one more hilarious. I don't think either of us minded that we failed to complete that assignment because we had way more fun laughing. 

It was dark in their basement apartment.  A few small windows near the ceiling let in a grey light above the grass blades.  Tiny drops of water were tapping on the widow pane.  Cathy was at work and I was alone with Sid.  Normally I would not have found this scary - but I knew Sid wanted to scare me and just the thought of it made me scared. The lights were off and shadows flickered in every corner from the shifting image of ROSEMARY'S BABY!

Rosemary's apartment was creepy... the neighbor's were even creepier.  She was being drugged and made to have a demonic baby.  She gets a butcher's knife and begins to hack through the closet wall.

"Sid! Where are you going!?”

"I have to go to the bathroom."

The off-pitch lullaby sound track gets louder and as rosemary begins to break through the wall in the back of the closet you can hear a baby screaming.

"Sid?"

"Si-id?"

"Si-id where aaare you?"

"SID!"

I forget about rosemary's apartment and start looking around this one.  Where is he going to jump out from? Is he behind that chair?  Could he have gotten a knife from the kitchen and snuck into the closet?

"SID COME OUT!"

The light flickers I look up at the window and........

HE'S THERE!

Outside - with his face and hands pressed up against the wet glass - making the scariest face ever!

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Sid was enormously popular all through grade school, junior high, high school and college because he could do so many things so well without ever being conceited. However, in 7^th grade we discovered the one thing Sid couldn’t do. He tried out for singer in our little rock band – probably still the worst such band in the world – and we discovered that he couldn’t sing. In fact, he spectacularly couldn’t sing (in those days, at least). But he took the rejection in good spirits and still came to some of our practices, which probably does prove a total lack of musical appreciation at that point in his life. To paraphrase the old song, if there’s a rock-and-roll heaven, I don’t think Sid will be singing for the band – but he’ll be a star at everything else.