Latter-Day Faints

My girlfriends and I hated the Osmonds. There was something monumentally uncool about sibling bands, mostly because the age range made the oldest creepily avuncular and the youngest just a puerile fartelberry. And this group, all twenty-seven of them with their oversized heads and untainted religious convictions were doubly odious. The prospect of catching a glimpse of them as they rode along Riverside Drive offered little incentive. Still, call it Catholic guilt, but we felt we had to participate. It was a walkathon for Muscular Dystrophy and we’d been Clockwork-Oranged by Jerry Lewis every Labour Day since we were infants.

For the first five miles Kathy put up with ill-fitting shoes. For the next three she walked in her red tennis socks. At mile nine with torn socks, blistered and filthy feet she just stopped and lie there crying. At that point the promised cavalcade of lesser Osmonds passed us, their collective teeth a sunshiney death-ray that threatened to burn the retinas of anyone who dared to look directly at them. After that we lived in fear that a future Tiger Beat would have a picture of our sobbing, prostrated friend and the caption “Canadian Fan collapses after meeting Jimmy!”