Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.
CP: I can't even. It's too embarrassing.
RN: You can tell me. It won't go any further. Swear.
CP: Well, I feel I can trust you. Of course you must also confide, just to me, your most humiliating moments.
RN: Fine. I'll start by saying I'll never live down an utterly mortifying error in the paper. I was writing about wild game dinners, and noted that the menu included roast peasant. Pheasants everywhere are still laughing, at my expense.
CP: Ha. That's a springtime walk in the park compared to the time we had to wrestle in eighth-grade P.E. class. As in, classmates gather round the mat to watch and learn all kinds of things as two classmates grapple and coach shouts helpful tips. In my fear and anxiety, I managed to cut one. I got over it sometime in my late 30s.
RN: Oh, please, that's nothing. I spent two junior-high years mowing lawns, shoveling driveways and babysitting to save for a racing bike. "Pearl Orange," the catalog said. When I pulled my new — and nonreturnable — bike out of that big C. Itoh cardboard box, it was, yes, pink. Bright pink. A pink bike in 1973 suburbia did not go over well.
CP: I dunno. You add a couple of those confetti-colored handgrip streamers and ride into the Burnsville sunset with your head held high. "I, Rick Nelson, decree that pink is the new blue."
