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My husband and I have a running gag about the Bob Seger song “Betty Lou”. I know if you’re under 35 you probably have no idea what I’m talking about which would put you in company with all of the bands at the places where we go to dance. Now these are mostly old guys from my generation, but they get a blank look across their face and ask me how the song goes. I sing a few lines and they all say, Yeah, I know what you mean, but we don’t play that one. Occasionally they ask me if I’m Betty Lou and I tell them no, but I know her real well. I’m mostly lying when I say that because I never really knew a Betty Lou and only pretended that I was one. She was the bad girl that turned all the boys into hound dogs and all the girls into green-eyed monsters. I’m not sure what she would look like but I always imagined her as being all the things I wanted to be in eighth grade. Even though I’m not especially tall by today’s standards, I have been this same height since I was 12, somewhere between 5’6’ and 5’7”. My hair was a golden brown without the hint of a natural curl and I had a woman’s curves very early on. Back in the day clothing manufactures were slow to respond to women wearing jeans and my friends solved this problem by shopping in the men’s department. I tried that, but those that fit in the hips gapped like a feed sack around my waist, and I could not pull the ones that fit my waist up over my hips. Then there was the boob division, where I was fairly average, but without the modern technology of a push up bra, certainly not spectacular. Betty Lou on the other hand was never over five feet two; she had breast like Dolly Parton, blond curly hair, and hips like an Italian boy. I hated her and I wanted to be her.

The down side of being Betty Lou didn’t hit me until some years later. I left home to go to college, but BL got married right after graduation because she “had to”. That’s what they used to say about girls that got pregnant before the ring was on their finger. My how the world has changed. Style changes too, and in my college years the girls with the curly hair were getting their roommates to iron their hair to make it look like mine. Keeping my hair hanging to my waist so it “rolled and flowed all down my breast” in the best Dylan song fashion was my solution to the less than gigantic boob issue. My long legs looked a lot better in the popular mini skirts than BL’s short ones and there seemed to be more men who liked shapely legs and rounded bottoms in college than in high school. Now that the boys had caught up with me in height, I quit slouching and walked tall and straight, projecting a confidence I still didn’t quite feel inside. I forgot about Betty Lou for a long time, but finally realized that I could have been her if I had wanted. A man asked me a question once and I took too long to answer. “Would you rather be beautiful to one man or merely pretty to hundreds?” It was the wrong question of course, because I was beautiful by most any standard at that time. Now that I’m older and wiser, I know what true beauty is and it has nothing to do with legs or boobs or hair. The one man who finds me beautiful above all other women on earth has taught me that, and I can answer the old question easily. I’d rather be smart, fun to be around, loved and loving, and I won’t settle for being merely beautiful or pretty.

So what’s this got to do with Betty Lou? Well, you all know I’m taking my boy to the AA meetings. He was supposed to go to eight and he put it off until the last minute, so we’re trying to cram them all into one week. He went to three yesterday. We both agreed that the one in downtown Richmond was the most moving and least like a revival meeting. The one at in the Presbyterian Church basement was my favorite though. Two people from the downtown location showed up there, and I think one of them was a fellow procrastinator. Most of the people in the room looked like they just strolled in from the Sunday school classrooms upstairs, and I began to wonder if they were posers. The women were white, overweight and in their 60’s, but there was one little middle age skinny curly headed blond in the back of the room. I listened carefully to them all and was genuinely moved by what most of them had to say. Then the blond opened her mouth. “My name is Betty Lou, and I’m an alcoholic.” I bit my tongue to stop from bursting out laughing. She spoke from her heart about an early marriage, putting her children through hell, but all I could hear going though my head was the song, and all I could think about was that this was how Betty Lou ended up, if she was lucky. I realized how fortunate I was not to be Betty Lou and not to be caught in the grip of addiction. Then I feel the presence of my boy, defiant by my side, and realized that for better or worse, I am trapped here with him, bound fast with the madding chains of love. The song will never be the same.