Let’s Get It On! by Big John McCarthy, Bas Rutten Loretta Hunt, Bas Rutten Read Free Book Online

so she decided to pay me a visit. Shockingly, she wasn’t all that mad. We talked a bit and ended up going on another date. Elaine was tenacious, I’ll give her that.
     
    When did I know Elaine was the one? It was when she played the theme to the film
Ice Castles,
“Through the Eyes of Love.” I know it sounds crazy, but she played the piano so beautifully and looked so pretty in that moment that I told myself,
I’d better not screw this up again.
    Elaine proved to be my match in every way. In the past, I’d always gotten tired of being around girls, but after that I never got tired of Elaine. Okay, I’ll admit I did get tired of talking to her on the phone—the girl could go on for hours—but our time together was fun.
    Elaine became my best friend. She took a great interest in me and everything I was into, like my lifting, motorcycles, and suped-up cars. She never tried to change me but allowed me to be who I was, for better or worse.
    I’ll admit that couldn’t have been an easy thing for her to do sometimes. Did I mention I have a temper and a stubborn streak? But Elaine was always brave enough to tell me when I was acting crazy or getting out of control. This is not a feat for the fainthearted.
     
    Elaine’s and my unique relationship dynamic was clear the day we played Zimm-Zamm, an inane game involving paddles and a tennis-sized ball attached to a pole with a cord. It’s like tetherball, except one player is trying to get the cord wrapped around the top of the pole while the other is trying to hit it to the bottom.
    After playing a couple games, Elaine sat down to take a break, while I kept hitting the ball.
    Elaine got annoyed. “Stop hitting it so hard,” she said. “You’re going to hit me.”
    Now, I was standing there with a ball on a cord attached to a stake pounded into the ground. There was no chance of that ball going anywhere outside of the arc the cord allowed it to travel.
    “Elaine, it’s physically impossible for me to hit you with the ball,” I said with complete certainty. “You’re sitting ten feet away.”
    But she insisted I was hitting it too hard.
    One of us was wrong, and it wasn’t going to be me. I’d prove it. I tossed the ball up and swung the paddle like I was Pete Sampras at the US Open. Sure enough, I knocked the ball right off the cord and hit Elaine in the throat. A direct hit.
    She staggered back, eyes big as saucers, and started gasping for air.
    “I’m so sorry!” I told her. I couldn’t say it enough.
    When she could finally speak, all she said was, “You did that on purpose.”
    I’m not sure I’ve ever fully convinced her I didn’t.
    To this day, when my stubbornness clouds my judgment and I think it’s no way but my way, my wife has to utter only two syllables: “Zimm-Zamm.”
     
    Elaine and I became inseparable. We went to parties and the movies together, I took her to her junior and senior proms, and I got to know her family.
    Elaine’s mother’s side of the family had come from money. Elaine’s grandfather had run Farmers Insurance, a nationwide operation with millions of customers. I wouldn’t say Elaine’s family was rich, but she lived in a middle-class neighborhood and got most everything she wanted.
    Elaine’s mom, Lynn, was always working. She was a computer wiz at a time when one computer system would fill an entire room. Lynn was a little savant who could write super complex computer programs, but nobody knew how she did it.
    Elaine’s father, Ted, was a smart man and had graduated from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. He’d even worked on the rockets that allowed the Lunar Excursion Module to land on the moon, but from the day I met him, Ted never had a job, and I never figured out why.
    I usually have a hard time respecting someone who doesn’t work, but I always seemed to get along with Ted. I also would not have normally associated with someone like him. Not only was he an intellectual, but he