Laurie and The Rock Star

This is by far one of the craziest adventures involving Laurie. I've met a lot of idiots in my life, but I swear Laurie just took the cake.

To understand Laurie, you have to understand the psyche of Laurie. In the prior story, I told you a little about her mom. Allow me to share a little more.

Since all of the moms at that time were stay at home moms, they periodically did things as a group. Evelyn, another neighbor, was a licensed cosmetologist. Once a month, they met at a neighbor's house and Evelyn would cut and style everyone's hair while the rest of the ladies "visited". ("visit" = gossip.)

At one time, they all belonged to a bowling league, so that provided another opportunity to have fun and "visit".

During one of these "visiting" sessions, somehow the conversation got shifted to what we (all of us kids) were interested in and what we might be doing for a living later on in life. I was probably about 13 at this point in time.

Jane (Laurie's mom) volunteered this info to the other ladies. She said that she had already told Laurie that when she grew up, she should look into being a (are you sitting down for this?) a call girl. Jane said that if Laurie was able to find the right sugardaddy, he'd put her up in a nice apartment, buy her nice clothes, and she'd be set for life for doing relatively little. She laughed as she said all of this, but it absolutely floored everyone else in the room.

This was WAY before Reba McEntire had even remotely THOUGHT about recording that song "Fancy".

After Jane left, all of the ladies looked at each other and Evelyn asked "Surely she was not serious.....was she?"

Marie said "Well, you know how Jane is, you see how she dresses, and she's got that dumb and helpless act down to a science. I wouldn't be surprised if she was serious."

So that sort of sets up the story of "Laurie and The Rock Star." I was about 21 at this time....Laurie would have been about 20. It was at this time, my mom told me about the call girl episode. After hearing about that incident, this story made a little more sense.

One afternoon, I was in my bedroom watching TV when my friend Greg called. He said "What do you know about Laurie getting kidnapped?"

I said (thinking this was a joke) "I give up. What DO I know about Laurie getting kidnapped?"

Greg said, "No, I'm serious. LeeAnn (Laurie's sister) is coming over to spend the night with Missy (Greg's sister.) Her mom just called up here telling my mom that she needed to send LeeAnn up here to spend the night because she (Jane) had to drive down to Savannah to pick Laurie up because she had been kidnapped!"

I said "WHAT???? Are you SERIOUS?"

"Yep! You didn't know anything about it? You live across the street from them." Greg asked.

"No! I'll call you back."

I went in and told my mom the news. She was just as shocked as I was. About that time, we saw Jane's car backing out of the driveway and LeeAnn walking up the street with her suitcase.

I told my mom I was going to see what I could find out from LeeAnn. I grabbed my bike and followed LeeAnn up the street.

When I caught up to her, I asked her what had happened. She said she really wasn't sure herself. All she knew was that somehow, Laurie called them from the police station in Savannah and she must have been kidnapped. As soon as her mom got there, she was going to call LeeAnn and let her know what was going on.

On the surface, the story sounded odd. But then again, this WAS Laurie, so it really wasn't so odd after all.

I accompanied LeeAnn to Greg's house. When LeeAnn went back to Missy's room, I told Greg what LeeAnn told me. Greg said as soon as Jane called, he would call me and tell me what he found out.

The next morning, Greg gave me a call and told me to come over because the story was just NOT to be believed.

Here's what SUPPOSEDLY happened.

At this time, Laurie was working as a dancer (more on that later) at a club downtown. She was waiting on a ride (not sure if this was a ride home or...ok I'll hush.) Anyway she was sitting at the bar and a man came over and began talking to her.

All Laurie knew was that he flashed a lot of cash around and he introduced himself to her as "the lead singer of Pink Floyd."

I started laughing at this point and asked Greg to just quit and tell me what REALLY happened.

He said "I swear this is EXACTLY what LeeAnn told me after her mom called."

I told Greg that I could just imagine the scenario. "Hey. I'm the lead singer of Pink Floyd. You can call me Pink.....what's your name?" "Hey Pink...my name's Laurie. Wow...is that all your money? Will you buy me some stuff? I really need me some boots." (Laurie had a thing for boots.)

Greg continued with the story.

The guy told Laurie that he would call his limo to come and drive her home. He bought her a couple of drinks while they waited.

The next thing she knew, she woke up in a hotel room...alone. Her new "friend" was no where to be found, when she looked out the window, she knew she wasn't in Atlanta, but she didn't know where she was.

She went downstairs and talked to the desk clerk. The clerk, thinking she was on drugs or something, decided to call the cops. The cops picked her up, talked to her to see if they could figure what what happened, then told her to call her mom.

When Jane got there, Laurie told the story to her. In the meantime, the cops had already figured out that something really stunk. Pink Floyd was not touring. They were not even in the country. But...just for the heck of it, one of the cops went over to a local radio station and was able to get a picture of the group. (This was before the internet.) They showed it to Laurie and without telling her who she was looking at, asked her if any of the guys in the picture looked familiar. The answer was no. (Big shocker.)

In talking to the night clerk, he didn't really remember the guy, but the room had been paid for in cash. When the cops ran the name that he had registered under, nothing had come up in either Atlanta or Savannah.

Those were the basics of the story. We never got much more than that. We never found out what the cops thought about it. We never found out if they took her to the hospital. Or what really happened. But we had our own theory.

Since the guy had a lot of money (supposedly) he was either into drugs or he was a pimp. He slipped something into her drink, took her to Savannah and between the time she konked out and the time she woke up, you can make up your own details as to what might have happened. Considering how everything turned out, she was actually lucky that she lived to tell about it.

It wasn't the first time she had gotten herself into something like this and it probably wasn't the last.

That's enough about Laurie...for now. Tomorrow (or whenever I get around to writing about it) I'll tell you some LeeAnn stories.

Like I said before LeeAnn was a real sweetheart and you just could not help but like her. She was just so darn funny! The story I have in mind is LeeAnn at her finest...and it's just classic LeeAnn antics. My dad and I both love this one. It's called "LeeAnn and Grandma Pearl."