What happens to our childhood dreams?

What did you want to be when you grew up? A firefighter? An astronaut? A teacher? All very good choices. But nothing compared to the swinging lady...

When I was much younger (maybe about 7 years old) we went on a little road trip to Texas. In Dallas, there used to be a restaurant my parents would go to called "The Old San Francisco Steakhouse." This time we visited, my parents decided it would be fun to take me. I can't tell you anything about what the restaurant looked like or how the food was or how nice the waitress was. All I can remember was the swinging lady.

In the restaurant they had a big, long, old-fashioned wooden bar. Part of the novelty was that every night a woman dressed in a red dress, fishnet stockings, and a feather boa would come out, climb on a velvet swing and start swinging as high as she could possibly go. She would swing up and up and up until you couldn't imagine her going any higher. Encouraged by the crowd, though, she would go aaaaaaall the way up to the ceiling and ring a tiny bell with her outstretched leg. Then she would twist around and ring the bell on the ceiling of the other end of the bar. It was quite a show, and my seven-year-old self was completely enamored by the whole thing.

To end the night, the swinging lady would pull up a set of black velvet stairs and ask for volunteers to try it out. My hand shot straight into the air. I ran up to the bar, she helped me up onto the pillow-y swing, and I swung as high as my little stubby legs would take me. My moment of glory was over all too soon. I got a pat on the head and a souvenir refrigerator magnet to take home.

By the time I got home, I had convinced myself that I wanted to be the swinging lady when I grew up. I can't tell you how many hours I spent on the swing in our backyard practicing. I would swing as high as I could go and pretend the branch of a tree was the bell on the ceiling.

We went back to Dallas when I was about 15 and decided to try to find the San Francisco Steakhouse for old time's sake. However, as we drove up to where it used to be, we discovered that it had been replaced....by a "gentleman's bar." Any hope of my becoming the swinging lady was crushed.