There was no way that Candy Shaw and I were going to be lovers. She was captain of our high school’s varsity cheerleading squad and she dated the football team’s quarterback. I was president of both the chess club and the engineering club, and at eighteen, I was still a virgin. A Jewish matchmaker would have paired me with some girl in eyeglasses who plays violin and appreciates Bach, and paired Candy with… well, yeah, the football team quarterback.
Then Candy asked for my help in designing and building her concept for a two-person mechanical costume to enter the annual Springtime Tallahassee parade. Her goal was to entertain the crowd while bringing attention to the local dog shelter’s pet adoption program. Okay, that was one thing we had in common: we both loved dogs.
She showed me concept drawings that were impressively well done, with top, side, front and rear views, replete with measurements and 3D sketches.
“It’s a giant dachshund, see?” she said. “It telescopes in and out, like a Slinky toy.”
“Clever,” I said. “You made these sketches?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you learn to make mechanical drawings?”
“I used to go to an engineering summer camp for kids.”
“You did?”
She gave me a look. “You think I’m too blond for that?”
“Uh…no. Not at all.”
“Anyway, will you help me build it?”
“Sure. We can use my dad’s warehouse; he’s got a full range of woodworking and metalworking tools. It’ll be fun.”
Fun. Not sure if that was the best word. Horny? Intimidating? Because — matchmaker be damned — I didn’t have a crush since sixth grade on some girl in eyeglasses who plays violin and appreciates Bach; I had a big crush on Candy Shaw. But I never would have guessed that she was interested in engineering.
After school and on weekends over the next three weeks, we built Slinky Dog, a giant dachshund that we could walk inside of, our legs being the front and back legs of the pooch. Candy’s original design needed only a little tweaking. We installed electric servos and mechanisms in the giant costume’s framework that gave it moving features: rolling eyes, hinging jaw, lolling tongue, floppy ears that stand to attention, and a tail that wags.
With Candy in front and me behind, we walked with the fifty-five-pound skeletal frame supported on our shoulders on thick padding; not heavy with the weight distributed between us. We practiced putting Slinky Dog through all its moves: first, Candy would turn Slinky’s head, drop its jaw and let its tongue loll out. Then she would raise Slinky’s ears. Next she would hop her legs apart and dip the dog’s head low, imitating the body language of a puppy eager to play. Lastly, I would rush forward, telescoping the dog to a tight ball, and I’d flip the servo that wagged his tail.
The first time we tried wagging the five-foot tail, its gyrating motion threw us off balance and we tumbled to the ground and got four skinned knees. The solution was for me to first stabilize our stance by holding tight to Candy’s shoulders as we braced our legs.
We figured we’d complete the project with a week to spare before the parade, but as they say in engineering: “Everything takes longer than it takes.” At 2 a.m. the night before the parade we finally finished covering Slinky Dog’s framework with beige shag carpet. At 9 that same morning, a family-oriented crowd was already forming along the parade route, looking like a Norman Rockwell scene.
We’d been assigned a position in the parade behind a self-driving float and in front of the FAMU Marching 100, one of the best college marching bands on the planet. We both said at the same time, “The music’s going to be good!”
Even though it was an unusually chilly April day, Claire was wearing a cheerleader’s miniskirt and a bikini top and I wore a pair of running shorts and T-shirt, because we’d done a test run in the completed contraption and it quickly got stiflingly hot inside the carpet-covered beast. Plus, it now weighed close to a hundred pounds, so it felt like we were each carrying a small child on our shoulders. Both of us wore a Camel water bladder, like a backpack, so we could drink on the go through a plastic tube.
We zipped ourselves inside. “Ready?” I yelled over the sound of the drummers behind us rat-a-tatting a funky cadence as the parade got underway. “Vamos!” Candy called back and stepped out in the stream. Through a mesh screen in the dog’s huge eyes, she could navigate as she walked at the front of the giant costume. All I could see was Candy’s bare back and her miniskirt riding her ass as she hammed it up, bopping to the funky music of the Rattlers. It must have appeared to the crowd that Slinky Dog’s torso and forelegs knew how to dance while his hind legs did not, which happened to be true.