Busted By Bobby Sherman

I was talking with a friend of mine recently, speaking of memories shared due not to proximity in space but proximity in time.  To put it more simply, we’re both roughly the same age and though we grew up in far different circumstances thousands of miles apart, we both spent our formative years in America in the 1970’s and thus had some of the same phenomena to deal with.

For instance, we both clearly recalled a time in the early 70’s when a feathered young fop named Bobby Sherman entered the national consciousness. Modestly talented actor, nice-looking guy, great hair, the entertainment factory of the time then presented him as a singer/performer based on the weak artistic argument that he was a nice-looking guy with great hair.

But for a short time, the demographic that buys unthreatening, nice-looking guys with great hair (mostly pre-teen girls) made Bobby Sherman a star. He was the guy that the girls were dreaming about rather than the pre-teen boys like me who actually inhabited their world. We could never be as perfect or as safe as a pretty boy with big hair on TV who could, and would not ever try to actually touch them. But we comforted ourselves with the knowledge that Bobby, pretty boy that he was, would obviously be considered a bit of a wuss if he was our age and went to our school.  We used him to insult each other:  “Yeah? Well, you like Bobby Sherman.”  Ended any argument worth having, every time.

So we got to wondering:  what is Bobby Sherman up to these days?  Ah, the internet. You turn around in your chair, and you can answer any ridiculous question you can think up. And some you can’t, or would rather not, think up.  Of course, the answer might be wrong about half the time, but sometimes it comes with some decent photographic evidence, and multiple sources converge to tell one story.

Bobby Sherman?  A cop. In Los Angeles.

He looks a bit more badass than he did in his singing days, and he was a paramedic for some years which, I think, indicates to his credit that he didn’t drink and drug and fuck himself into extinction after falling out of the limelight like so many. But still, I can’t help but think...

What if I got busted by Bobby Sherman?  If I went to L.A., and for whatever reason (presume for the sake of this fantasy that it involved some horrible, horrible misunderstanding), I was arrested and taken into custody by the one and only Bobby Sherman?  What sort of ruminations would ensue in my mind?  Oh, great. I got busted by Bobby Sherman.  “Yeah, well you got busted by Bobby Sherman.”  There is no comeback.  The taunting in my head would increase in exponential fashion as each remembered individual from my childhood came back to virtual life.  Ha!  Busted by Bobby Sherman.  Would it pass around the internet, becoming the top result for anyone from my past who googled my name for decades to come? Would it go viral?  Would I always be known as The Guy Who Got Busted By Bobby Sherman? Worst of all, would word of my fate go around accompanied by hysterical laughter at my next high school re-union, an event that I of course would be conspicuously absent from because I had been busted by Bobby Sherman?

At some point in the drama, presumably, I would find myself sitting in a tiny cell, wondering how my life had come to this, this busted by Bobby Sherman, and the overwhelming sense of karmic indignity would engulf me.  Not that I would believe in such a thing under normal conditions, but I am as human as the next guy and, under stress, am capable of believing in all kinds of stupid crap when going crazy.  As I surely would be, having just been busted by Bobby Sherman.

I swear, I will never go near L.A. as long as I live.