Amazing Lake (on Amazing Race)

Okay, here’s Uncle Mark’s saddest claim to fame evah:

Lake Garner of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, is a new contestant on this season of The Amazing Race 9. If you saw the show, you may remember him as:

– the dentist/fitness nut whose wife claims to be a modern-day Scarlett O’Hara.

– the white guy who constantly shouts, “Where’s the black guy?”

– the man who completed a detour by assembling a motorcycle from spare parts, promised an elderly couple he’d help them as soon as he finished his own challenge, and then ran off without keeping his word.

That Lake. He’s a charmer.

Lake was, I confess, at least equally charming back in 1987, when he was a student in a freshman English class I taught at the University of Southern Mississippi. Young Lake looked something like a young, slender, muscular, well-tanned Alec Baldwin (but not the older, huskier, chubby-cheeked, pasty-fleshed Alec Baldwin of today). In addition to his being almost painfully handsome, he was also the proud owner of a pair of those Alaskan Husky eyes — irises so intensely colored, they looked almost artificial.

Young women and gay men seated next to Lake were lost causes; distracted by his beauty, they couldn’t focus on their work.

I have a few Lake stories — for now, in honor of his appearance on my favorite reality show, I’ll share two:

Lake Does Lunch. One day, near the end of the semester, Lake lingered after class and invited me to lunch at Chesterfield’s — a local restaurant where he worked as a waiter. “My fraternity is doing this as a sort of teacher appreciation day,” he said. “Come with me. You can have anything you want.”

So I showed up. Lake didn’t.

Well, that’s not true. Lake did show up — just late. He joined me, made a big deal of presenting the menu, and spent a lot of time chatting up the other members of the wait staff. “I get a discount,” he said. “Order whatever.”

I forgot what we ordered. I do remember, however, the arrival of the check, the look of concern on Lake’s face, and his admission that his discount wouldn’t quite cover everything we’d ordered. “I’ll still cover it,” he insisted. “It’s just more than, you know, more than I would spend on me.”

And then he said: “Just hope you’ll remember this around grading time.”

I was already a little uncomfortable with the whole “Take a Teacher to Lunch” affair … and that comment sealed the deal. I paid for my lunch and left.

Lake at the Lake. Lake passed my class (and not because of that lunch, I must add) and, like most other freshmen, ceased to be a part of my universe …

… until one sunny Sunday afternoon almost six years later. At the time, I was preaching full-time at a little church in Simpson County. (Hard to imagine, I know. Ah, the lengths we’ll go to curry favor with our mothers.)

I was spending the afternoon with a young couple from my congregation, strolling along the banks of a recreational lake and feeding the ducks. Suddenly, there was Lake, rising up out of the water, wearing nothing but a navy blue Speedo.

He spotted me (I’d spotted him already, I assure you), waved, beamed his perfect smile, and came trotting over, dripping wet and as close to naked as you can be without being naked. He was a marble statue of a Greek god, come to life — finely chiseled male perfection.

In the process of greeting me, he may have ended a marriage. The young woman in our trio was visibly flustered from the moment Lake appeared, and she remained so for several hours after — a fact that didn’t sit well with her husband. “He’s just so virile,” she kept saying. It was the first time I’d ever heard someone actually use that word. “He just really, really virile, isn’t he?”

Her husband — a small, hairy fellow — said nothing.

The woman wouldn’t let it go. “Really. Very. Virile.” She fanned herself.

They divorced less than two months later.

Amazing Lake. The Lake on Amazing Race has a lot in common with the kid I knew way back then. He’s easily frustrated. He’s very much the stereotypical Southern frat brother. He still strikes me as the kind of person who might invite someone to lunch, show up late, and then weasel out of the check — or who might promise to help a pair of elderly competitors, then dash away once his own work is done.

Will he win? I haven’t seen the guy in almost twenty years — but something tells me that someone used to living on Planet Lake is going to have a pretty tough time making a go of it in the Great Big World.