Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: I was 18. He was 36 and my teacher. Could our marriage survive?
I was a teenager getting ready to attend Sequoia Junior High School in Reseda in 1960. My father heard that there was a new drama teacher at the school named Mr. C who was going to put on his first play. Since my father had done some acting in Indiana at Fairmount High School (the same school that James Dean had gone to), we went to the play together.
It was a silly but entertaining comedy with an odd title: “A Rocket in His Pocket.” Mr. C’s next play was another obscure and quirky little show titled “Come Out of the Closet.” Clearly neither play would be chosen in today’s world, but at the time audiences greeted them both enthusiastically.
A few years later, I took a drama class from Mr. C and was fortunate enough to be cast as Anne in his production of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” (Obviously, his choices for productions had improved.)
As the oldest of three siblings, I already had quite a bit of experience when Mr. C asked me to babysit his two young children. It didn’t happen often, but it gave me a chance to meet his wife. Reseda High School was close to Sequoia, which made it easy for me to later attend Mr. C’s subsequent shows, including “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “The Wizard of Oz” and even “1984.”
Suddenly and tragically, Mr. C’s young wife died of cancer. I felt sorry for my former teacher and volunteered to help out by babysitting his children, free of charge, while he taught summer school. I was attending what was then San Fernando Valley State College when a lonely Mr. C called me that fall and asked me to dinner as a thank-you for taking care of the children. Me? The babysitter?
I was still surprised despite knowing him for several years. I had seen all of his plays, and we knew a lot of the same people. And I especially loved his children. So why not accept his invitation? We went to dinner at Yamashiro in Hollywood and ended up staying for three hours talking and talking. It turned out that even though he was 18 years older than I was, we had a great deal in common.
That wonderful dinner led to another dinner at Hoppe’s Old Heidelberg in Los Angeles. After that, there were dinners in the Valley with his children at Bob’s Big Boy, Piece o’ Pizza and Van de Kamp’s bakery. As we spent more time together, we realized that although several people he knew (including my mother) weren’t thrilled with the idea, we were in love and wanted to get married.
So we did.
Nothing was easy for us in those early years. We were raising his two children who had lost their mother. He was working on his master’s degree in theater and directing plays, and I was going to college to earn my teacher’s credential. We soon realized that one teacher’s salary didn’t go far. We never seemed to have enough money.
Consequently, we took a chance in 1974 and tried out for “Gambit,” a CBS game show hosted by Wink Martindale. With a combination of personality, trivia knowledge and a lot of luck, we were on the show for four days and actually won $18,000 in cash and prizes — much more than Mr. C’s annual salary at the time!
It was a life-changing experience for us. Mr. C also faced another big change when he left Sequoia Junior High and transferred to Chatsworth High School. His drama program there attracted outstanding students (many of whom became famous), and together they put on productions such as “Grease,” “The Elephant Man,” “Equus,” “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and “A Chorus Line” for a supportive community.
In addition, we discovered that we both loved to travel. As a result, we organized theater trips for his drama students to take them to London, Paris and New York. Years later we branched out and traveled during spring break with hundreds of his students and some adults to Japan, Australia, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Singapore. That was our one big indulgence — spending extra money on travel.
After our children graduated from high school, we decided to try something different. Since we both had our master’s degrees and had taught in California for many years, we were hired to teach at Taipei American School in Taiwan.
For the first time in our marriage, we were alone — in our charming but funky little house in the hills above the city. It was like a honeymoon for us. After 10 terrific years teaching and producing shows at the school, we came back to live locally for a few years and to spend time with our daughters and grandchildren. Mr. C had retired, but I still wanted to teach again internationally. Sometime later, I accepted a job teaching third grade at a small private school in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
“It’s just for two years,” I promised my mother.
But I had to break that promise to her because our time in Malaysia became another romantic interlude as we shared nine happy years in the tropics. Mr. C’s biggest job there was playing Santa Claus for all the elementary school classes at holiday time. He enjoyed acting this time and not directing.
We’re back home now and living in Westlake Village. Our traveling days may be over, but fortunately we kept journals of all the trips we’ve taken for 50 years to more than 100 countries. Every day we reread one of them and recall our adventures in Tanzania, South Africa, Europe, Argentina, China, India, Sri Lanka and beyond. We can practically taste the foods we ate years ago, hear the music and delight in the colorful dances and shows we saw around the world.
Our unlikely romance that many thought had little chance of success became a true partnership for life. For 57 years, I have loved being married to Robert Carrelli — he’s now 93 — and I’m extremely happy Mr. C made the daring decision to marry his 18-year-old babysitter on March 17, 1967.
The author is a retired international educator who lives in Westlake Village. She can be reached at patriciacarrelli@gmail.com.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
“She’s like a female Willy Wonka,” Sakief Baron, 36, said about Kendra Austin, 32, after she explained that her personal style had a playful and cartoonish spirit.
Dressed in loose, oversize layers in blue and neutral shades, the couple were walking on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when I noticed them on a Saturday in April. There was a symmetry to their ensembles, so it wasn’t too surprising when she noted that he had influenced her fashion sense.
Before they met, she said, she was “less sure” about her wardrobe choices. “I also have lost 100 pounds in the time we’ve been together,” she added, which she said had helped her to recalibrate her relationship with clothes.
His style has been influenced by hip-hop culture, basketball players like Allen Iverson and his mother’s Finnish background. “I just take all these pieces and then it kind of comes together,” he said.
Both described themselves as multidisciplinary artists; he also has a job at a youth center, mentoring children. “I want to make sure that I look like someone they want to aspire to be every time they see me,” he said.
In my L.A. Buy Nothing group, I started noticing how some objects, given for free from neighbor to neighbor, carry emotional weight. An item was more than it appeared. It was a piece of personal history, perhaps one with generational memories.
From one person’s hands to another’s, objects find new life through the free gift economy on Facebook or the Buy Nothing app. Buy Nothing Project, a public benefit corporation, reports having 14 million members across more than 50 countries who give away 2.6 million items a month. There are more than 100 groups in Los Angeles alone.
Buy Nothing reduces waste by keeping items out of landfills. It also builds community. When our lives are increasingly online, Buy Nothing encourages us to get out of our cars and make connections with neighbors, even if the interaction is no more than a wave when picking something up left by a doorstep. Researchers have found that even small social interactions can foster a sense of belonging.
Still, Buy Nothing has its challenges. For years, some have complained that the groups shouldn’t be limited to neighborhoods, but rather have more open borders. Last year, many longtime members complained about the project enforcing its trademark, leading Facebook to shut down unregistered groups even if they were serving people under economic strain. Critics saw the tattling as a shift from mutual aid toward control and branding. For its part, Buy Nothing says its decisions are based on building community, trust and safety.
Despite those disagreements, Buy Nothing offers a platform for special connections. As much as there are jokes about people offering half-eaten cake, many have passed along treasured items. Buy Nothing items may feel too valuable for the trash or too personal for Goodwill. The interaction between giver and receiver becomes just as meaningful as the object itself.
I set out to document these quiet exchanges in my Buy Nothing group, drawn to the question of why people choose to pass their belongings from one neighbor to another.
Tiny builders, big exchange
Lidia Butcher gives a toolbox and worktable her two sons used to Chelsea Ward for her 17-month-old son.
“We’ve had the toolbox and worktable for the last 10 years, it’s been very special. When I told my youngest son we were going to give it away, he was a little sad. He said he was still playing with it, but then I explained that it’s been sitting untouched for a year and that if we gave it to someone else, maybe someone else would be happy about it. So he felt joy about giving it to another child who would want to play with it. I have this little emotional feeling letting it go, but at the same time, it’s a good feeling. Like a new beginning.”
— Lidia Butcher, 35, joined the group several years ago when someone told her a person in the group once asked for a cup of sugar.
“We’re getting a worktable. Benji is now old enough to be interested in playing with tools. I’m going to move my drafting table out of his room. His bedroom is my office. So that will go into storage or the Buy Nothing group and the worktable will go in its place. We live in an apartment, and as he’s growing, his needs change but our space doesn’t. Buy Nothing is really helpful to be able to cycle out of stuff.”
— Chelsea Ward, 38, has found the Buy Nothing group extremely helpful since becoming a mom.
Something borrowed
Abby Rodriguez lends Sophie Janinet a veil for her wedding.
“Sophie had asked for a wedding veil on our Buy Nothing group and I’m lending it to her because I wanted it to have a second life. I hate the idea that precious things just sit there and never get touched. My wedding day was one of the best days of my life. At one point the power went out and now we have this amazing picture with my husband and I and everyone using their phone to light up the dance floor.”
— Abby Rodriguez, 40, discovered Buy Nothing when she moved to her northeast L.A. neighborhood in 2020.
“I moved to Los Angeles from France four years ago. The day I joined Buy Nothing was the first time I felt connected to the community. It played a huge role in my adapting to life here. I’m receiving a veil because I want my wedding to look and feel like my values. I thrifted my dress, I chose a local seamstress to alter the dress but when I tried it on, I felt something was missing. I wanted a veil but I didn’t want to buy new because I didn’t want to add anything to the landfill. So I posted a request for the veil on Buy Nothing.”
— Sophie Janinet, 37, is recreating the low-waste, slower-paced values she once lived by in France through her local Buy Nothing community.
2
1. Abby Rodriguez, left, holds her wedding veil that she is lending Sophie Janinet, right, for her upcoming wedding. 2. Michele Sawers, left stands with Beth Penn, right, while giving her a decorative owl.
A pigeon-spooking owl gets a second life
Michele Sawers gives Beth Penn a decorative owl.
“Coming from a place of luck, now I have plenty to give. The owl has been with me for 26 years. I bought the owl soon after I bought this house. The owl was purchased because I had a pigeon problem, they would camp out under my eves and I would have bird poop everywhere. The owl must have worked because they’re gone and they haven’t come back.”
— Michele Sawers, 58, uses Buy Nothing regularly to connect with her community and support her low-consumption values.
“There are things I don’t want to own. So borrowing those things on Buy Nothing is really nice. There is a person who I borrowed their cooler twice and their ladder twice so I feel like they are my neighbor even though they are not [right next door]. We get these birds that poop on the deck and the recommendation online was to get a fake owl. When it was posted on Buy Nothing, I thought, ‘I have to have that owl!’ It’s going to have a good home with me on the deck with some cats, a dog and some kids.”
— Beth Penn, 47, once helped build her local Buy Nothing group and now experiences it from the other side, as a member.
Stuffed toys find a new purpose
Magaly Leyva, left, stands with Tatiana Lonny, right, with the stuffed toys and play balls she is gifting her.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
Magaly Leyva gives stuffed toys and plastic play balls to Tatiana Lonny.
“My mother-in-law gave the dolls and plastic play balls to my daughter, but she has so much. My daughter is not going to play with them with the same intent that another kid would, because she’s really little. I’d rather another kid use these things.”
— Magaly Leyva, 35, joined Buy Nothing nearly four years ago to find clothes for her nephew.
“I’m taking these new items to a township called Langa in South Africa. I know the kids there will be so happy. They have so little there. I’m doing this all by myself, I’m just collecting a GoFundMe for the suitcase fee at the airport.”
— Tatiana Lonny, 51, began using Buy Nothing in hopes of finding resources to support the animals she rescues.
A second helping
Laura Cherkas gives Aurora Sanchez a cast iron pan.
“Buy Nothing gives me the freedom to let go of things because I know that they will stay in the community and the neighborhood. I’m giving a couple of cast iron items that my husband and I got when we were on a cast iron kick, probably during COVID. We determined that we don’t actually use these particular pans and they were just making our drawers heavy. So we decided to let someone else get some use out of them.
“I hate throwing things away. I want to see things have another life. Sometimes I take things to a donation center, but I like the personal connection with Buy Nothing and that you know that there is someone who definitely wants your item.”
— Laura Cherkas, 40, has built connections with other moms through Buy Nothing and values it as a way to cycle toys in and out for her child.
Laura Cherkas, left, holds the pan she is gifting Aurora Sanchez, right, through Buy Nothing.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
“I wanted a cast iron pan because I cook a lot of grilled meat. I’m excited to try this style of cooking out and it will help me when I cook for only one or two people. I got lucky because I was chosen to receive it.”
— Aurora Sanchez, 54, has spent the past two years engaging with Buy Nothing, finding in it a sense of neighborly support that makes her feel valued while strengthening her connection to the community.
Next player up
Joe Zeni, 70, is using his local Buy Nothing group on Facebook to give away a basketball hoop he used with his son when he was little.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
Joe Zeni first offered a basketball hoop on Buy Nothing in 2023, where it remains unclaimed.
“I’m giving away a Huffy basketball freestanding hoop because it’s just taking up space. We used to play horse and shoot baskets together. My son is now 35, he doesn’t live here anymore.”
— Joe Zeni, 70, uses Buy Nothing often to give items away, believing many of the things he no longer needs still have purpose.
In the year since his death, there has been no hard pivot at Armani. The shadow of the founder has stayed in place over the Milan HQ, where the brand seems happy to leave it. Armani is not just plumbing the past for continued inspiration, it’s reselling it.
Today, Giorgio Armani is announcing Archivio, a grouping of 13 men’s and women’s looks, plucked from the brand’s back catalog and remade for today. (And, yes, at today’s prices.) There’s a jacket in pinstriped alpaca of 1979 vintage; a buttery one-and-a-half breasted jacket with a maitre d’s flair that first appeared in 1987; and an unstructured silk-linen suit that will activate ’90s flashbacks for die-hard Armani clients and those who want to capture that era’s nostalgia. The advertising campaign was shot and styled by Eli Russell Linnetz, who has his own label, ERL, but always seems to be the first call brands make when they want sultry photos with the aura of Details magazine circa 1995. (He did a similar thing for Guess recently.)
Linnetz’s images are a reminder of how Armani’s work still reverberates decades later.
Archivio is also a canny recognition of what shoppers crave now. On the resale market, Armani wares are as coveted as can be. Every week it seems as if I get an email from Ndwc0, a British vintage store, announcing a new drop of meaty-shouldered ’90s Armani power suits. They sell for less than $500. At Sorbara’s in Brooklyn, you can buy a tan Giorgio Armani vest for $225.
That vintage-mad audience is in Armani’s sights: To introduce the collection, it’s staging an installation, opening today, at Giorgio Armani’s Milan boutique. It will feature the hosts of “Throwing Fits,” a New York-based podcast whose hosts wear vintage Armani button-ups and shout out stores like Sorbara’s.
It’s prudent, if a bit disconnected. Part of the charm of old Armani is that it can be found on the cheap. I’m wearing a pair of vintage Giorgio Armani corduroys as I write this. I bought them for $76 on eBay. Archivio is reverent, but its prices, which range from $1,025 to $12,000, may scare off shoppers willing to do the searching themselves.
If you ask me, the next frontier of this archive fixation is that a brand — and a big one — will release a mountain of genuine vintage pieces. J. Crew and Banana Republic have tried this at a small scale, but a luxury house like Armani hasn’t gone there. Yet. Eventually, Armani (or a brand like it) is going to grab hold of the market that exists around its brand, but through which it gets no cut.
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