Free Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle With Tiger Woods at the US Open by John Feinstein, Rocco Mediate Page B

find. Or I would throw a Nancy Drew
     into my backpack and go sit at the Salamander River and read. I wanted to write when I grew up.”
    Linda’s parents separated when she was eight, and finances were never easy after that. When she went to college, she paid
     her own way, working forty hours a week in the hardware department at Sears. During her sophomore year, her roommate, who
     worked in a beauty salon, told her that working at Sears was completely uncool and convinced her to go to beauty school. She
     did and landed the job at Anthony’s soon thereafter.
    “If you were going to work in a salon in Greensburg, Anthony’s was the place to work,” she said. “It was the biggest, it was
     the best, and it was where everyone in town went.”
    On the August day that Rocco walked into Anthony’s — August 21, Linda remembers very specifically — Linda happened to be working
     on the nails of Susan Lucas, mother of Rocco’s boyhood friend Dave Lucas.
    “I always worked with my back to the front door so the person I was working on was facing it,” Linda said. “I heard Susan
     say, ‘Oh, my God, Rocky’s here,’ and there was this commotion behind me. To be honest, my first reaction was to roll my eyes.
     But I remember thinking, ‘Okay, let’s see what this guy looks like.’ So I spun my chair around. He was standing at Tony’s
     station, which is elevated, talking to his dad. I looked at him and, to this day I can’t tell you why, but I heard a voice
     in my head say, ‘That’s the man you’re going to marry.’ I immediately started arguing with the voice: ‘Don’t be ridiculous,
     you’ve never met the guy, he’s a
golfer,
for crying out loud, just stop it.’
    “Susan and I were very friendly; we talked about a lot of things. She didn’t like the guy I was dating, so as soon as I turned
     around, she started waving at Rocco to come over. She introduced us. I was absolutely convinced that everyone in the place
     could hear what was going on in my head, so I was completely embarrassed. I tried to be very cool. I just said, ‘Oh, hi,’
     and went back to work.
    “He went off to talk to a few more people while I finished up with Susan. A little later he was in the back talking to his
     uncle Joe, and I saw the two of them looking at me and whispering. I loved Uncle Joe; we always kidded around with one another.
     Now Rocco’s talking and Uncle Joe is nodding his head yes, over and over.
    “Finally Rocco came back to talk to the woman I was working on at that point. He sat down and said to me, ‘My sister and I
     are going to this place called Tingles tonight. If you’re not doing anything, maybe you’d like to come.’ Believe it or not,
     I was planning on going there with a friend, so I said, sure, why not, we’ll meet you there.”
    It all happened very fast after that. Linda remembers being so nervous she spilled three drinks on Rocco’s white pants. “This
     was after I asked him if he was one of those golfers who wore those awful polyester plaid pants,” she said. “He said he didn’t.
     We played a video trivia game and we won. He looked at me and said, ‘So, how about a kiss for the winners?’
    “I said okay and he kissed me. Don’t ask me why, but when he kissed me I remember thinking of the
Brady Bunch
episode where Peter has his first kiss and fireworks go off. My friend had been in the bathroom, but when she came back we
     must have had those stupid, giddy grins you get at times like that on our faces, because she just looked at us and said, ‘Oh,
     my God.’ ”
    They went to lunch on Saturday and that turned into spending the whole day together, including Rocco taking Linda to his parents’
     house for dinner. The next morning, Rocco had to fly out to the next tour stop in Memphis and convinced Linda to ride to the
     airport with him and his parents.
    “The pump in our well in the backyard was broken and we had no water,” Linda said. “I woke up at four thirty