I liked girls? Not too early!

When did I first find that I liked girls? Hmmm. When does any guy? I loved school and mainly high school because it was the first time I became a social being. I loved to go out with various girls and I usually double dated with one of my sports friends and their dates. We’d go to the Drive-in movies; we’d usually sneak a couple people in the trunk of the car and let them in the seats after we got in the theater area. Sometimes we’d all go to the beach for a nighttime bonfire and have food and listen to the radio and talk. We’d look out at the waves; sometimes they glowed with a greenish light from the foraminiferans in the water, or the moonlight would sparkle on the wave crests and water. It was just a special time in my life. Other than getting married way back then, it was the best of times. I’d fall in and out of love almost weekly, as did the girls I was dating. Some became special, some not, some were so much fun and in love with life, some were not, most were just really wonderful people. The ones that were, I still write to at Christmas time each year. Some friends are too good to lose. I can’t figure out how I got on to this topic to write about. I usually only recall the funny things that happened back then.

Funny in an odd way I guess but not humorous. The very first person (outside of

Mom, aunts, grandmothers and nurses) to kiss me was Joanie Valentine in second grade in Massachusetts. We were in the same class upstairs in Jonathan MaynardSchool, the middle three windows in this photo. Miss Greenwich was our teacher. It was one of those very old schools with a huge closet and bathroom for each classroom. Ours was to the right side of the class next to the corner I was facing often for my bad moves in class. Joanie was a bit smaller than me…heck it was Massachusetts, everyone as smaller than I was. I was a year older than any one else in class too as in Massachusetts we started first grade at age five…no kindergarten just full tilt into school. I had begun first grade when I was five but then we moved to Fort Leonard Wood and I had to wait until I was six, then mid year we were back in Massachusetts and I was a year behind my age group in that state. Joan was as I said smaller than I and very blonde and blue eyed…like me! We often shared a seat on the bus and we chattered away all the way home most days. She lived on Pleasant Street in Framingham Centre, which was not far from the school. I lived way out another mile from school on Millwood Street. We were on the bus going home and we were talking about school and just as she was getting ready to get off the bus, she very quickly leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, rose and dashed off the bus leaving me in a state of shock! (And awe!...where have I heard that?) I of course was still seated silent now, turning bright red and I didn’t look up at a soul as the bus was full of kids I knew. We moved to California that summer and I never saw Joanie again. It took years for anything like that to ever happen again!

I had a serious crush or two in fourth grade. One was

Carol Borrowdale, a nice little semi-sexy (in 4^th grade semi-sexy is more than fine, what did we know?) brunette with dazzling blue eyes, whom I walked home with very often. Here to the left. She played flute (?) in the orchestra and I played (caterwauled, screeched, mauled?) on the violin. I swear I could see the saw marks. She and I walked home after orchestra. She lived in a large fairly large home on one of the nicer streets in Pasadena. Her front yard was bigger than our whole lot. I swear I saw a few plane circling thinking it was an airport. She was the one that filled me in on the details on how to use your hands to squirt water out of the tub …very funny…but it gave me such visions of her in the tub doing this…yikes. And wow, now I have this vision of her as an adult doing the same thing. I also had a big crush on Linda Rees a statuesque (for fourth grade!!! What is that… 4’2” or something??) blue-eyed blonde.

To the right and left  in high school. She was a ballet dancer then and had won a bunch of awards. She even gave an in school presentation and wowed us all! I used to walk home the same way she did and one day her sister Lois asked me (right in front of my friends, Marshall and Doug and my brother Jeff) if I “liked” Linda. I was so freaking mortified to be asked a question like that in front of the guys. So, I said “Heck, No!” and walked away in a huff. (Calvin and Hobbes seems to be a close parallel… yep, that’s it…I walked away in a Calvin type huff!) I had to tell Linda many years later that I really did like her but Lois put me on the spot. Of course by then I knew she was happily married and very wealthy and way out of any problems for me… so I felt very safe and honest! Fifth, sixth and seventh grades were strange years. I had a big crush on Francis a tall (this time she really was tall… she was in 7^th grade!) redhead who lived next door. She was a year ahead of me in school but only 5 months in age and she was turning into a real beauty. When we all got together in the huge teepee that our neighbors had put up she used to tease the hell out of me by slowly lifting her skirt until the very edge of her bright yellow panties were showing and then ask me if I wanted to see more. I was very embarrassed but I would stammer out a yes and then she would laugh and drop her skirt and run off. I felt as foolish as Calvin often does then too! I had dreams of her for years. I suppose I still do now. The girl directly across the street from us was Norma. She had a thing for me and every time we’d play hide and seek, she’d hide with me and then start covering me with kisses. She had red hair too. I think this is when I came to think that redheaded girls were all I ever wanted. Norma even later between 6^th and 7^th grade had her family come and stay with us for a time. She and her siblings slept in the living room and once I got up early and went in to watch television, she was up already watching television and sitting on her sleeping bag or whatever they had for her. We began some small talk softly so as not to wake the others and as I looked at her I noticed that her pajama top was partially open …now a 7^th grader is no Jayne Mansfield but still. Wow! I was 12 years old and this was as close to that as I would get for many years. She noticed that I noticed and she just smiled and lowered her eyes very demurely and let things go on as they were. She kept the small conversation going with me and being the consummate gentleman I am, I continued to steal glances until we both began to redden a bit. Only then did she secure the loose buttons. Had she been more this way playing hide and seek I am sure I would have fallen for her back then! Ahhhhh, thank the gods for making redheads! Thus, my introduction to girls, and especially redheads, was fairly complete. I was no longer a member of the “He-Man Women Haters Club” (a reference to Spanky and Alfalfa in the Our Gang/ Little Rascals comedies.)