Puppy Love

Not only will I refer the time period by music, but the titles will also be song titles. This will signify to you that I am writing about the past so you can skip these posts. They may bore you, you see.

Just when Janice and Jimmy bought it, I found my first love. I actually had a girlfriend all through Ingleside grade school. Ingleside was K-8 at the time and there were literally 8th graders running around on the same playgrounds where we played. We were not allowed on certain parts of the campus (if you can call a grade school a campus) and if we were caught there, our teacher would read to us out of a Kindergarden book -- See Spot Run kinda stuff to make us feel like babies and emotionally batter us into avoiding the playground of the younger kids.

First, the girl who liked me...third grade. I met this new girl who was nice and she told somebody who told me that she liked me. I decided to like her because she only had one hand. I don't know if I felt badly for her or she was really a nice girl, but I decided to like her. Her name was Dianna Schmidt. She didn't seem the least bit selfconscious of it. She showed it to me and I marvled at the complete lack of hand that she had on her arm. I don't remember the reason she didn't have a hand. I don't remember asking and I don't remember her telling me. Somehow, though, it was OK. Maybe it was kinda exotic to me. I don't know. I do remember her using her non-hand to restrain herself when she had to pee. I would get her laughing and she would laugh and pound to keep herself from peeing. Why do I remember that? I would love to get ahold of her again to see what she is doing.

Next, the girl I liked. Karen Sullivan. I liked Karen because she had the same birthday as me. Of course, she was cool, very cute, and she liked me too. Those very strong attributes and her cute freckles sealed the deal for me. I think she was my girlfriend until I moved away in 6th grade. I remember years later after moving to Mesa I called her on a dare from my friend. I was no better off with women then than I was in third grade so like an idiot I let my friend do the talking. BIG MISTAKE. I still feel badly about this because she probably still thinks I moved away and got really weird. So maybe I did.

I remember having crushes on the older women at Ingleside. I liked Debbie Drain because she ran for office - 8th grade president or something. I remember her name because it was somewhat unusual. It seems she would be about 5 years older than me. In elementary school, that was nearly as old as my mother.

There was one other lady who meant a great deal to me in grade school. Mrs. Snyder or Mrs. Keith, I think, was her name. When I was 8 my brother died of liver cancer. My older brother is Dennis, my younger brother is Marlo. My other younger brother is Richard. Richie as we called him. He was only a few months old when he died. I remember it very well, though I don't remember him. He was just a little baby, you see, like any other. I do remember that my mother had his crib set up in her bedroom. I remember climbing up on Richie's crib bars and looking at him. One day I was sick - a cold or something - and I climbed up to see my brother. I remember my mom scolding me for breathing on him and possibly making him sick. A few weeks later, my brother died. I remember having two distince feelings: 1) if he could die, so could I and 2) because I breathed on him, I caused his death. I guess I was kind of disturbed after that. Enter Mrs. Keith. She ate lunch with me in the cafeteria everyday and made me feel like it was OK. I don't really think I have deep psychological difficulties as a result of this but I do think I carry sympathy to a little bit of an extreme.