Verified by 
Adolescence
Stirrings, Rated PG-13
Memories (Hallmark Style) are made of this
Posted February 17, 2012
"Oh God. Oh God."
Were there many women who had responded to him with such an on-high tribute?
There was the futon back in ....
There was the night and the morning on the fold-out in ....
The four-poster in the bed-and-breakfast ....
The starboard upper bunk aboard the ....
"Oh God, Oh God" was surely his response to the news that his Alzheimer's stricken wife had been struck fatally (totaled) by an oblivious gargantuan SUV.
"Oh God, Oh God" would surely be his response if anything terrible happened to his son or his daughter.
Recently, the expression came to him with the breaking news of violations by elementary school teachers and college coaches.
And, recently, he has called out the plea as he tries to deal with the aftermath of medical "procedures." He has intoned the plea in response to forebodings of what might still have to be removed, and what might have to be re-routed. Even as conducted by the most expert of surgeons, the removals and the follow-on chemistries may leave him less inclined and less able.
And so, more and more, he is stimulated by memories: gauzy but not flimsy. Recollected or recreated, these faded deckle-edged mental snapshots are faithful in their way.
With carnal bliss in abeyance, he revisits his first loves -- first infatuations, first crushes, first heartthrobs -- to the extent that memory allows.
The first: The pony-tailed dark-haired girl who sat at an elementary-school projects-table, back in the early- and mid-1950s. Though it was never articulated -- he didn't have the vocabulary, or perhaps the full realization -- his other tablemates must have felt the same innocent allure.
Years later, he would slow down as he passed by the showroom and lot of her family's auto dealership -- and think about walking in, on the pretext of shopping for a car. Maybe she'd be there as the customer-relations manager. Maybe there'd be a picture of her in the executive office. He never stopped. The dealership is gone now.
What isn't gone is a pleasant, albeit vague, romance of memory; a shapeless, faceless memory that's uncomplicated by the realities of romance -- and thus easy to carry forward through the decades.
Following that first elementary school infatuation, he discovered that feminine mystique (1950s variety) could take the form of a teacher. One in particular stays through the fog of early adolescence: She was tall, wore long tweed skirts, and had long brown wavy hair. No, no -- there was no suggestion, not even the slightest, that she was trying to engage him or any student other than in the most appropriate ways. Those were innocent times, when innocence was not detrimental; not co-opted by the perverse.
What registered was an appreciation for femininity that was fully clad -- even as he and his classmates were discovering fold-out pages of unclad young women.
Then, a formidable rival came into view in the form of a dark-haired pony-tailed girl -- in a periwinkle blue gym suit. A sixth-grade classmate, she won all the field-day footraces, and one couldn't help but admire her long-legged strides. God, she was, was, well.... And she was multi-dimensional, as well. Though he had not even a fingernail's bit of musical facility, he took up the violin so that he might sit near her in the elementary school orchestra.
And then there was a seminal moment: The afternoon he accompanied her home. There in her house, with her mother still at work, he had a pre-teen epiphany: It may well have been the first time he experienced a genuine actual-body-in-range titillation that was unmistakable. The experience was delimited by virtue, and by virtue of inexperience and awkwardness. The moment passed, but was archived, for safekeeping: a short, short story album-ed for future reference, to return to wistfully.
Years later, at a high school reunion, she returned as the mother of several - and happily married. She looked absolutely wonderful. He was not alone in envying her husband.
There were two other pre-teen moments that stay with him, as valued keepsakes:
The scent of salt-water and sun-tan lotion take him back to a row of clapboard changing sheds at some sandy shore. In the completely sectioned-off cubicle just a few feet away was the girl in the green bathing suit with whom he had exchanged shy mumbles, little more. There was nothing to use to record phone numbers. They were not prepared for such exchanges. "See you again, maybe."
There was the bonfire-marshmallows-on-sticks night when young boy campers were trundled to meet young girl campers who they had tried to spy all summer from across a lake. She had red hair. Of that he is still sure. They had just enough nerve or fate to establish a nervous "rapport" that was not totally unnerving or embarrassing. "Maybe see you again."
Should he share these quick sketches of "romance" with his kids? Would they find the sketches amusing or embarrassing, or endearing?
High school brought the usual challenges for a kid who wasn't captain of any team and who didn't have a car, or any social cachet. His junior prom and senior prom dates were quite good looking -- but while he was surely delighted to be so nicely accompanied, those prom evenings were no more than 8-by-10 glossy-photo successes.
His superficial successes continued into his early college years. There was Miss Teen Junior something-or-other who he showed her off at post-football-game parties. After basking in the glory that appearances provide, he drove her home, direct, by her 11:30 curfew.
In that era, he can recall only one seemingly lusty "relationship" -- only one date that had his college-mates wink extravagantly, mouthing kudos, and congratudalting him with lascivious thumbs-up gestures. She was, in fact, a nice girl, a smart girl - but her buxomness gave her prominence, and won lecherous acclaim -- and regrettably, notoriety (undeserved).
After the fashion of the day, he dated several attractive coeds who were simply (not disparagingly) nice girls, all. Those young women were mentally mature, worldly for the times, and sophisticated without the snobbery that often went with the territory. One would become a judge; one went on to become a Ph.D. in psychology; one a medical doctor; another, a prominent lawyer and business entrepreneur.
He had not been equipped, or schooled, to value such assets and appreciate their upside. Such acumen would come only after he had earned his advance accounting credentials and began to see entries beyond the columns he had studied so myopically. Or, maybe he had made a subconscious appraisal: at the time, those women may have been too formidable.
He chuckles recalling his monastic cinderblock grad-school dorm room. It was so narrow that the chair to the built-in desk often bumped back against the slab on which a thin mattress rested. He recalls one extremely judicious evening, and a singularly injudicious one (for him).
It was a Saturday night: The wife of a grad-school classmate had about a dozen of her fellow grade-school teachers to the couple's off-campus apartment for the overt purpose of meeting a bunch of her husband's buddies - who arrived tardy and scruffy. The ladies were arrayed on one side of the living room; the buddies were huddled on the other. There was no meeting of the minds, let alone hearts, souls, and limbs. The buddies behaved like grade-school clods.
As to the injudicious, there was a snowy icy weekend that held promise of hot time. A dorm-mate needed him to separate one sister from another. He lied about his age and rented a car from a lot whose proprietor was disposed to such deceits. He found it difficult to give himself over to unbridled opportunity when all he could think about was the snow and the ice that would have them trapped in, boost the daily rental charges, and give rise to an insurance claim on a policy that he could only claim to have. For him, even just the semi-harrowing tamped and trumped the libido.
His genus species - accounting major, Army ROTC, - was not the phylum that would lure and procreate with the visually provocative of the female smart set, of the 1960s.
What does linger, nicely, are recollections of pony tails, flowing wavy hair, a green bathing suit, red hair illumed by a camp fire, a profoundly contoured sweater; faces that bore no need for make-up, eye-liners, lash-extenders, or nip-and-tucks. Later on there was the softly-husky ultra-sultry voice of a local news anchor-lass; and then the voices of kind, patient, forgiving women who thought it would be nice to see him again, and again.
