Photo Credit: Annie Spratt
All this time, I have gotten it wrong. When filling out an online profile for professional services, I always select “name your first boyfriend” as the question to answer for security verification. What have I been thinking? Anyone who knows me well could make an educated guess. And yet, they would be wrong. As off the mark as I have been...until now. My high school boyfriend, Rick R, wasn’t my first boyfriend nor my last. He was what I refer to as an “in-between’er.”
My first boyfriend was John C. We met in kindergarten. John was my “go to guy” when the teacher asked me to hold hands with someone to walk down the hallway. Throughout my grade school years, John C. and I would secretly slip valentines to each others professing our undying affection. Then one day "it" happened. We stopped sharing love cards in exchange for sharing joints. From each love we learn. With John C., I learned you never want to square dance with a boy that puts cornhusker lotion on his hands before you do a “Do-Si-Do.” around the dance floor. I made the mistake and never again. And yet, John taught me being different isn't a bad thing.
Once I hit my early teens and my breast started budding, my all-knowing parents sent me to the quintessential “To Kill A Mockingbird” southern town in North Carolina to spend the summer months with my Scottish “Granny Cameron” and “Miss Margaret,” my beloved aunt. Not only was I absolutely positive my parents didn’t love me anymore, I was convinced they had thrown away the “cool camp” brochure in lieu of free summer housing that came with trusted adult supervision. In hindsight, I am forever grateful...grateful that southerns like to spend their afternoons "calling on" folks. It was on one of those lazy Sunday afternoons that Granny Cameron, Miss Margaret and I, along with one of Miss Margaret's famous pecan pies, called on Dr. W. and his family. It was on that afternoon, I met John W. Jr., two years my senior. John came with a set of blue eyes that could melt butter, and a southern drawl that felt like a spiders web drawing me in. While John was full of an unabashed, unadulterated spirit, he also came with lots of “yes ma'm and no sirs.” Being able to "check the etiquette box" was all my Granny Cameron needed.
John gave me Hallmark memories. Many a summer evening we could be found driving around town in his old Ford truck with a cold beer between our legs. We had no place to go and everywhere in-between. Some nights it would be so quiet I swear you could actually hear tobacco growing in the fields. It was on those hot and sticky summer nights, I swore my sides would split from laughing so hard at mostly nothing at all. Unlike the Hallmark movies, John W. was “the love that got away”…he was a southern boy and I was a girl from north of the Mason Dixon Line. Enough said.
Now let me get to Rick R., the “in-between’er.” The boy I thought was my first boyfriend…that was until my recent epiphany. Rick was a “guys guy” who smelled of grease. He spent Friday nights in the garage with his buddies working on anything that came with a motor. To this day, I am not quite sure of the spell he cast upon me. It probably didn't help that I became a hopeless romantic at a very young age. He came with legs that looked like toothpicks, a chest as smooth as a babies bottom, and was never on time for anything, much less a date. Time for me to keep going.
The nice, simple guys never stood a chance. The Allure factor was the hook. Okay, maybe once or twice I slipped up. If the allure factor was the master hook, curiosity was its sous-chef. The combination of these two was as strong as my desire to capture fireflies and put them in a jar when I was a kid. I go toward the light. I did then and I still do. John C. was bohemian, John W. came with a "je ne sais quoi" spirit, and Rick R. came with eccentricities to the likes I had never experienced. My love journey has led me to today, and my epipfany of yesterday. It began not as I have thought at all. It began with my "go to" guy from kindergarten. The guy that was a little different.
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