2.My First Romance ?

Saying for the Day: You never forget your first romance as long as you have a picture.
Contest prizes(with pictures)......... Contest rules

--Digging into the box we find an old kodachrome picture. It is faded so badly that the color is almost gone. If you look closely you can see a young man in a suit that doesn’t fit with his arm around a girl in a pretty yellow dress.

When our archeologists do their work they will recreate my first, sort of , romance.

When I entered high school I had four things that stood in the way of romance.

I was fat. You can see it in the picture.

I couldn’t dance.

I had had a religious conversion and was disgustingly religious.

I had no car

One of these things alone was bad. You put all four together and romance becomes impossible.

Girls didn’t like fat boys.

Girls only dated boys that could dance. They did not want to be taken to a dance and end up dancing with some other girl. Even the Justice’s daughter, who met her date at the door naked (everybody in school knew that story) insisted her date be able to dance.

Girls wanted at least the possibility of sex ( I found that out later). Disgustingly religious boys that believed sex outside of marriage was of the devil really didn’t fit in.

Girls liked boys with cars.

So for my first three years of high school I went dateless. I asked a few girls out but after awhile you get tired of being laughed at.
So I spent my time going to Luther League gatherings looking for a disgustingly religious girl.

My senior year some things changed.

I lost a little weight.

My dad let me use the car.

Two out of four at least gave me a shot.

I met Nel. Nel was funny and Nel was fun. She was somebody I could talk to like Margaret.

She had nice parents. My mother thought she was okay.

I asked her to the Senior Prom.

That was a mistake. Now I had to learn to dance.

I ordered the Arthur Murray Dance Course. It came with big foldout sheets with footprints on them. You put your feet on the footprints and walked through the steps. It was horrible. But I learned enough to waltz.

They still waltzed a lot at Proms in those days.

So I took Nel to the Prom. You can see in the picture how beautiful she was. She put up with my imitation of dancing.

We went out and ate. My dad gave me money for the meal. (Money was green pieces of paper that you used to buy things before credit cards.)

I spent all my paper that night. It was a great meal.

Then I took her home.
I kissed her goodnight.
I didn’t try to take her to a motel or the woods.
I just kissed her and took her home.
I think she was disappointed .

Hey, that’s what a disgustingly religious person does.

I had day dreams in those days about sex. I did what you do during such day dreams. But I never, ever, saw Nel as part of those day dreams. And of course I repented after every one and promised God, never again.

While other boys were trying to get their girls into bed I was trying to convert her from Catholic to Lutheran.

She came from a strong Catholic home. They had eleven kids. You can hardly get more Catholic than that.

I liked her and wanted to save her from her works religion.

Did I tell you I was disgustingly religious?

I went with her until summer.

When summer came my mother talked my great uncle into getting me a job as a deckhand on an ore boat.

I’d like to tell you that my mother believed that idle hands were the devil’s tool . But I think she really hoped that a summer with all these tough drinking sailors would sand off some of the “ religious nonsense” I had developed.

I wrote every day to Nel.

She wrote once a week to me.

By the time I got home she was married to a guy named Freddie. They had a kid on the way.

That’s when I learned that some girls wanted sex as well as dancing.

Nel went on to have ten kids.

Then she left Freddie with the kids and ran off with the mail man, or the milk man, or maybe the garbage man. It was some kind of man.

You see being disgustingly religious saved me from a fate worse than death.

The wife I have now says to throw the picture away since it is so faded

But I never will because it calls back my first , sort of, romance and the miracle of religion.

No! I never will..

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6600 spins without a win. For the rest of the week hapless loser is giving this space to contest details. The results are in. After forcing the judge to make a decision and warning here of the dangers of nepotism yesterdays winner of the suprise prize is in. The winner of 25 blog explosion credits is Laurie of Stranded in Suburbia . I have also decided to give a special GREAT PERCEPTION AWARD to Maritza at Jump In theOcean worth 25 credits.(this over the objection of the judge who said "she's just sucking up" .The judge didn't see her great abilty to see the real nature of this blog) Credits will be transfered as soon as I figure out how. Today we have a new and different suprise prize and you could win it. Also note you can add a comment to Monday's blog , if you haven't already done so which will count for the total in the week.
Well Uncle Wiggly lovers if the judge doesn't get too upset and quit leaving me to try to figure out winners for this contest . We will be back tomorrow with another adventure of "As the World Spins"
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Betty spent the morning working on her houses while I bloged ( I need to get the credits to give away.) Is it spelled bloged or blogged.(Darn my fourth grade spelling ability). Then she got the mail (mostly junk catalogues ,no tracks, no table pad, no railroad cars, no fantasy train parts) and took a nap. I discovered that I need the blog explosion login name to transfer credits to somebody. Winners can send their name to me at linnajohn@sbcglobal.net ( I don't need nor want your password)
Did a little straightening in the basement in the afternoon and made some saffron bread. Betty has gone to Bible study and I need a breathing treatment.
GBYA