On the way to HIM...the Early Years

Love, lust and lots of like.

Sam the gardener. He brought me rice paper candy each week. I liked him. He stopped bringing me candy, I stopped liking him.

End of story.

The trash man. He had an exciting job. My world was very small and I didn't have the chance to meet many men until I started school.

Regan was in my first grade class. He sat in front of me when I wasn't banished to the hallway with my entire desk in tow for poking him in the back with a pencil and making him cry. I decided then and there that the sensitive type wasn't for me.

In third grade I liked Richard. He had rainbow lined paper. I wanted some. I promised something big to Richard just so I could have some college ruled rainbow stash. I think he's still looking for me to pay up.

I had a little dry spell for a couple years and then I developed a pretend crush on my 5th grade teacher, Mr. Kano. He was the only male teacher in our school and all the other girls in the class liked him so I thought I should too not to be left out. Mr. Kano took me and 4 other students on a field trip to U.C.L.A. one summer. I think he considered us "at risk" kids. I remember thinking the cafeteria was really cool and I liked eating off trays. I don't remember much else about that day.

In 6th grade I fell in love with the smallest boy in our class with the prettiest rabbit teeth I had ever seen. His name was Sammy, not to be confused with Sam my first (imagined) love, long forgotten by now.

Sammy told me my class picture was the prettiest of all the girls in the class.

I was certain we were destined to be together forever...until the day I asked him to borrow his "rubber". Sammy was a little more sophisticated and worldly than me to say the least. I was a naive and sheltered kid. Sammy burst out laughing, and I turned ten shades of red as he proceeded to tell anyone within shouting distance that I had asked to borrow a rubber from him. I had no idea why he was making such a big deal out of it.

Sammy had these really cool erasers that I now understand were artists erasers. They were like putty and could be molded. They were nothing like the standard, boring pink eraser with the slanted edges. He always looked like he was having fun erasing his work while forming his eraser into different shapes.

If we were to be married soon I wanted an equal share in our future property.

There is a picture of the dreaded eraser at the top of this post. I never said another word to Sammy again. I think that was my first official break-up.

to be continued...