Diane moved in next door when I was six years old. Being the only kid my age within 5 miles made it inevitable that we'd become playmates. Did I mention that next door was still nearly half a mile away, four-tenths to be exact? Our farm was two miles down a dusty gravel road in central Illinois. Diane's folks bought my Grandfather's farm after he passed away.
At the two-room country school Diane and I attended, we mostly played with other kids. After all, she had girl friends there, while I liked to play softball or dodgeball during recess. But once we got home, Diane was normally my only available playmate. The only way another kid could visit either of us was if a parent drove them over, then picked them up later. In farm country most parents had chores that kept them busy all day long
Circumstance threw us together other times as well. There was only one local church, so our Moms often took turns dropping us both off at Sunday school or social events. The modest Baptist church was located in what was laughingly called a town. It had a one-room grocery store, on the first floor of a house, run by 88-year old Mr. Meyer. When he died in his sleep, the entire commercial district closed forever. Unless you count the nickel coke machine his grand niece continued to operate in front of the bygone business. She kept it going for years afterward as a community service and memorial to the beloved town elder.
Diane and I liked each other; we got along fine almost all the time. You'd be hard pressed to prove which of us was the shyest. We were both quiet, well-mannered children. We never fought or tried to impose our will on the other. Case in point, tea parties with imaginary guests weren't something I enjoyed. Once Diane realized which games that she liked would bore me to tears, she never attempted to foist them on me. Likewise, I learned to hunt at an early age, but she hated guns. Diane wasn't a wimp; she'd eat a rabbit or pheasant. She just didn't enjoy hunting.
As I recall, most of what we learned to enjoy doing together came as a result of someone saying, "Wanna play...", then trying it. Over the years we discovered a number of activities we both enjoyed, mostly with little discussion. We weren't afraid to try something new. We'd give it a shot, then simply decide if we liked doing it together or not.
Early on we learned that long hikes over the hundreds of acres of surrounding farmland were more fun when we took them together. Combined, our two farms had a couple miles of streams. Minnows, tadpoles, dragonflies, and crawfish provided untold hours of enjoyment. Seeing a pair of foxes seemingly float across a recently harvested wheat field, or a Sparrow Hawk lazily circling above the stubble of a corn field, alert for careless field mice, were typical rewards for hours spent sitting quietly on grassy knolls.
A rusting barrel hoop nailed to a now rarely used Black Smithing/Harness shed gave us a place to shoot a basketball. A baseball tossed onto the roof of her huge old hay barn made for a good game of catch. A series of board games came and went as we progressed from toddlers to teens.
Looking back, I realize we often spoke for hours on end about the world around us, but rarely the worlds within us. I never tried to be her boyfriend; she never tried to be anything but a playmate and trustworthy friend for me. Our friendship was solid as aged oak by the time we graduated high school.
Don't ask me when it happened, but at some point what I had became hers, and what she had was mine. Whether it was books or bikes, it was normal for us to say "our books" or "our bikes". The word 'my' was rarely spoken between us. It didn't matter who bought the toy, or whose house it was in at any given time. Totally unselfish would be an accurate characterization of our relationship.
I didn't pay overmuch attention to the fact that Diane was a girl and I was a boy. It wasn't that I didn't have hormones aplenty either. Over the years I'd coaxed several girls to sneak down to the basement at school for a game of "I'll show you mine, if you'll show me yours". There were only forty-something kids in our grades one through eight county school, even fewer in our high school. As a result, I had the almost unique experience of seeing four pussies almost every year from the time they were seven to seventeen.
With three of the four I think it just grew to be a custom. Maybe once or twice a year we'd check out each other's development. Trust me, there were no Playboy magazines, no cable TV. What most kids knew about sex, or especially the opposite sex, they learned from animal husbandry around the local farms. The only things most Baptists tell you about sex is not to have any.
There was one girl named Margaret that let me finger her a few times, and she had to teach me how to do that. Margaret was a sweet girl, but both slow and homely. Boys weren't exactly beating down her door, but she needed a little attention now and then like anyone else.
The high point of my sex life before graduation were the few times Margaret gave me a hand job after wandering away from some social gathering for a few minutes, plus one time we masturbated while watching each other behind a shed at a classmate's birthday party. She was from peasant stock. Margaret's bush was so thick I never did learn much about how she looked between her legs after puberty. But that one time I saw a finger disappear into her body was more than enough to trigger the ejaculation she wanted to see.
I never ever kissed Margaret. I feel guilty about it today that I was only curious about her body. I had no actual affection for her, and she understood that. For those who wonder, she did marry a local farmhand who seemed to make her happy.
All fours girls at least flashed their breasts for me a few times, but we'd been pulling our pants down from such an early age, that I was well into my teens before I thought of asking to see their more recent female enhancements.
