I was surfing through a few websites suggested by Richard's Realm when I came across a series of pictures that could have been shot in my own kitchen. No, not this kitchen where I sit in front of a lap top and see the reflection in the screen of an older man with a grey beard, but one that I still remember from the late 1950's. Those strange growing up years of my youth, where boys and girls wanted to be men and women, but it was not quite so easy then. The " Pill " was, at least to a 18 year old, nothing more than wishful thinking, and condoms were still called rubbers and came out of vending machines in dirty gas station bathrooms. Sex was something we all thought about, but girls seem to know more because budding breasts and monthly periods required more immediate answers than sticky bed sheets and funny voices.
It was also a time of social and financial distress. My parents had made it very clear that if I got a girl pregnant, I was going to have to get married and any financial support from them would end. Get a job, support the family and forget about going to college, Not that 18 year olds thought much about college, but the boys all knew that college students would not be drafted into the military. There were already rumors of war in Asia, so the double whammy of having to go to work, and that maybe your boss would be a nasty Army Sergeant was enough to consider girls more a threat than a blessing. The Draft Board did not like to tell everyone that Fathers were also exempt, because they did not want to start another baby boom.
I had just gotten home from school and was making myself a sandwich when the telephone rang. My parents both worked and would not be home for hours, so with supper along way off, eating was more important than talking, But the ringing just would not stop. The excited, but also anxious voice of the girl down the street blurted out " Bob, I need your help." Sandy was a pleasant girl, and we had gone out together a few times ... large groups to the football game, house parties, that sort of thing, but she was apparently more interested in me, or boys in general than I was in her. It was one problem after another, from reasonable requests like giving her a lift to the library on a Saturday morning to the not so subtle ones like when she caught me behind the lockers and said she needed a big strong hand to un jam the zipper on her blue jeans.
"So, what's the Problem, Sandy? Did you lock yourself out of house again and need someplace to stay for a week."
"No, Bob, this is serious .... I need to know something, and I am scared. It was my 18th Birthday and we had a party last night. I got sort of drunk, and I woke up in my bed and I was naked. Everyone else was gone. Well, my friends had teased me about getting my cherry popped, and this guy and I got sort of hot, but I don't know if we did it last night.."
I thought, well better him than me , but I said " So, what do you want me to do about it."
She said, " I was, you know, a Virgin, and now I am not so sure .... and I need to know, and I thought maybe you could see if anything happened ."
Ok, this was going way beyond the stuck zipper, or the constant requests to scratch her back that never seem to satisfy her unless my hand was under her shirt. " Sandy" I said, " I am no doctor, and besides isn't that something your girl friends can help you with "
No, I don't trust anyone else to keep this quiet, and didn't you say that you spent your spring vacation on your Uncle's ranch helped with the sheep."
