but it's a great lucky number
Well, I'm a very mature 26.
<devilishly handsome, too>
Is that REALLY a picture of you MA?I´m reminded of a Southern senator(must be the hat).
13- All baby fat and pimply, and a mass of worries- And think of the raging hormones!
I hit my thirteenth year on the run, vital in body fluids, vivid in imagination, and vigorous in curiosity. It was a time of magnificent awakenings. I dove, with equal enthusiasm, into de Toqueville and Stag magazine. One I understood, and the other I didn't. My self confidence raged like a class B solar flare and I was, I recall this with remarkable clarity, utterly confident that I could become an astronaut and that the two girls laughing in the back of the classroom were laughing about me. I became as intellectually bold as any Round Table Knight, and yelled up at God to go screw himself. I learned humility and temperance and empathy, and sitting in the principal's office, pointed out these qualities to God. I adventured out into my first date, with Sheila Konkol, who had breasts so tender and beautiful that they might have qualified for a Psalm. They left me for Bob Carr.
Ah, yes, the memories from age 13....... I remember when George gave me a ring to wear on a chain around my neck. Turned out to be his dad's wedding band and George got in all kinds of trouble for taking it out of his dad's dresser drawer. I remember when George called me on the phone and we sat there in complete silence, not knowing what to say. I remember writing George's name all over my PeeChee, and then carrying my PeeChee in front of my chest, as if it were an announcement. George was in my History Class.
Then I'm holding in there at 17. That's what I said I was before I switched to 23 to stay older than my kids.... guess I've gone into retrograde orbit.
I liked being 17. I knew everything. Life was good.
Age 13, I was a late bloomer and the most mischief I could manage at that time was carrying my brother's Marlboro Flip Top cigarette box (empty) in my purse to church. I used it to shock the other girls sitting beside me on the pew during the long, long, over time sermons. I can still remember the excitment of hearing Phoebe Cook catch her breath in shock and counting on one hand the number of seconds it took her to whisper the news to Charlotte sitting on her other side. Excapes such as these helped pass the time while the preacher droned on.
Sermons at our church, we were Mennonite, were in Low German. This didn't bring my twin brother Bob and I much closer to God, the only Low German we knew was the word for shithead. Bruno taught us that word. He also taught us how to masturbate. Bruno was an influence.
But the real battle for our souls was never between Bruno and God. It was between baseball and God. Baseball was perfect the way God was supposed to be. Not that He was a bad God back then, actually we were rather fond of him. Our church, the Broadway Mennonite Bretheren was a church of grandmas and uncles and moms and kids, and God seemed to fit in pretty well. I think it was a good time for Him back then. The valley where we lived was warm and green and everything just grew of its own accord. It was like Satan somehow hadn't got there yet, like he was still someplace else. That's what it seemed like to Bob and me. But another theological opinion held that Satan had already arrived, but secretly, hiding in the underwear of Catholic girls. That's what Bruno figured.
Bruno wasn't Catholic of course, he was one of us. Well, that's if we defined "us" pretty broadly to include kids who didn't believe, who'd been to reform school, and who taught other kids how to masturbate. He was two years older than us and he had a wonderful penis. Actually, all our penises were wonderful back then, but his was most. It was like...Mickey Mantle.
See, even the words of baseball were perfect - Mickey and Peewee and spitball and Ty and grounder and Minnie Minnowso. They had music, and they would roll off our tongues and hang in the spring air like an easy pop fly. And it takes a perfect word to do that
I didn't get in on the poll, but I'm here at last. I didn't know a heck of a lot as a young man and I'm still pretty much in the dark at 60. Please tolerate me.
Edgar
I think you'll find we tolerate the tolerable tolerably well.
Blatham, Sounds like you like baseball. Do you miss it in Canada?
Don't know nuffin about baseball. Just Hell fire and Brimstone and teenage gossip.
I can tolerate being tolerated so long as the tolerators are also tolerable, as they appear to be thus far.
Hey, Boss, they play bas-oo-ball in Canadia, too, ya know . . .
There's a park down the street from Lovey's house, and it has several baseball diamonds, just filled with little leaguers all summer, just like Amer-ee-kay
In fact, base-oo-ball is played all over the world, alla time . . .
I act my shoesize, not my age !
Gautum,
Glad to see you made it. Your avatar suits you very well. Let me guess, you were a size 9 months shoe.
I was just trying to tweak him a little.....
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