Near the end of my junior high experience, I began to like a girl named Michelle. And what was really great about Michelle was that she liked me! At an after-school, seminary dance she and I danced with each other exclusively, and we went outside and talked for a long time on a park bench. A few days later the whole Ninth grade class went to Lagoon. Michelle and I rode the rides together all day long. I supposed those were the closest things to dates without really dating. I called her a few times in the summer and even ran two miles away by her house in the early mornings. I listened to the Carpenters song over and over , “His Only Thought, Is Love For Me.” And I hoped Michelle was singing a similar song, because I sure felt a lot for her. Actually I was in love with being in love. If you want to call that infatuation, so be it. It’s a good thing. Infatuation changes a boy from a geeky, greasy, slimy, smelly person who doesn’t care how he comes across to other people, into a young man who is concerned about how others, particularly and most emphatically, girls, see him. Infatuation is the beginning of romantic love which in it’s more mature state will lead a couple to marriage and the responsibilities generated by that love.
When Michelle and I got to high school, our relationship fizzled and we never really were friends any more after that. As my sixteenth birthday loomed nearer and the “official authorization” to date was almost upon me, my hormones kicked into high gear. And high school was the best place to be. There were beautiful girls everywhere! I was still shy though, so that explains why I didn’t go on my first date until a month and a week after my sixteenth birthday.
Coming tomorrow: For This Is Our Promised Valley
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