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Love Is Like a Lead Pipe

It was the late 1950's in San Francisco, California; the neighborhood was referred to as "The Avenues". It was a great place to live back then only two blocks from the famed Golden Gate Park, within walking distance to Kaesar Stadium, the Planetarium, Museum of Natural History and the Japanese Tea Garden. The homes were all two story and so close together they were separated only by the width of two or three 2X4's, and like much of San Francisco we were on a hill, what a hill, it was a mild grade on our block and the two above us toward the Park and down toward where our school was it became considerably steeper leveling off at the cross streets, a suicide rush on a bicycle. Most of us young people who lived on my block went to Star of the Sea Catholic School, we were a community within the community, but only smaller in stature. Most of all what I remember of the neighborhood, was a girl by the name of Valerie, she stood only 4 foot 6 or so, at the time and very petite, the most alluring thing about her were her eyes. She had what I called then the Elizabeth Taylor look, comparing her to the girl in "National Velvet", she had long dark hair, alabaster complexion and the deepest dark eyes with the longest dark eyelashes. I fell in love, or so I thought, with her at first sight. She was only ten years old and I was just shy of twelve but I was smitten. As all the kids on the block gathered after school, once we went home and got out of our uniforms into our street clothes and did our homework, usually on the front steps of one or the other's house and I would always get a close to her as I could. Either sitting beside her or near in front of her so I could look at those beautiful eyes. I was learning why they called infatuation at our age "Puppy Love." I followed her around like a little puppy waiting for her to smile at me or take my hand.Now back then, as with many families today, we were not old enough to have a boyfriend or girlfriend, but that really didn't stop us from referring to each other as such. They were simple times; I was elated when she would ride sidesaddle on the bar of my bicycle in front of me as I could have my arms around her even though we were not touching. I like especially when one of the other little citizens of our community had a birthday. That meant a party and with a party usually came a good game of spin the bottle. Boy! I had it down to a science where I would spin the empty coke bottle so that it would point at Valerie every time so that I could kiss her. Looking back how humorous to adults this must have been, we would barely touch lips and make these funny sloppy noises. It would be awhile until either one of us would learn how to "Kiss".I remember one party especially, after the basic birthday party games came the usual Spin the Bottle. Only this time it was different,they, the girls, changed the rules and the person across from us,in my case Valerie, would spin the bottle for their opposite in the circle. Needless to say I wasn't getting all the required kisses from Valerie that I had hoped for and she had that twinkle in her beautiful eyes letting me know that she was teasing me to the maximum degree. When she spun for me she always made sure it would point to one of her less attractive girlfriends and I would have to kiss this other girl, much to my dismay. I was totally dejected by this turn of events and began moping around and feeling abandoned by this girl who I saw as my girlfriend. As the girls, they controlled all the games we played, got bored with the game we all went outside in the yard to play. I was sitting on the swing, gently going back and forth and then pumping to the point that I was almost perpendicular to the bar holding the chains. Showing off my male prowess for MY girl. As I slowed down to face her she came over and we had our first spat."You made me kiss, Sue, " I pouted."Well it was only fair, you always cheat so you can kiss me." She retorted. "But you know I don't like her, I like you." "Sometimes you make me so mad, I could hit you with…" She looked around the yard and found a 12 inch long piece of water pipe, "this." "Go ahead, see if I care." Being stupidly male stubborn. She lifted that piece of lead pipe and brought it down hard on the top near the back of my head. Everything went black and I fell backward out of the swing, out cold. I had to stay quiet for the next couple of weeks; thank goodness it was summer, because I had a concussion. That is when I learned that Love was like a Lead Pipe, after the heartache was over you would end up with a major headache. (Note:This is actually a true story, it did happen to me oh so many years ago.)

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