SQUEEZED

You can feel that way. Go ahead. We all do from time to time to time.

You see, for me it started in junior high. Middle School is what they call it now. I think Junior sounds better than Middle. Middle School sounds like lunchtime.

I had this girlfriend. She wanted to wear my initial ring. What other kind of ring would a thirteen year old have? We started kissing. She started to like it.

So much in fact that every single time I saw her she wanted to kiss me. Now, I guess she was a good kisser. I mean she puckered, she wore a little lipstick. She tasted good. No bad breath. She wore that junior high perfume, kinda flowery but more juicy somehow than older girls wore.

It was just that everytime I saw her, she wanted to kiss. I know; I've said that before. But how can I emphasize it more than by repetition?

Her mother even started squeezing me. When she would pick us up after school or when I would be at her house, she referred to herself as my mother-in-law. "Now, you listen to what your mother-in-law says--it looks like rain. If you and Teri are going to the game, take a jacket."

To think it all started with a Teddy Bear. I had given a previous girlfriend this huge bear I'd won at the Shriners or Optimist Park carnival over Fourth of July. I had made three baskets in those rigged small contoured rims that were higher than the regulation 10 feet basketball goals. The ball would barely go through even on a swish, but I knocked three in a row down and hauled off the bear. I held on to it long enough to give it away at Christmas. In return, I got an ID bracelet with my name on it. I didn't care for it much. I knew who I was and most other people did too, in my hometown.

Maybe Teri thought I had another bear. I don't know, but she initiated the whole thing. I ended it.

At the same park in the Spring I took her best friend out on the lake in a little row boat. I really did. She didn't kiss much. I guess we did, but I don't remember. I guess unless you kiss somebody about 1,000 times, you don't remember much about the actual act.

I also have no memory of Karla's mom. Except she wasn't a squeezer. Thank goodness.