Everybody Has a Story: First lesson in fickleness was learned fast, and stuck

In the fall of 1950, we moved to the rural Kansas town of Altoona. I was 7 years old and in the second grade, and moving to a new school in a new town was, for me, a scary experience. Actually, the school at Altoona had fewer than 140 kids, but that was a lot more than at the school I had left.

So there I was, in a totally strange place. I didn’t know anyone and had no idea where anything was. However, I quickly figured out that when everyone suddenly left the room at 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., it was recess time! And when the teacher lined us up later in the morning, saying that it was time to walk the four blocks to the school cafeteria, I knew that it was lunch time. The thought of having to go to a cafeteria was scary, because I used to be able to go home each day for lunch. I had no idea how we would get our food at a strange place called a cafeteria.

Somehow, I managed to survive those first two or three weeks, and soon, school at Altoona was no longer a big-scary-monster thing.

After about four or five weeks, during recess one Friday afternoon, this redheaded girl in our class ran up to me and told me that she loved me. I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. I was an only child and my understanding of love was that parents and grandparents loved their kids and grandkids, most aunts and uncles liked their nieces and nephews, and cousins were kids that I had to put up with only once in a while.

So I had no idea why this girl ran up to me and told me that she loved me. She wasn’t a cousin, I had never seen her before starting school at Altoona, and she wasn’t a neighbor kid. She was just a girl that just happened to be in my second grade class. While I knew that her name was Ginger, my thinking was that her running up to me and telling me that she loved me was totally dumb. I figured she must be sort of stupid.

That evening, a little while before suppertime (in Kansas, the evening meal was then and still is called “supper”), it hit me. Hard. Like, a double whammy! I was in love! Oh boy, was I in love! Like, hopelessly in love! I was in love with that little redheaded girl. Ginger. My Ginger! I didn’t have any idea what her last name was but I didn’t care. I knew that she was the one for me and, obviously, I was the one for her!

I started moping around. It was only Friday evening. I wouldn’t see my Ginger until Monday morning. Monday morning appeared to be so very far away. How could I ever wait that long to run up to my Ginger and tell her that I loved her? For some reason, life was being cruel to me by making weekends have two long, very, very long days in them.

Saturday afternoon was a terribly horrible time.

One time, I looked at the clock. It was 2:34 p.m. It would be another 42 hours before I could finally see my Ginger again. I forced myself to get busy doing something, I don’t remember what. Finally, after what had surely been a long time since I last looked at the clock, I looked again.

It was 2:37 p.m.

Monday morning was a million years away! And getting farther away with each passing minute!

To make a long story short, Monday finally did arrive. I wanted to leave for school at about 5 a.m. Hey, I needed to be there when my Ginger arrived. But my mother, who apparently had turned into some sort of mean monster over the weekend, wouldn’t let me leave until the usual time, which was about 8 a.m.

I ran all the way to school, three-fourths of a mile. Arriving gasping for breath, I was able to see that Ginger had not yet gotten to school. For that matter, neither had any other kids.

Finally, a few minutes before 9 a.m., there she was, my Ginger, coming onto the school grounds. I hadn’t seen her for almost 65 hours!

I ran up to her and told her that I loved her. She just sort of said, “Oh,” and walked on. But I didn’t care. I knew we loved each other. After all, just last Friday, she had told me that she loved me. And I had just told her that I loved her. Yes, life was going to be so wonderful for my Ginger and me!

The next day, Ginger dumped me for Bobby Blaker, another kid in my class. I knew that my life was forever ruined.

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