Thank Goodness I Married The Right Guy Read Count : 123

Category : Stories

Sub Category : Romance
	As I begin this story, I am 12 years old and live out in the country with my parents and a sister. I don’t have any close friends living nearby. I spend a lot of my time out in the garden with Dad, when he is home, picking bugs off the tomatoes. My younger sister and I like to water the flowers each night except when there was a thunderstorm like tonight. Sis said, “Jean, It’s raining, let’s go jump in the puddles.”
	My sister and I had been making leis this night out of Four O’clock flowers, which opened at 4 P.M. each day. The big black seeds were easy to pick, and so we always had a jar full of them and numerous plants coming forth in the yard. I enjoyed the country life and didn’t feel I was missing anything; that is, until neighbors moved in down the road with a young man in the family named Bill. (name changed to protect)
	Bill was in the army, training as a paratrooper soon to go overseas. I was impressed with his uniform. He was a cute fellow, although kind of short for a grown man. Bill came walking down the street with a big grin on his face.  “I’m really excited about going to Germany soon,” he said. I’m going to miss you, Bill,” I replied. I was just getting to know him.  “Why don’t you write to me?” said Bill. Well, what else did I have to do? and so I said, “Sure, I’ll write. It would be fun.”
	Bill's family had owned a home on property down the street, which had burned down years ago. Our family used to go down there and admire all the flowers that were growing wildly now. Then one day a couple of trailers arrived. One, was home for a woman and her two children, a girl my age and this fellow named Bill. In the other trailer lived a grown-up sister and her husband.
	My Mother used to visit with Bill's mother while my sister and I played outside with his sister. Being just 12 and a bit naive, we were very curious and used to sneak by the windows of both trailers to listen for grown-up conversation. One day his sister and I were talking to each other and the trailer where the married sister and her husband lived started to rock. Giggling, we ran around to hide behind some trees and discuss what we thought was going on there.
	Soon Bill left for Germany, and he and I started sending letters back and forth. He wrote of things that were happening where he was in Germany and of Army life. I was enthralled as this was my first experience with a fellow. Bill was out of school and an older man. Bill started signing his letters with “I miss you, I need you, I love you.” I felt big at school now writing to an older fellow and thought I was doing my part in making a serviceman, so far away from home, feel a little less lonely.
	One day his sister was at my house as I was taking one of Bill's letters out of the mailbox, for which I ran eagerly each day to look for and most days there was a least one letter. Sometimes there were a bunch of letters if they got held up in the mail. He wrote a letter to me every single day for the four years he was in Germany.
	Bill's sister said, “You know that Bill has a girl friend he is going to marry, don’t you? I hadn’t been thinking of marriage at age 12 but just enjoying all the attention. When Bill came home on leave, he came right down to see me and once giving me our only kiss. We would have the greatest time talking. Then at night his sister told me that he went out with his girlfriend who was his age.
	I thought Bill and I were just being good friends. His letters really gave me something to look forward to. However, Bill's letters seemed more and more to sound like he was falling in love with me. His four-year stint in the Army was going by quickly and I was 15 years old before I knew it. My thoughts started to wonder about Bill and his feelings, but I knew he still was going out with his girlfriend when he was on leave. I wasn’t old enough according to my mother to date anyway.
	My life wasn’t exactly filled with the type of things that girls my age usually involved themselves with. I would spend time with a neighbor boy riding or driving an old truck with a flat bed that he had available to him. We had fun riding all through the woods, but that was it. I wasn’t able to stay after school for activities, as I was needed at home to help with a new little sister as my Mother was ill from time to time. I did attend a Good News Club on Wednesday afternoons, sponsored by our church, after my mother learned to drive. That was a fun time when Mom learned to drive. Dad took her over to the large field across the street from our home; and Mom took the wheel and went straight for the only tree, a large one, in the middle of the field. Dad jumped out just before she hit the tree, and they had a few words about that. Dad said, “If you want to run into a tree, why should I go with you.”
	On Friday nights Mom would also take Sis and I into town to the dances held in the fire hall where upon she would join the chaperons. My thoughts of boys then started filling my empty hours.
	Letters arrived almost daily from Germany, and I enjoyed each one which was filled with the interesting life of a paratrooper in a foreign land. I learned about Germany and jumping from planes and many interesting things. I experienced these events through Bill's letters. Each letter Bill still would sign off with “I love you, I miss you, I need you.”  I thought this kind of strange now as my letters were quite ordinary. I really didn’t have much happening in my life to share with him and ooed and aahed over the things he was telling me; but I wasn’t “in Love” with him. After all, I knew he had a girlfriend home here that he dated whenever he could. I had never had a date with Bill. This made me wonder, but I felt he was just dreaming, too, being so far away and just having fun. Soon things started arriving in my mail, pins, patches and then his wings that he received when he made his first solo jump. I was really impressed but didn’t know until much later that receiving the “wings” meant that we were supposed to be engaged. Engagement never was mentioned in either of our letters. People told me servicemen got plenty of badges and they can buy them. I believed them.
	In the meantime, I was almost 16 and my parents were worried about their children living way out in the country without a social life. A larger house was also becoming a real necessity when our brother was born. One day Dad said, “I’ve decided to build a house in a nice little town near our cousins.”  With the help of relatives and friends this became a reality, and we moved into the new home along about October 1st when I was still 15.
	My life was about to make a lot of changes. The first day of school, though, I realized that it was not going to be easy.   Starting your Junior year in a new school was quite lonely. I found the girls were mostly in clicks and had lived in the same neighborhoods for their entire growing up years. The school I attended was far away due to there not being a high school to hold the students from our town. Each grade, as they became eligible for 9th grade, was shipped to a different school. After graduating from eighth grade from a tiny four-room school without indoor plumbing, I didn’t think much about the handicaps of this new high school, and the fact that only students in my grade came from my neighborhood.
	My cousin Joe was a long-time resident in the next town. He knew everybody; and although he was younger and a cousin, I welcomed the opportunity he presented when he said, “Would you like to go up to the dance at the local fire hall on Friday night?”  I gave a quick, “Yes.”  Joe was really nice to me, dancing with me and all, but also he was very busy being so popular with all the girls. The dance I had waited for all night finally arrived: and as they were announcing a “Lady’s Choice,” I jumped at the chance to ask for a dance with one of the fellows. 
	This young fellow I had my eyes on was really cute. He wore a cowboy hat, boots and jeans. I just had to know why he didn’t take off his hat in the building and so posed the question as soon as we introduced ourselves. I blurted out, “Why do you keep that cowboy hat on in the building?”  “Well,” he said, “The guys would all stomp on it if I left it unattended. We both had a laugh, and he asked me to dance a few more dances and even the last dance of the night. My eyes were so dreamy, I was in teen-age heaven.   I was in love at first sight. He said he would take me home from the dance if it weren’t for the fact that he drove several of his friends there. This was the night before my 16th birthday; also Mischief Night, the night before Halloween. He told me that he and his friends had been getting ready to cut a picture window out of the fire hall and jumped inside the dance as policemen went by. I never even gave a thought that this guy could be problems.
	Several weeks I attended the dances at the fire hall, dancing with my cousin and a few fellows that asked me, but I was forever looking for that special cowboy to appear. Then one night there he was, and he asked me to dance right off. We ended up dancing the whole night while I became deeper and more and more starry eyed. At the end of the night while they were playing their usual closing song “Good Night My Love” I was so hating the night to end. He offered me a ride home and I jumped on the chance.
	We started going to the dances as a couple, and we both fell madly in love. Everyone that saw us together said we looked like “a perfect couple.”  However, my parents thought I was too  young for a relationship and that I hadn’t given my new life a chance. No matter what, I couldn’t forget about my cowboy. He would pick me up in his car around the corner of my home and take me to the school bus each day, starting off my day in heaven and saving me from rain at times.  One day Mom said I see him picking you up around the corner.  She didn’t then forbid me again and he and I continued.
	One day after school I had to walk home, as he had a different schedule and went to a different school and couldn’t give me a ride home. Then my old friend Bill, fresh home from Germany stopped in his car and said, “Can I give you a ride.”  He was home to stay; and, of course, I was glad to see him. He was rather quiet and let me do much of the talking about how my life changed in moving out of the country and how I had met this dreamy fellow. Well, Bill dropped me off near home, and I never heard from him again.
	My cowboy and I eventually married and were living happily ever after. Now and again, I asked my Mother, who kept in touch with Bill's mother, how Bill was doing. Once I was given the answer that Bill had married his girl friend and they had their first child, a girl. I was pregnant with my first child who was a son and life got busy after that.
	Then one day in the newspaper I saw a large picture of Bill being handcuffed and drug away by the police. The article read that he had ROBBED a gas station and listed numerous accounts of BURGLARIES and RAPES that he had done. I was in shock! I knew he was babied too much by his widowed mother and sisters. I could remember his mother turning the heat way up and stowing heavy blankets on Bill when he had a cold one day. He was the only boy with two sisters, the man of the family, since his father died. Being short may have caused him problems, and he also had an unusual nickname. Could this be why he flipped out and turned to a life of crime? Being young and naive, I thought, “It couldn’t be because of me, or could it?”
	I just couldn’t’ stop thinking about Bill and what he had done. I wondered if he really had loved me and was waiting for me to grow up, and then was disappointed because I had moved on while still writing to him. What could have caused Bill to have done these terrible things? I though of the horror that may have happened if he had come to my door to see me. I surely would have let him in. Maybe I would have then been one of his victims.
	My cowboy and I have had conversations about Bill over the 60 years we been married. We are now living in our retirement home in Florida Laughingly I say I saved him from a life of crime when he met me after running into the dance that mischief night. I know this isn’t true because he is a wonderful person and was just acting like a kid. I couldn’t have been luckier that night at the dance. I still wonder what happened to Bill and where he is. I haven’t heard anything about him for the past almost 60 years since I read that newspaper story. His mother and my mother are both gone now and so all contact has been lost. I guess I should be glad.
	My cowboy was a bit jealous when we first got married. I threw all the stuff I saved from Bill away to show hi he meant nothing to me. Sometimes I wish I had just given them to my Mom to keep as I'm sure Bob wouldn't care now.
	However, when I thank my cowboy for saving me from a could be husband who was a rapist, I can’t help wondering how Bill is today and if he could find me if he wanted to. Heaven forbid!

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  • Oct 29, 2018

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