My recent post on hearing Doris Day singing "Que Sera Sera" at the I-75 rest area between Dayton and Cincinnati continues to get "hits" to my surprise. The thing I forgot to include was how when I first got out of the car and headed for the restroom there was a motorcyclist parked near the entrance with his back facing me. The back of his black leather jacket had a very prominent embroidered logo with large letters in a half circle that read, "SATAN'S SIDEKICK".
Of course, I absolutely HAD to check this guy out from the front and he didn't look menacing necessarily but certainly someone you could be scared of. I'd say he was in his mid-50s, weighed maybe 225 pounds and had the usual longish (and graying) beard that many hard-core motorcyclists like to keep. He was looking down at his phone so he didn't notice me looking at him.
*****
The only books I really wanted to read in my mid-teens were Harlequin Romance paperback novels.
The thing that engaged me was the romance. I especially liked the ones written by Great Britain authors, where you could actually get to the very last page of the paperback before they had their first kiss!
Years later I realized that, between the old classic romance movies I watched on late-night TV and the Harlequin Romances, I might have doomed myself for ever finding a mate!!!
What I remember most is when I slowly, vaguely realized my dad had a sort of unhealthy attraction to me when I was 13-16 and wanted to know where I was all the time (mostly because he was always wanting me to work at his doctor's office), I cleaned out the closet in my little room (my mom converted her sewing room into a bedroom so I could finally be separate from my older sister) and I put a gooseneck reading lamp in it that had an extension cord running to the electric outlet.
I would literally hide in the closet with just that little light going and read my Harlequins without him knowing where I was. The only dead giveaway, and it became the thing that eventually "ratted me out," was my dear Shih-Tsu who would inevitably come scratching at the closet door, wanting me to let her in.
The bottom line is these Harlequins, at a very crucial period in my life, could very well be why I turned out the way I am--a single woman in her 60s who's never been married!
To make a point on that reality, when I had my first boyfriend in my junior year at Ohio State University, he started to really fall for me. He finally let me know this in his own way, and I told him, because I did not share his attachment that way, that he was "not Cary Grant"! You talk about insensitive! I still can't believe that was what I chose to say to him as an explanation.
We happened to be in his car when I said this, on the way home from celebrating his birthday at a fancy seafood restaurant in downtown Columbus (that he paid for), and he later told me that after dropping me back off at the off-campus house I shared with two roommates, he was driving down a street and took the wrapped present I gave him and tossed it out his passenger window as far as he could throw it!