A person has multiple “first times” in their life: first car, first bicycle, first breath of air, first fight, first argument, first joke told that was actually funny, first kiss, first kiss not from mom or dad, first romantic kiss, and et cetera. So, here are a few of my “firsts.”
My First Scary Dream at Age 0-1 Years
My First Girlfriend (Age 5)
Her name is Sandra Flora. With her curly hair, she looked like a 5-year-old Shirley Temple. I carried her kindergarten school photo in my wallet for many years into my adulthood before I finally managed to misplace it.
My First Boy Friend (Age 5-8)
His name is Michael Pollard and his sister is Joan. They both were near the same age as me and both are redheads complete with freckles. Mike lived across the street from my house on Mathews Avenue in Redondo Beach, California. We played together quite often. His father was a roofer and the family pickup truck always smelled of tar due to the “puddles” of dried tar in the truck bed. At age 6, Mike and I caught the city bus alone and rode it to the beach where we went into the roller-rink and played a game of pinball or two before we rode a bus back home. I don’t think either of our parents even knew we were gone for that 1 ½ hours.
My First Scary Movies in a Drive-in Theater (Age 4 or 5)
It was at a drive-in theater somewhere in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. There was the usual a double feature. One movie was “Rodan” and the other I think was titled “Them.” “Rodan” was a flying-dinosaur-type creature and regardless of the actual title, “Them” was about giant ants that made a nest in the sewers of Los Angeles. In that movie, James Arnes played an army colonel ordered to destroy the ants and the nesting queen. In any case, the monsters scared me so much that whenever one was on the screen, I would hide in the back seat and not look until one of my parents said it was okay. I guess I should say that I actually started to watch the first movie from the front seat between my parents. I guess I wasn’t very macho. During the intermission between movies, I walked to the refreshment “stand” to buy myself a piece of pie. The teenage attendant could not understand me very well and after explaining that they only had pizza pie sold me a piece placing it into a small box to take back to the car. Naturally, as I left the building I saw all the cars in front of me and wasn’t sure how to find my family’s car. I was lucky and found it after only a very mild panicking. When I got inside to eat my pie, I started to cry because it wasn’t pie. My parents ate it instead. I guess I didn’t understand the teenager either focusing on the word pie rather than the modifier “pizza,” which I didn’t know what it meant anyway.
My First Scary Visit to the Beach (Age 2 or 3)
The family went to the beach several times I’m told, but I only remember this one time and only then this one event. I was really cute in my blue little-boy bathing suit. You know the type; the ones that squeezed the front so tight whatever size “package” a toddler might have was squashed into not showing a bulge. I was playing in the sand right next to the water line where the waves would reach. Earlier, dad had taken me in deeper and we bobbed about and I played while safely held in his arms or hands. I must have decided to play in the water a bit so while my parents relaxed on their beach-towels a couple of yards away, I moved into water that was up to the middle of my lower leg (about 5 or 6 inches deep) during the maximum reach of the wave on the beach. A series of unexpectedly larger waves arrived and the first one knocked me down and rolled me along towards the shore. As I tried to stand, the retreating water kept pulling the sand out from under me and I went back out into the deeper 5 to 6 inch water. The next three waves did the same thing and then dad arrived and picked me up. Naturally I was crying because I was scared but I don’t know what of. To this day I am very uneasy around large deep bodies of water, including swimming pools. It took years before I could pass my First Class Scout badge by swimming 50 yards.
My First Award (Age 1)
During the summer of 1949, my family was living in Lawndale, California. The city parks & recreation department held a “Baby Show” that mother entered me into. I won a couple of 2nd place red ribbons and one blue ribbon. Mother questioned the judges about the red ribbons as I was clearly the first place baby in those two categories. The judges told her that they just could not award me all the blue ribbons because the one I did win was the “King of the Show” award for being the “best baby” overall. I still have the cardboard covered crown with gold foil and stick-on stars as well as the photo of me wearing the crown. Mom and dad must have been very proud to have a child to brag about. Interestingly though, my future wife was crowned “Queen” of her baby show that same summer in Ohio. |
| Crowned 5 August 1949 |
My First Crush (Age 10)
After living with my mother’s parents for 2 years, mom and my new step-father came to Minnesota to show off the newly-born twins and to bring me back with them to California; south shore of Lake Tahoe to be precise. I turned 10 two weeks later. When school started, puberty had already begun for me, but no one had any idea it had (there were no outward visible indications). I was assigned to a 5th grade class with a brand new teacher, Miss Herbert. Until I was picked up from the farm in May of 1958, I had not seen my mother in about 2 years so I missed her and my dad for that long. Now I was living with her and yet by October I was madly in love with Miss Herbert. She must have known or suspected because one day she arranged with my mother to take me to her house after school to work on a project for our classroom bulletin board. To say I was in overjoyed mode would be a gross understatement of how I responded to the situation. Miss Herbert offered me cookies and milk and then we got to work. Nothing sexual of any kind happened, but if she had tried to seduce me, I would have been putty in her hands. Then the forest ranger entered into her life and I told the other boys in my class that she was going to marry him, but they didn’t believe me. We started Christmas vacation and left the school leaving Miss Herbert behind and returned to Mrs. Walksdahl (the ex-Miss Herbert) as our same teacher. I also returned after a case of laryngitis had healed over the Christmas break. When it was over my voice had permanently changed, so I never went through the “squeaky” stage.
My First Time Sex (Age 10)
During the autumn of 1958 or the spring of 1959, I was alone playing bus driver in an old 1935-1940 style bus, which someone had turned into what we would call a motor home. I had done this during several weekends for about ½ hour each time before I got bored and quit for the day. One day, the second to the last time I ever went there to play, another boy showed up. He was 8 or 8 ½ as I recall. We took turns driving the bus and being the passenger. At one point, he told me that his older brother, who was 11 or 12, would make him suck his brother’s dick. I thought, “You can do that?” followed by “I want to try that.” So, I asked him if I could suck his dick and he refused my request at first but I kept asking so he gave in. I made him promise to not pee in my mouth and began to suck. It was a wonderful. About 2 minutes into the act, he saw an adult heading our way so we stopped.
My First Scary Movie on TV (age 40ish)
You may think that I would have seen many “scary” movies in the theater and TV by the time I was 40; and so I had. The difference was that by this time, my emotions were sufficiently “blocked” that my mind kept telling me its all fake so nothing was really scary. However, this movie got to me because I was now the father of four children, three of them girls, and in this movie there was a little girl (8-10) who was in danger throughout the movie. You may have seen it, the second Alien movie with Sigourney Weaver.
My First “Scary” Book that Unsettled My Mind for 3 Days (Age 62)
The book was titled, “Lost Boys,” written my Orson Scott Card a rather famous LDS author. It was one of his earliest works and according to him was inspired by Steven King’s “Pet Cemetery.” The story was rather slow to develop but all the elements were in place by the end. The story revolved around the family's oldest boy; an 8-year old “perfect” child who became very sullen when the family moved to a new small town. The townspeople did not realize until well into the story that young boys were being abducted by an apparent serial killer. The ending had an unusual twist that totally unhinged me. I had wanted the boy to live and figured that he would be the one to expose the killer; and in fact, he did. So there was a partial happy ending but not one that I would have expected.
My First “Scary” Porn Story that Really Got to Me.
(Age 57)
This one bothered me for a day or so because I could actually imagine that it could really happen unlike the story I related above. The premise of this story is that scientists actually identified a gay gene in human DNA. As a result, laws were passed that all male children reaching age 10 were tested to see if they carried the gene. If so, the child was either castrated by a doctor or nurse or a “clam shell” was fitted over the boy’s scrotum which could not come off as the opening was too small to pass the testicles. The “clam shell” device contained a small radioactive particle which eventually killed the testicles and they shriveled as they died until they were shriveled enough for the device to fall off the scrotum. Boys thus altered were sent to “summer” camps where they were all instructed in the details and methods of gay sex. At the completion of their training each boy was partnered with a known pedophile. As long as the man only interacted with his assigned boy, he was not prosecuted. If he strayed, nullification and life imprisonment awaited.(Age 57)
As I said at the beginning, I can actually see where this could happen if a gay gene is actually found. Thus, it really bothered me for a day or two.
© 23 January 2012
About the Author
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.
My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com
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