Tryin' to Get My Mojo Mo-ing Again…or Is It Jo-ing?

I looked at my content list and see I have only done four posts since the year began. I have done even less on my other Blogs. I have suffered writer's block occasionally in my life, but never for such a long stretch. After all, since I was a wee lad I had a compulsion to write. And if this be writer's block it is different from any other I ever endured. I haven't been bereft of ideas. No, I have run many potential screeds through my brain while out upon my morning walks. Perhaps I have thought too much about it as I strolled. I may be writing too much in my head and then I lose it when I actually sit down to type.

Anyway, this can't go on or I'll bottle up too much inside for my own wellbeing. I am in need of a laxative for my creative constipation. It has been advised by several in the field of advising writers that one method of breaking the block is to simply sit down and write about anything. I will give it a whirl or write.

This is "Throwback Thursday" which are people posting old photos on Facebook. I began doing this a couple weeks back and this morning I posted several photos of me with the girlfriends I had in my youth. It seems a bit self-congratulating, but I am going to tell some tales about my romances.

Frankly it surprised me one day to discover how many girls I had dated. You have to understand I didn't have a great deal of self-confidence in my teens; in fact, I was pretty shy. I would go to school dances with my friends and become a wallflower while they whirled about the floor with a lovely creature in their arms or given the nature of rock 'n' roll dancing, at least wiggling about in their general vicinity. My best effort might be to slouch up to a fellow wallflower of the female persuasion and ask if they cared to dance. This was met 10 times out of 10 by rejection. I was literally shocked to realize Lois wasn't even in the first dozen of my girlfriends. But last is best, is it not? None of the others lasted with me for 53 years.

I liked girls early. My first friend was a girl, although I have very little memory of her anymore. That is her and I on the front porch at 424 Washington Avenue, Downingtown in 1942 in the top photo and her and I in our "ride" to the left. Her family and mine were long time friends and Sandy and I were often play penned up together in those toddler years. We were even baptized together in the Grove Methodist Church. Sometime in those initial years we went off on separate tracks. She did outgrown those bulky playsuits and turn into a very beautiful young lady (right in 1959), but by that time I was entranced with others of the fair sex.

My second best friend was a girl as well. Her name was Iva and we continued to be playmates all the way into junior high school and we are still friends.

At the time (1946) when that little pig-tailed banjo player and I posed together we were both redheads. She kept her gingerness,  but my locks turned a very dark brown and appeared nearly black a few years forward.

Of course by 1946 I had a number of guys in my gang, but Iva remained one of the regulars. She was a Tomboy anyway in grade school. I probably had a crush or two on her by junior high and maybe if I hadn't moved I would have eventually got around to asking her out.

I had two other close feminine friends in my early elementary years, Dottie and Patty. I have no pictures of Dottie, much to my sorrow, but on the right is a photo of Patty and I sharing a moment in a flowered field along the Brandywine near her home in Lenape. Both these girls remained friends into my adulthood. (Dottie was a couple years older than I and at one point was my babysitter.) Patty married one of the ushers in my wedding.


My first serious crush was for Mary Jane, a bespectacled blond in my

class that I thought was the most beautiful creature on the planet at that time. She come to my birthday parties and she lived in the same building as the boy who would become my best friend, Ronald Tipton.

The photo I posted in Facebook we are standing with our arms about each other and you can see the silly expression on my face from being so close to this exquisiteness. This is her posing on the front walk at my then home on Washington Avenue in 1948 taken during one of my birthday affairs.

I had just turned 7.


My first girl trouble came around 1953 with the girl across the street, Michelle. She and I often played together, which was perfectly fine, but one fine day during recess I chased her about the sliding boards and jungle gym until I caught her behind a tree and kissed her full on the mouth.

Her father was not happy about this, although I meant no harm. Sex wasn't yet in my vocabulary and I was not quite into puberty either.

Still, I got a couple lectures and kind of stayed a distance from Michelle after that.

These were all early girls. I wouldn't call any of them "girlfriends" as we use that term. They were just friends who happened to be girls, although I really did like that Mary Jane a lot (and maybe Michelle a little).

It was when I moved from Downingtown after ninth grade that any serious dating occurred for me. Maybe tomorrow I can take up that phase and if I can it might mean this writing drought is over.