Story Time: First Romantic Kiss

My first “romantic” kiss occurred in the early Spring of my last year of high school. Her name was Annette. Everybody called her Annie. I called her “The most beautiful, wonderful, smartest, funniest and caring person in the world that I ever met.”

Yes, she was amazing.

Her and her family moved in just a few houses down at the end of the summer. Relocating from Lancaster, Ohio to Chillicothe to accommodate her father’s employment. I saw the moving truck when it arrived, I just didn’t see her until the morning of the first day of school.

I could have driven that morning. As it is, on good days, I preferred to walk the five blocks to school. I left the house and made a right turn on the sidewalk and began my trek. As I approached her house, she was emerging with a book bag draped over her left shoulder. My first thought was simply …. “WOW.”

Her long strawberry blond hair nesting perfectly on her shoulders. One side extending about six inches in front and the other, six inches down her back. I remember it like it was yesterday. Mostly because, you tend to never forget the first time someone takes your breath away. I stopped just in front of her gate and watched as she skipped down the porch steps showcasing a warm and friendly smile. “Good morning.” She issued, reaching for to open the gate.

“Please,” I ushered in response, “allow me.”

“Aren’t you a gentleman.”

I closed the gate behind her. We started walking side by side and as expected, made our small talk with introductions and the “Where are you from” routine. Shortly into it, I requested to carry her book bag for her. She replied, “Thanks, but I can do for myself.” And yet, she didn’t say it like she was offended or anything, just a matter of fact. I countered with, “Yeah, I know that, but anybody that sees us will wonder why I am such a schmo for not carrying them for you.”

She must have found that to be a clever retort because she paused and grinned while shaking her head. “So, it’s a saving face kind of thing then?”

“I suppose.” I recall saying.

She didn’t hesitate to hand it over. “Then here, I wouldn’t want to be the cause of your reputation being destroyed. Your chivalry is appreciated.”

I think we both were kind of taking our time to walk to school. Our pace slowed down the closer we got to the doors. Once I opened them for her, I handed her book bag over. “You’re leaving me here?” She questioned.

I had to explain that while technically I was something of a jock, I liked to hang out in the mornings across the street prior to the bell with my “hood” friends. You know the ones, the party animals. She thought that to be odd. Everyone knows that in high school, you have your groups. The hoods, the jocks, the nerds, the Goth’s, the cheerleader’s, the loner’s, and so on and so forth. The fact that I got along with, and had friends from all of these groups impressed her. And the fact that I always found different times of the day to spend with each of them was probably more impressive.

She gave me the “See you around.” departure and I ran back across the street to get the ribbing from the guys after they saw me walking with her. That was to be expected. And that first month of school suddenly got very interesting. I walked her back and forth pretty much for the first week until she made friends with some other people and I gave her some space. I also discovered that she had no intention of having a boyfriend. Now, one would think this would indicate she was perhaps a lesbian, but that was not the case. She was just focused on what she wanted in life. Grades came first. Friends came second “and quite frankly“, as she told it, “guys are nothing but distractions.” It would seem that she had plans. Big plans. And I admired that.

So we were friends.

Oh sure, there was the occasional sneaking over to my yard and talking to me through my window in the late evenings after school. I ended up placing a chair outside of it so she could sit while I was sitting on the window sill inside. I don’t know why I never went outside to talk to her, she just liked it that way and to be honest, so did I. It prevented me from making a fool of myself or doing something stupid like, leaning over and planting an unexpected kiss on her lips like I wanted to do right from the moment I first laid eyes on her. But this girl was one hundred percent class from head to toe, inside and out.

And OMG! Did she smell so good.

Soon, we got a little closer when I injured my ankle and knee in a football game. I knew the moment it happened that my athletic career was over. Football, basketball, baseball and even track and field, done! Kaput! Fin!

I think she took it harder than I did.

But the days, weeks and months passed. Holidays came and went. I bought her a special Christmas present. She always wanted a necklace with her birthstone on it. (She was a Leo too, like me. Born the day before I was, and she always made light of the fact that she was OLDER than me. Albeit, only about 24 hours older, but still.) And she bought me a book. This is significant because her family wasn’t really wealthy or anything. They weren’t poor, but she did have a little brother and in order for her to go to college, they needed to save every little penny they could. She did eventually get a part time job to help contribute to that cause. She wanted to get into politics. Go figure.

We hung out on the rooftop of my house on New Years Eve looking through my telescope at the stars. We were bundled up under layers of shirts and coats and drinking hot cocoa from a thermos. You would have thought we would have kissed by now or on that night, but we didn’t. She did, however, ask me if I would attend her Aunt’s wedding in mid-March. She explained that she didn’t want to go alone because she worried she would get hit on and stuff by a bunch of strangers and what not. She said that by taking me, guys would leave her alone. (It made sense at the time.) So I said yes, even though, I wasn’t a big fan of weddings. And she knew of my reputation by then. She had heard all the stories about all the girls I messed around with. Even the older girls I would bring to the school dances. They were 19, 20, up to 22 years old. Once, I brought two girls to a Spring dance when I was 17. They were both 19 years old.

She made it a point that we would just be friends.

Finally, the day arrived. I walked out of my house all dressed up in my Tuxedo. I walked to her house to meet them and we rode to the wedding with her parents in their car. Prior to that, as I walked up to the gate, she reached over and started adjusting my tux. “Don’t you look handsome.”

Her mother found it adorable. “You two look so cute together.”

We arrive and as I anticipated, I felt like an outsider. But through it all, she stood by my side and when they were saying their vows, she slid her arm under mine and held my hand. Then afterwards, at the reception, we sat together at the bride and grooms table. And when it was time to do so, we would get up and dance. (Slow dances only)

About an hour before we left, we walked outside and roamed the grounds. We ended up on a picnic table off in the short distance in the lawn area of this reception building. At last, for the first time that day, we were alone. This is when our conversation turned to the events of the day. We discussed weddings and marriage in general. She wanted to wait. I wanted to … well actually, I never wanted to get married. She found that amusing. “Really? You don’t think you would ever get married?”

I was positive. “No. I just don’t see it happening.” And I paused for a moment before I said it. I turned to her and gazed into her beautiful blue eyes. “I would probably marry you though if you ever asked me.”

Suddenly, my heart stopped. What did I just say?

I think hers stopped too. She took a deep breath. We stared. I wanted to apologize or something because I thought I said something wrong. But before I knew it, she reached out and cupped the side of my face. She kept staring at me and smiled. She leaned in and kissed me. I thought about using the tongue, but caught myself in time. I just went with it. It was soft and tender. It lasted for about thirty seconds. She pulled away and then …. She broke my heart. “I wish I was in love with you.”

We remained friends and kept in touch for a while after graduation. When I returned a few years later on leave from the Navy, her and her parents had moved back to Lancaster. She spent two years at Ohio State and took her Junior year off because of an ailment that she never detailed for me, or so she said to me in a letter. I never did ask her about it.

While on leave, it was arranged for me to go visit her on my 2^nd day in town. However, I couldn’t get a rental car until Monday and it was Saturday. My parents couldn’t loan me theirs because they had plans. I had sold both of my cars when I enlisted in the military. Luckily though, my brother’s motorcycle was stored in the garage. It was stored for the winter and this was about a week before Christmas. So out of my need to see her again, I decided to ride my brother’s motorcycle all the way to Lancaster from Chillicothe. (About an hour drive) Halfway there, it started snowing. Mostly just flurries. Still, it was butt cold freezing. She thought I was completely nuts. Maybe I was. I was completely nuts for her.

I had dinner with her and her family that night and they invited me to stay over on the promise that the next day, her father and I would load the motorcycle in his pickup truck and he would drive me back to Chillicothe. This sounded good to me. And Annie and I stayed up all night just laying in front of the fire talking. This is when she revealed to me that she was engaged. To be wedded that Spring. She removed the ring from her pants pocket and showed me. She took it off earlier so that I wouldn’t see it. She wanted to tell me about it first.

So we just ended up holding each other in our arms. Me stroking her hair for hours. We didn’t even kiss that night. The next day, her father drove me back home. I went back to see her the day before I headed back to Norfolk, Virginia. This time, I drove a car. I had gotten that rental. We drank a few beers and snuggled again in front of the fire. I kissed her on the forehead before I left around three in the morning. The last thing I said to her was, "Too bad you're not in love with me."

She silently agreed with her eyes.

On the plane back to Norfolk, I thought about her all the way. I ended up writing her a poem that I never sent. I called it, “I would Give You My Life”

A few years after I left the military, I was in Chillicothe. I bumped into an old high school friend and we rehashed the old days. We soon ended up talking about old friends and what they were up to and Annie’s name came up. About four or five years had passed since I last saw her. My friend was also good friends with her. (Everybody was) He pulled out a picture of this little boy and girl. Twins. She never sent me one because we never wrote each other after that last night together.

They were beautiful. Just as I would have expected her children to be. Then he told me, after I asked what she was up to these days. “Dude, Annie passed away a few months ago. She died of cancer.”

That must have been the ailment she referred to.

What you’re feeling right now, multiply that by a million. That is how I felt when he said that. I went home that night and cried for hours.

(Here is that poem I wrote for her:)

I thought a lot about it

And I decided that I need you

I can’t go on without it

All your precious love

Yes I know how you feel

And you know how I feel too

But if you asked my darling

This is what I would do

I would give you my life

I would make it right for you

Give you all I had

Just so I could help you see life through

Why do our feelings have to be oh so hard to control?

And are they true?

All I know my darling is

I would give my life to you

I’m sorry that it happened

I wish there was something I could say

The words of love I’ve spoken

Us ending up in this way

Yes I know how you feel

And you know how I feel too

But if you asked my darling

This is what I would do

I would give you my life

I would make it right for you

Give you all I had

Just so I could help you see life through

Why do our feelings have to be oh so hard to control?

And are they true?

All I know my darling is

I would give my life to you

And if you asked my darling

I would give my life to you

The Presidents: John Adams

John Adams was born on (October 30th, 1735 and passed away on July 4th, 1826. He was the second President of the United States from 1797 to 1801, having earlier served as the first Vice President of the United States under George Washington. An American Founding Father, he was a statesman, diplomat, and a leader of American independence from Great Britain. Well educated, he was an Enlightenment political theorist who promoted republicanism and wrote prolifically about his often seminal ideas, both in published works and in letters to his wife and key adviser Abigail as well as to other Founding Fathers.

Adams came to prominence in the early stages of the American Revolution. A lawyer and public figure in Boston, as a delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress, he played a leading role in persuading Congress to declare independence. He assisted Thomas Jefferson in drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and was its primary advocate in the Congress. Later, as a diplomat in Europe, he helped negotiate the eventual peace treaty with Great Britain, and was responsible for obtaining vital governmental loans from Amsterdam bankers. A political theorist and historian, Adams largely wrote the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780, which together with his earlier Thoughts on Government, influenced American political thought. One of his greatest roles was as a judge of character: in 1775, he nominated George Washington to be commander-in-chief, and 25 years later nominated John Marshall to be Chief Justice of the United States.

Adams' revolutionary credentials secured him two terms as George Washington’s vice president and his own election in 1796 as the second president. During his one term, he encountered ferocious attacks by the Jefferson Republicans, as well as the dominant faction in his own Federalist Party led by his bitter enemy Alexander Hamilton. Adams signed the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, and built up the army and navy especially in the face of an undeclared naval war (called the “Quasi-War”) with France, 1798 - 1800. The major accomplishment of his presidency was his peaceful resolution of the conflict in the face of Hamilton's opposition.

In 1800, Adams was defeated for re-election by Thomas Jefferson and retired to Massachusetts. He later resumed his friendship with Jefferson. He and his wife, Abigail Adams, founded an accomplished family line of politicians, diplomats, and historians now referred to as the Adams political family. Adams was the father of John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States. His achievements have received greater recognition in modern times, though his contributions were not initially as celebrated as those of other Founders.

John Adams, the eldest of three sons, was born in what is now Quincy, Massachusetts (then called the “north precinct” of Braintree, Massachusetts), to John Adams Sr. and Susanna Boylston Adams. Adams birthplace is now part of Adams National Historical Park. His father (1691-1761) was a fifth-generation descendant of Henry Adams, who emigrated from Somerset in England to Massachusetts Bay Colony in about 1638. The elder Adams, the descendant of Puritans, continued in this religious tradition by serving as a Congregationalist deacon; he also farmed and served as a lieutenant in the militia. Further he served as a selectman, or town councilman, and supervised the building and planning of schools and roads. Adams commonly praised his father and indicated that he and his father were very close when he was a child.

Susanna Boylston Adams was a member of one of the colony's leading medical families, the Boylstons of Brookline.

Though raised in materially modest surroundings, Adams felt acutely that he had a responsibility to live up to his family heritage: he was a direct descendent of the founding generation of Puritans, who came to the American wilderness in the 1630s, established colonial presence in America, and had a profound effect on the culture, laws, and traditions of their region. Journalist Richard Brookhiser, drawing on the relevant historiography, has written that these Puritan ancestors of Adams's believed they lived in the Bible. England under the Stuarts was Egypt; they were Israel fleeing ... to establish a refuge for godliness, a city upon a hill. By the time of John Adams' birth in 1735, Puritan tenets such as predestination were no longer as widely accepted, and many of their stricter practices had mellowed with time, but John Adams considered them bearers of freedom, a cause that still had a holy urgency. It was a value system he believed in, and a heroic model he wished to live up to.

Young Adams went to Harvard College at age sixteen in 1751. His father expected him to become a minister, but Adams had doubts. After graduating in 1755 with an A.B., he taught school for a few years in Worcester, allowing himself time to think about his career choice. After much reflection, he decided to become a lawyer, writing his father that he found among lawyers noble and gallant achievements, but among the clergy, the pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces. He later became a Unitarian, and dropped belief in predestination, eternal damnation, the divinity of Christ, and most other Calvinist beliefs of his Puritan ancestors. Adams then studied law in the office of John Putnam, the leading lawyer in Worcester.

In 1758, after earning an A.M. from Harvard, Adams was admitted to the bar. From an early age, he developed the habit of writing descriptions of events and impressions of men which are scattered through his diary. He put the skill to good use as a lawyer, often recording cases he observed so that he could study and reflect upon them. His report of the 1761 argument of James Otis in the Massachusetts Superior Court as to the legality of Writs of Assistance is a good example. Otis's argument inspired Adams with zeal for the cause of the American colonies.

On October 25th, 1764, five days before his 29th birthday, Adams married Abigail Smith (1744-1818), his third cousin and the daughter of a Congregational minister, Rev. William Smith, at Weymouth, Massachusetts. Their children were Abigail (1765-1813); future president John Quincy (1767-1848); Susanna (1768-1770); Charles (1770-1800); Thomas Boylston (1772-1832); and Elizabeth (1777).

Adams was not a popular leader like his second cousin, Samuel Adams. Instead, his influence emerged through his work as a constitutional lawyer and his intense analysis of historical examples, together with his thorough knowledge of the law and his dedication to the principles of republicanism. Adams often found his inborn contentiousness to be a constraint in his political career.

Adams first rose to prominence as an opponent of the Stamp Act 1765, which was imposed by the British Parliament without consulting the American legislatures. Americans protested vehemently that it violated their traditional rights as Englishmen. Popular resistance, he later observed, was sparked by an oft-reprinted sermon of the Boston minister, Jonathan Mayhew, interpreting Romans 13 to elucidate the principle of just insurrection.

In 1765, Adams drafted the instructions which were sent by the inhabitants of Braintree to its representatives in the Massachusetts legislature, and which served as a model for other towns to draw up instructions to their representatives. In August 1765, he anonymously contributed four notable articles to the Boston Gazette. In the letter he suggested that there was a connection between the Protestant ideas that Adams' Puritan ancestors brought to New England and the ideas behind their resistance to the Stamp Act. In the former he explained that the opposition of the colonies to the Stamp Act was because the Stamp Act deprived the American colonists of two basic rights guaranteed to all Englishmen, and which all free men deserved: rights to be taxed only by consent and to be tried only by a jury of one's peers.
The “Braintree Instructions” were a succinct and forthright defense of colonial rights and liberties, while the Dissertation was an essay in political education. In December 1765, he delivered a speech before the governor and council in which he pronounced the Stamp Act invalid on the ground that Massachusetts, being without representation in Parliament, had not assented to it.

In 1772, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson announced that he and his judges would no longer need their salaries paid by the Massachusetts legislature, because the Crown would henceforth assume payment drawn from customs revenues. Boston radicals protested and asked Adams to explain their objections. In “Two Replies of the Massachusetts House of Representatives to Governor Hutchinson” Adams argued that the colonists had never been under the sovereignty of Parliament. Their original charter was with the person of the king and their allegiance was only to him. If a workable line could not be drawn between parliamentary sovereignty and the total independence of the colonies, he continued, the colonies would have no other choice but to choose independence.

Massachusetts sent Adams to the first and second Continental Congresses in 1774 and from 1775 to 1777. In June 1775, with a view of promoting union among the colonies, he nominated George Washington of Virginia as commander-in-chief of the army then assembled around Boston. His influence in Congress was great, and almost from the beginning, he sought permanent separation from Britain. Over the next decade, Americans from every state gathered and deliberated on new governing documents. As radical as it was to write constitutions (prior tradition suggested that a society's form of government need not be codified, nor its organic law written down in a single document), what was equally radical was the revolutionary nature of American political thought as the summer of 1776 dawned.

On May 10, 1776 Adams seconded Richard Henry Lee’s resolution calling on the colonies to adopt new (presumably independent) governments. Adams then drafted a preamble to this resolution which elaborated on it, and which congress approved on May 15. The full document was, as Adams put it, “independence itself” and set the stage for the formal passage of the Declaration of Independence. Once the combined document passed in May, independence became inevitable, though it still had to be declared formally. On June 7th, 1776, Adams seconded the resolution of independence introduced by Richard Henry Lee which stated, “These colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states,” and championed the resolution until it was adopted by Congress on July 2nd, 1776.

Congress twice dispatched Adams to represent the fledgling union in Europe, first in 1777, and again in 1779. He was accompanied, on both occasions, by his eldest son, John Quincy (who was ten years old at the time of the first voyage).

In 1785, John Adams was appointed the first American minister to the Court of St. James’s (ambassador to Great Britain).

While Washington won the presidential election of 1789 with 69 votes in the electoral college, Adams came in second with 34 votes and became Vice President. According to David McCullough, what he really might have wanted was to be the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He presided over the Senate but otherwise played a minor role in the politics of the early 1790s; he was reelected Vice President in 1792. Washington seldom asked Adams for input on policy and legal issues during his tenure as vice president. Adams' two terms as Vice President were frustrating experiences for a man of his vigor, intellect, and vanity. He complained to his wife Abigail, “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”

As President, Adams followed Washington's lead in making the presidency the example of republican values, and stressing civic virtue; he was never implicated in any scandal. Adams continued not just the Washington cabinet but all the major programs of the Washington Administration as well. Adams continued to strengthen the central government, in particular by expanding the navy and army. His economic programs were a continuation of those of Hamilton, who regularly consulted with key cabinet members, especially the powerful Secretary of the Treasury, Oliver Wolcott, Jr. Historians debate his decision to keep the Washington cabinet. Though they were very close to Hamilton, their retention ensured a smoother succession. He remained quite independent of his cabinet throughout his term, often making decisions despite strong opposition from it. It was out of this management style that he avoided war with France, despite a strong desire among his cabinet secretaries for war. The Quasi-War with France resulted in the disentanglement with European affairs that Washington had sought. It also, like other conflicts, had enormous psychological benefits, as America saw itself as holding its own against a European power.

Following his 1800 defeat, Adams retired into private life. Depressed when he left office, he did not attend Jefferson's inauguration, making him one of only four surviving presidents (i.e., those who did not die in office) not to attend his successor's inauguration. Interestingly, one of the other three was his son, John Quincy Adams. Adams' correspondence with Jefferson at the time of the transition suggests that he did not feel the animosity or resentment that later scholars have attributed to him. He left Washington before Jefferson's inauguration as much out of sorrow at the death of his son Charles. (due in part to the younger man's alcoholism) and his desire to rejoin his wife Abigail, who had left for Massachusetts months before the inauguration. Adams resumed farming at his home, Peacefield, in the town of Quincy (formerly a part of the town of Braintree, as it was earlier in his life). He began to work on an autobiography (which he never finished), and resumed correspondence with such old friends as Benjamin Waterhouse and Benjamin Rush. He also began a bitter and resentful correspondence with an old family friend, Mercy Otis Warren, protesting how in her 1805 history of the American Revolution she had, in his view, caricatured his political beliefs and misrepresented his services to the country. Primarily, this revolved around a dispute about whether Adams was sufficiently republican in Warren's view, instead of monarchical, and was related to the Federalist/Republican political divide.

On July 4th, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Adams died at his home in Quincy. Told that it was the Fourth, he answered clearly, “It is a great day. It is a good day.” His last words have been reported as “Thomas Jefferson survives” (Jefferson himself, however, had died hours before he did). His death left Charles Carroll of Carrollton as the last surviving signatory of the Declaration of Independence. John Adams died while his son John Quincy was president.

Source: Wikipedia


This work is released under CC 3.0 BY-SA - Creative Commons

STGRB Interview Update #1

Recently, I did an interview with the website STGRB. They are an anti cyber-bullying website, mostly focusing on cyber-bullying activities on the Goodreads website, Amazon Kindle Boards as well as other sites where cyber-bullying attacks occur.

Anyhow, I discovered that an attempt to hack into their website was thwarted on or around Jan. 16th. However, an investigation is currently on-going. The "would-be" hacker's IP address has been recovered. Identification of the "would-be" hacker is pending. You may read all about it here. Bully Crime.

I will keep you all posted on the situation as it developes.

Allow me to take this opportunity to say that cyber-bullying / stalking is a serious issue, not to mention, a crime. We all need to do our part to combat this growing phenomenon. There is just too many people being victimized by cyber-bullies. Their words, their actions, it just needs to stop. It all just needs to stop.