Catharsis

—“It’s time to move on to something new,” my friend says.
Seventy-some years ago, the infamous Hilda Q. Walton, my hyper-religious and overly judgmental Sunday-School superintendent neighbor, told me all males, including me at age 5, were despicable and disgusting.
I think her husband, a hotshot RCA engineer, was probably fooling around.
Had my parents, also hyper religious, come to my defense, Faire Hilda woulda crashed mightily in flames.
Instead they heartily agreed, all because I couldn’t worship my holier-than-thou father.
Over 76 years on this planet I have met thousands. Only two seem to understand the madness of my childhood.
One is my aunt, age-90, badmouthed all her life by her mother, who continually told her she shoulda never been born. That aunt probably had it worse than me.
The other is my cousin: the only child of my father’s brother. “I don’t know how my father ended up being as decent as he was after the childhood he had.”
My aunt regals me with stories about how she walked into a tree-branch, and it knocked her down. “You deserved that! Harr-harr-hardy-harr-harr! You had that coming!”
“No female will ever associate with you!” That was Faire Hilda marking me for life — and my parents agreed.
My parents mellowed as more children were born. But I was first-born.
Especially my mother, as she began to realize my father was losing me.
So now, 70 years late, I’m beginning to realize the zealots were all WRONG.
Forgetting such a childhood would be easy-as-pie for the average person. The average person couldn’t comprehend the madness I endured = the continual put-downs and badmouthing, that I was rebellious and disgusting.
So now, 70 years late, I find myself befriending way more ladies than I ever expected.
It’s joyous and mind-blowing.
And it seems like something like that happens every day.
The fact I make so many lady-friends gets celebrated as blog-material.
“Every day, something!” I say to myself, as yet another wondrous contact with a female occurs.
A lady smiles at me, or her eyes sparkle = we’re striking sparks.
“Your eyes are pretty,” or “boy-oh-boy am I glad I struck up a conversation with you!”
I celebrate it too much: stuff like this is totally unexpected after the childhood I had.
“I’m 76 years old, and you’re a pretty girl.” Blush! “Boy did I hit the mark with that! After my childhood?”
Another “relations with the opposite sex” blog = boring as Hell to my friend.
But these blogs score 10-to-15 hits per blog. I’m sure some of those hits never get read.
Even if I go down to zero reads, I’ll probably keep celebratin’. My childhood is being flip-flopped.
Writing these blogs is catharsis for me = my friend doesn’t hafta read ‘em.

• “RCA” is Radio Corporation of America, an early marketer of in-home electronics — radios, record-players, and eventually TVs. It was based in Camden, NJ, across from Philadelphia. Not far from where I grew up in south Jersey.