Beating down the ghost of Hilda Q.

—As in Hilda Q. Walton, my hyper-religious Sunday-School superintendent neighbor, who along with my Bible-beating parents, convinced me all males, including me at age-5, were SCUM!
Actually, my parents weren’t denigrating my maleness. They declared me EVIL and rebellious because I couldn’t worship my holier-than-thou father.
The past week was a downer regarding my lady-friends. It gives my critics the opportunity to loudly proclaim “no pretty lady will have anything to do with you!”
—On Monday, I had no reason to go to my pharmacy, where I normally would meet pretty *****.
No chance to say hello, after which she bounces out of her workstation to come talk with me.
—On Tuesday I discovered astonishingly-pretty ******, one of the “temperature ladies” per COVID-19 outside Thompson Hospital’s Physical-Therapy department, was married. She seemed too young.
That scotched entertaining her with “the speech:” “yer gonna to get married someday; whatever ya do marry somebody who can make ya laugh. My wife always told me the reason we lasted 44&1/2 years was because I could make her laugh.”
—Wednesday would be my aquatic balance-training class at the Canandaigua YMCA swimming-pool.
There I would meet *****, my pretty lifeguard friend, to whom I love talking.
She’d gone to Floridy with her husband.
She’s rather impressive, so I wonder why she even associates with me.
I do have other lady friends there, but I like talking with *****. She reminds of my wife. She isn’t my wife; she’s an entirely different person, but the brains are there.
Plus she seems to like talking to me, and of course talking is all we ever do.
Sometimes she smiles at me, and when she does WOW!
—On Thursday I’d hike Lehigh Valley RailTrail, and chance meeting my pretty young jogger friend with whom I once struck up a conversation, and we thoroughly enjoyed each other.
We’ve met two or three times since, and it’s always thrilling.
No rail-trail; it was raining.
—So Friday, one last chance to strike sparks with a lady friend; after four consecutive days of nuthin’.
Friday fell flat too, except my aquacise-instructor seemed to wanna talk with me.
Friday is another visit to that YMCA swimming-pool, but no aquacise class. This would just be “water-walking,” slosh around in that pool with self-directed attempts at in-pool exercise.
Just sloshing around in that pool is work.
“DREAMIN’!” my critics would scream. “No cute aquacise-instructor will wanna talk to you, Bobby! You are ONE PATHETIC LOSER!”
I entered the pool area wanting to talk to that aquacise-instructor’s sidekick, a retiree who once did aquatic therapy in that pool.
Now she volunteers, helping the aquacise-instructor.
“I can’t talk right now,” my aquacise-instructor said to me. She was otherwise occupied.
“No problem,” I would say. “I was aimed at your sidekick.”
Sidekick and I began talking, and soon sidekick dragged the aquacise-instructor into our discussion.
But we drifted apart, since I already had said most of what I planned to say.
Later that aquacise-instructor pulled me aside, apologizing for not talking to me earlier. I think she wanted to talk with me.
I was so flummoxed I ducked. A cutie wants to talk to me? “NO WAY JOSÉ!” my critics would bellow.
I worry about faltering self-confidence, the ghost of Hilda Q. Walton haunting me.
I notice increasing hesitance to take the risks I earlier took with other pretty ladies.
A week or two ago I said something my YMCA lifeguard-friend about how if I was the least bit hesitant or tentative (scared) about meeting her, she would pick up on that, and probably be less responsive to my saying hello to her. (She might think I was avoiding her.)
She looked befuddled at first, like “what’s he telling me that for?”
But then she seemed to crunch it.
REALLY? That’s the sorta thing I would say to my wife.
Eyes-eyes-eyes-eyes-eyes at my supermarket, but I’m afraid of telling a lady she has pretty eyes. I did it a few weeks ago.
“Take the risk!” my bereavement-counselor advises. “If you succeed, that counters your childhood. If you fail, try someone else.”
It ain’t easy beating down Hilda and my parents after what they did to me. Self-worth destroyed!
I also have the problem of not feeling like I’m in the real world. Reality nearly disappeared after my wife died; also after my stroke.
I keep two small reminders in my kitchen.
First is something posted long ago by that aquacise-instructor to her Facebook: something about “absent friend.”
I keep it to remind myself that aquacise-instructor does indeed exist. She’s not a figment of my imagination, which my critics claim is “twisted.”
Second is a small thank-you note given me by that lifeguard friend last year, after I gave her an extra train-calendar for her railfan friend in FL.
I keep it for the same reason: to remind myself she exists.
It’s like half the reason I continue that aquatic balance-training is to reacquaint myself with reality; prove to myself I am indeed in the real world.
I look pool-ward, and there’s ***** up on her lifeguard-stand waving at me.
I walk into the pool area, and there's Mrs. ******, smiling with sparkling eyes.
Maybe I should go to my pharmacy for a pretty-***** fix.
Or risk female encounters at my supermarket.
I haven’t been smacked yet!

• My brother and I photograph trains down near Altoona PA, where the old Pennsylvania Railroad crossed Allegheny Mountain. The railroad is now Norfolk Southern. Every year I take 13 of our 89 bazilyun photographs to assemble into a calendar — I do it with Shutterfly. I give those calendars as Christmas presents.