“Get over it!”

—“I have one tiny story if you wanna hear it.”
I would say that to my lifeguard friend at Canandaigua’s YMCA swimming-pool.
She’ll probably wanna hear my story.
“We could talk forever!” says my pretty pharmacist friend.
Two years ago she gave me a flu shot, but she hung around afterward.
“Don’t you wanna leave?” I kept thinking.
Nope! We had started talking, and she wanted to continue.
A friend of mine, a retired transit bus-driver like me, commented about how all my recent blogs seem to be girl-oriented.
Continuously celebratin’ my joyously newfound relationships with women.
(This is the guy whose writing advice I’ve taken before — mainly about not explaining everything.)
My newfound lady-friends counteract my hoary childhood, which left me thinking no girl would ever have anything to do with me, especially not pretty girls.
So now, 70 years late, I find those overly judgmental zealots were WRONG!
They marked-me-for-life: totally scared of and unable to relate to women.
How I even managed to attract a wife is another story. Some day readers.
Girl-oriented, but not sexually. I’m continually amazed I can even talk with women, and they wanna talk with me.
Over the past few months I have gotten much better at striking up conversations, including with pretty ladies.
I keep doing it, and thereby gain confidence.
So I mentioned to this friend I was sorry I kept being so amazed at these pretty-girl interactions.
I think he got it = that my continual girl-oriented blogging was not sexual bragging. Just that I was continually amazed I could even talk with a girl at all, and they seem to wanna talk with me. (Gasp!)
“Only a slut would talk to you, Bobby! You are despicable!”
Interacting with women is entirely new and unimaginable to someone like me, a scumbag ever since age 5.
“No attractive lady will ever associate with you! Don’t even think about it!”
This was my hyper-religious Sunday-School superintendent neighbor, the infamous Hilda Q. Walton.
Had my Bible-thumping parents come to my defense, Faire Hilda woulda crashed mightily in flames.
But I already was “rebellious” because I couldn’t worship my holier-than-thou father.
My retired bus-driver friend was not the first to decry my “girly” blogs.
Years ago another friend decried my continual mention of the “Hilda Q. Walton School of Gender Relations.”
“Hilda is dead and gone, as are your Bible-thumping parents. So get over it, Hughes!”
Many others have complained, and the number of my blog-readers has declined over the past few months.
I find myself blogging every fabulous female encounter.
Every day something!
My friend suggested I blog other topics beside my female encounters, and I have a few ideas in mind — mainly regarding my bus-driving, and my auto-styling and music preferences.
Plus various insanities regarding my iPhone, technology, and my computering.
But after the childhood I had, and suddenly free of the albatross I carried 70+ years, these extraordinary female encounters are what get my attention first.

• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My friend was also an RTS bus-driver.