Smiling all the way!

—“You been talking to *****,” I said to ******, my number-two lifeguard friend at Canandaigua’s YMCA swimming pool.
She’s number-two only because ***** has always been number-one. ***** said hello to me by name years ago, before I struck up a conversation with ******.
That first conversation with ****** was my own doing. I’d got to where I could talk to a pretty lady, and ****** is attractive even though she was 55 or 56 back then. ****** is now 58.
***** is now 65, and was back from vacation in Alaska with her husband.
I asked if she saw anything.
“Birthing moose and antelope,” she said.
(“Meese?” I asked. Nope; that was Edwin Meese III, Attorney General during the Reagan administration.)
I noted how I practiced socializing at my brother’s wedding-celebration south of Boston, such that if ***** asked how I was, I would say: “fine thank you; and how are you?”
Normal people socialize that way, but not this kid. No one taught me how to socialize. I’m the product of overly-judgmental hyper-zealots. —I was “rebellious” and “Of-the-Devil.”
So when ****** said “hi Bob; how are you?
Now you’re supposed to say……”
“Fine thank you,” I said; “and how are you? And it sounds like you been talking to *****.”
“I have!” she said.
Both ***** and ****** seem to have joined to drag me into the real world.
Where normal people, like my numerous lady-friends (WOOPS! “Friends who happen to be female”) don’t automatically deduce me EVIL and disgusting!)
***** stayed with me ever since she first said hello, despite my many foul-ups and faux pas. She’s female (“GASP!”), and rather impressive for her age.
Shortly after ***** said hello to me, when I struck up that conversation with ******, ****** promised to not give up on me despite my total inexperience with women and socializing.
She hasn’t. She’s always happy to see me, and usually says hello first.
Thankfully I never did anything stupid with ******; although once maybe, but I apologized the next time I saw her: (“I don’t want you thinking you’re chopped liver”).
With ***** I thought I lost her with two dreadful mistakes. Poor wording last time.
But I won her back. Unlike my father, ***** doesn’t keep score.
So here we are, much to the angry chagrin of the Bible-thumpers.
Still friends with both ****** and ***** — ladies (“GASP!”)
“Go to Hell, Bobby! Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Go DIRECTLY to Hell!”
(Smiling all the way!)