Kitselman’s birthday

Gail Kitselman. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Every morning I usually get up early enough to hear Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac.
The classical-music public-radio station out of Rochester (NY) I listen to airs it about 8:20 a.m.
It usually grates this retired newspaper employee because Garrison, who majored in English, is always “entitling” things, like poems, books, whatever.
At which point I scream “Entitled to what?”
“Today is Tuesday, August 12th, 2014,” he said yesterday morning.
He then started listing various birthdays, Zerna Sharp, the person behind the “Dick and Jane” readers, Cecil B. DeMille, etc.
“It’s also Kitselman’s birthday,“ I said.
Gail Kitselman is one of my first girlfriends, not the first, but the first I felt serious about.
Her mother thought I was wonderful, but her father, a highly-paid executive, quite-rightly felt I was a waste; that I’d never amount to anything.
I met Kitselman in a roundabout way, after driving her and friends to visit their basketball-coach in a distant hospital.
I took Kitselman on various dates. The ones I remember are -a) a day-long sojourn to 59th-Street beach in Ocean City, NJ, and -b) to a nearby amusement-park in southeastern PA.
That amusement-park closed long ago. 59th-Street beach is the finest beach in the entire known universe.
Ocean City had a boardwalk, and we walked it after dusk holding-hands.
We had a really great time, and Kitselman wanted me to kiss her when we got back home. But I couldn’t do it.
I’m a graduate of the Hilda Q. Walton School of sexual relations, where no girl would have anything to do with me.
My relationship to Kitselman was my senior year of high-school, and we drifted apart when I started college.
Kitselman was still in high-school. She was Class of ’64; I’m ’62.
The last time I saw Kitselman was in that high-school.
She didn’t wanna continue if I was 400+ miles away, distracted by other college girls.
So now I wonder if Kitselman is still alive.
I say that because my beloved wife, who would have made 100 had she not developed cancer, is GONE. —Her mother is still alive at age-98.
Kitselman and I would have been a difficult match. I was too messed up, and Kitselman wasn’t.
I never amounted to anything because I was too messed up.
I always felt I was borderline insane compared to my wife; like my wife was the sane one.
Kitselman used worry she was too thin, that she didn’t fill out her clothes.
She also worried she’d get varicose veins in her legs like her mother.
But Kitselman was really great person, to parry me screwed-up as I was — and still am, probably.
So now I wish I’d kissed her, like I carry a debt to fulfill.
We had a great time at the seashore, but I’m a graduate of the Hilda Q. Walton School of sexual relations.

• “Q” stood for Quincy, her maiden-name.