And So It Begins

Her name was Betty and she was a very bright teenage girl, quiet and bookish with an artistic side. She loved to read, especially the classics. She wore jeans as a latent hippie in the mid Seventies, and stuck mostly to herself as she had no friends to discuss her aesthetic interests with.

Her mother was beautiful and sensual and attracted many men, and she attracted many men, but she wasn't a hippie girl even though she came from hippie times, but her new boyfriend Bonn was. He still had long hair and wore sandals, played the guitar and sang folk songs. He was a big reader of the classics too and liked to discuss his books, but Betty's mother Glenda didn't. She was into the new trends, with shorter hair and the latest clothes. She was confident and told Bonn she like to read, but more commercial mainstream, not the difficult stuff he did.

One day he saw the Thoreau book Betty was reading under a lamp on the sofa and sat down next to her, bringing up subjects trying to trick her, but Betty knew the answers and so this enamored him so much that he asked her if she wanted to go to the library for some new books. He asked her if she knew Jonathan Livingston Seagull and she said no, so he said that's that we need a trip to the library.

Betty being a girl of fifteen with no friends and a thirst for books and knowledge and thoughtful conversations, asked her mom if she could ride with him to the library and she said yes.

As Bonn drove his VW but toward the local small-time library, his hand rested on Betty's knee and squeezed a little. Looking over at her he said, "You know why I like you, don't you?"

She looked down at the hand on her knee and moved her leg slightly away so he would no longer be touching her.

"I can talk to you about things that I can't with your mother," he said. "You're special. You're different."

And so it begins.

The end