Reminiscences

I'm musing far from the garden today, prompted by random recollections that refuse to be ignored.  Although I made a quick trip into my garden today in the chilling temperatures and dim light of early morning, Memory Lane beckoned later and took my thoughts on a detour.

It's Mrs. ProfessorRoush's birthday, and one of my presents to her, (yes, I'll take credit for anything I can) was to relieve her of dropping her smaller clone off at school.  The smaller clone normally could drive herself but temporarily has lost her keys for the umpteenth time.  Later, sitting in the line of cars at the High School, it suddenly struck me that the gaggles of giggling girls, even the older ones, just seem so...teenagerish.  

It was not that way in my far ago youth.  The female Seniors of my High School were sophisticated and cool and so...unreachable.  Ingrained into my soul is the time that I spent in typing class as a 9th grader, the first 9th grader in my school to be allowed into the class (and yes, it was a TYPING class, pre-computers and computer keyboards).  I was placed into the back row of typewriters, seated between the polished and refined Prom Queen (a senior) and the voluptuous senior Pom-Pom Captain (who actually, at that tender age, had Breasts and occasionally displayed glimpses of them even back in those pre-Madonna-influenced times!).  To communicate the experience to another gardener or rosarian, I can only compare it to being the spiky Echinops planted as a companion between the damask 'Madame Hardy' and the extra-large-bloomed Hybrid Tea 'Dolly Parton'. The entire atmosphere in that vicinity was charged, as I recall, with electricity, feminine perfume, and the essence of hyperstimulated nerd.  In hindsight, it is probably easy to understand how I, a 9th grader and the lone male, won the typing award that semester amidst a class of Senior girls.  The practice of touch-typing is immeasurably enhanced when the attention of the typist is everywhere but on the keyboard.

This all brings up a question I don't want to face, though.  Is it the eighteen-year-old females, and our society, who have changed so radically since the 1970's, or is it the ancient and wise gardening (former) nerd?  I cannot provide a defensible answer in fear that the passage of time has colored my view on the matter.  I will only say "Thank You" to 'Madame Hardy' formerly on my right, and 'Dolly Parton' on my left, for providing in my life the beauty and wonder so otherwise lacking in my pre-gardening years.  And, since it's her birthday, I will also hold up and celebrate the even more beautiful Mrs. ProfessorRoush for turning a hopeless nerd into a puttering and partially-useful husband with a modicum of socially acceptable behaviors.  It was a hard road you chose, Honey.