The Beginning and End of My Dancing Career

Maryleen, My First Love

Somewhere in here, I entered adolescence.  Several changes took place in my life during that time.  For one thing there was an interest in girls. I knew Maryleen Gilliland from the middle of my third grade year until the middle of the seventh grade, but I discovered her in the seventh grade.  She was a petite blond, whom I thought to be about the prettiest thing I had ever laid eyes on.

I couldn’t imagine her being interested in me, but there came a day when I wrote her a note in a lovestruck moment.  I wrote the words, “Maryleen, I love you” on a piece of notebook paper.    I never intended those words to be read by anyone but me but a kid named Ray Eddins saw what I had written, snatched it off my desk, and gave it to Maryleen.  I was horrified.

What would I do if I found out she hated me?   I was too young to join the French Foreign Legion. Could I run away from home and join the circus?  Maybe I could talk my parents into letting me quit school?  How could I ever face her again?  Would she turn up her nose at me? laugh at me? refuse to speak to me? say horrible things about me?  To my great surprise I found out that Maryleen liked the attention.  That created another problem.  I didn’t know how to act around a girl who actually liked me.

 For the next month so we were inseparable.  My whole life was consumed with Maryleen.  We probably made everybody else sick.  They had to separate us on the school bus.  It was about as bad a case if puppy love that you could have. 

One night we got together at a 4-H club Christmas party. For some reason, my parents mingled with the adult.  Maryleen and I ended up in a room that had a juke book.  She asked me if I would like to learn how to dance?  I grew up in an environment where dancing was forbidden.  But it didn’t matter.  Maryleen asked me if I would like to learn how to dance.   She knew she needed to start with something simple.  So she explained the “two step.”  I could barely do the one step.  I’ve got two left feet.  I never aspired to be the heir apparent to Fred Astaire. My parents showed up in a few minutes.  I don’t think they ever caught on to what was happening.  It was just as well.  I was able to get out of the room without stepping on Maryleen’s feet.  That would have been an embarrassment.

My parents broke up the relationship by pulling a dirty trick.  We moved.   I was only fifteen miles away, but I went to a different school, and I might as well have been in Africa.   Maryleen and I vowed to stay in touch.  We wrote two or three letters and then both of us went on to other interests.  Maryleen dropped out of my life forever, but sometimes I wonder whatever happened to her.