The Curse Continues

When I was in high school, more than fifty years ago, one of my most serious "crushes" was on an older man. He was out of school, looked sort of rough, drove a Cadillac and lived a very fast life. He paid me very little attention and was not at all encouraging. But I thought he was hot stuff. He married and moved on and so did I.

While I worked at WRIT radio station the night time disc jockey, college educated with a degree in English literature, was the friend and crush. We even did a television show together ... black and white on a UHF channel. Then he was drafted and went off to San Antonio and an Air Force stint. I later found out that he was gay.

After my first divorce the craziest of all the crushes happened. A brilliant and funny radio newsman with very little grasp on real life seemed to find me entertaining and I him. That was short lived as well and came back to haunt me many many years later as his grasp on reality became even weaker and he stalked me mostly by mail and phone until I needed to invoke the help of a mutual friend who had some law enforcement cred.

And then, after the last divorce, a creepy man for whom I worked enticed me into a less than pleasant (but seemed like a solution at the time) arrangement that meant he was looking at my growing children as "workers" for his weird plan. It was something about becoming self sufficient to protect yourself. I mean, weird.

So, I went for thirty plus years with no more crushes, at least none acted upon at all. But then I slipped. Someone for whom I could have had one all along called and asked me out to dinner. Damn, I was done. We had been family and church friends for many years. I thought he was most upstanding, as does he. He made no bones about it. Not looking for a girlfriend, not ready for a relationship. Still healing from wife's death. Yada yada yada. And now all that has changed. After sharing a lot with me he has decided he is ready for a relationship and has lined up a wife-clone with whom to have it. He dumped me by e-mail on Thanksgiving!

Here's the punch line. All of these men have the same first name. Some of them used a shorter version. But I call it the Curse of the Richards.