Princess and Anny

 

In my tweens and teens, I fancied myself as a photographer in more ways than spying on Anny, the neighbor girl. I also learned how to develop film and make prints in a darkroom. The darkroom was in my sixth-grade classroom, built by the students out of cardboard refrigerator boxes. (I guess that makes me eleven or twelve here.) That was during the early seventies. Those were such innocent times. Students, parents, and teachers thought nothing of an adult male teacher spending time alone with students in a four foot by eight-foot darkened enclosure after school hours. (Nothing inappropriate ever happened—that I remember. I probably should’ve skipped this aside altogether.)

I’m not sure who took this photo of Princess and me. I’m guessing Cheryl snapped it, probably with a Kodak Instamatic. This was long before I got my job as a paper goods supply warehouseman and bought my Pentax K1000 SLR with zoom lens. What I find most interesting about the shot is how Princess—who I’ve always remembered as being tiny as Toto—almost completely blocks me from view. She meant more to me than anything else in my life at that time. I love how she dominates this photo.

Or to be honest, Princess dominated my reality and would continue to do so throughout her life. But once my tweens had decisively turned into teens, girls dominated my thoughts. Much like my wife Trissa misreading my emotions when she thought she was having a stroke, Mom found me a puzzling cypher when it came to the opposite sex. She never verbalized her fears about my not dating. She’d just find little ways to nudge me along. Of course, the truth was my fantasies  kept me in a constant state of knotted stomach and nerves. Anny—here washing my first car—was my sixteen-year-old crush. Would Mom have been relieved had she known I had these feelings? Would she have pressed the matter and forced me to dial Anny’s number?