• Most of my high school classes were mostly girls. They were all the advanced classes and it seemed that there were more smart girls then boys. Being constantly surrounded girls all day has a distracting effect on a teen age boy. If I sat in the front of the french class in stead of the back, I might actually remember more then two words of french. One class I was in the front of was English.
    My English teacher had a flair to him that helped me pay attention, or maybe it was his humor:"What's a metaphor? To put your cows in." When we were studying poetry, he took the class outside and told us to write. Some people wrote about the flowers in front of the school, others wrote about the sun or the blue sky or the cars in the parking lot. When we were done, he took us inside and read the poems out loud, asking us to guess who wrote each one.
    Every poem's author was guessed by someone in the class, except mine. When I was outside, the most powerful sensory input was the girls who were playing around while trying to write. They were happy and having fun and giggling. The sound of their giggle was intoxicating. An addictive sound that I wanted to continue forever. It made me feel warm and happy and a few other emotions as well. It gave me nearly overwhelming urges to be near them, to make them happier, to help them, to protect them from harm.
    I don't remember exactly what I wrote, but it silenced the class for a moment. No one had any idea who wrote it. When the teacher finally told the class, they were all surprised. No one thought the nerdy little boy who did physics for fun and tutored computer programing was someone who the English teacher would call a "True Romantic."