Damn Yankee by George S Geisinger (books for 7th graders .txt) 📕

to impose, anymore than I enjoy being imposed upon. I thought it was such a big thing to tell someone young and beautiful that's what they are, until some old lady said it to me.
***
Our gentleman farmer presents an appearance above reproach, of having friends and enjoying people's company. There is no suggestion of any untoward activity going on there that I can see. My hat is off to them.

Chapter 7

There is the woman here who's got her eye on one of the men, at least. He's a great old guy, easy to get along with, affable, and very mild mannered; a regular Clark Kent. She's always looking for him here and there, since he's as self-possessed as he is, napping regularly in various places around the great Brighton Dam Apartments. But the woman is always busy trying to interact with him.
She frankly says she'd “like to put him on a leash.”
I could scarcely believe my ears, at that statement, but a mutual, male friend of mine corroborates that she used that expression exactly. I know didn't imagine it.
It's sort of the same thing one sees with young women who want to “play house with their Barbie and Ken dolls,” in their novice times of young adulthood. The female wants to impersonate her Barbie doll, and wants to lasso the Ken doll of her dreams, and drag him home to play house with her, regardless of what he wants. His wishes have nothing to do with it. She's not focused on anyone's wishes but her own. I knew a girl like that at university at the age of 18 & 19.
Those kind are like the Canadian Mounted Police. They always get their man.
Forty years later, she's been married five times, and has buried three husbands. I asked her over email, since she wouldn't let me alone all these years later, if she's been investigated by the Police Dept.
I was under that sort of man hunt as a freshman in university, as a young man, with a war on, with a military draft in play. I think the girl would have been equally happy, if I'd have only given her a bun in the oven, waltzed down the isle, and proceeded to join the Marine Corps in wartime, and gotten blown to hell on the battlefield, leaving her survivor benefits as the honored widow and mother of the child of the fallen hero.
She was not in love with me.
She was in love with marriage.
The girl artfully played my libido against me, when I was in my prime, like a subtle weapon against me. After a time, I began to realize that I was on the verge of something I hadn't counted on.
So I made her cry, calling an end to her game, and went my own way, grateful that I was not about to become an unwed father or a military statistic.
In the entire theater of the game between the boys and the girls, I've taken a somewhat negative position. Personally, I've gotten a little set in my ways. I'm a bachelor for life. I'm on the look-out for the Canadian Mounted Police syndrome, and the girls who work a man's feelings against him, talking too much, giving unending, inappropriate attention, working at the game of “love,” opposed to working for a living and not minding their own business. I'm on guard. It happens to me all the time.
It's a dirty trick, if you ask me.
Oh sure, I would liked to have had a wife and family, for company's sake at the very least, now that I'm getting old and alone. But as a result of not tying the knot with any of my girlfriends over the years, I'm alone now, which is not so good. But I am a product of my environment, and I was greatly convicted by my parents' failed marriage from a very impressionable age.
By this time in life, marriage is a moot point. There's no one to be interested in.

Chapter 8

There is the person at the church program I attend once a week, close by the great Brighton Dam, who is so friendly with me, I wonder what she thinks she would get from me? What does she want? Then there are the people whom one cannot reciprocate attentions with, out of mere conscience, because of too many extenuating circumstances, and I'd rather not be romantically involve with anyone, anyway. That's being tested, by several people. I wonder whether I need to let go of some of my caution?
I told one person here at the Brighton Dam that I'd be more than honored to be more of a man to her, if things were not as they are, but I'm not citing her shortcomings or incapacity, I'm citing my own. I don't feel qualified to be in a close relationship.
I was so thoroughly, overwhelmingly abused as a child, and am such a severely traumatized person for most of my lifetime, I get upset at the idea of being physically touched by anyone. Not exactly a good place to be launching and constructing a relationship with a lover, or even being overly friendly with any sort of demonstrative person. It's not anyone's incapacity but my own.
I love to have a good, stimulating conversation with intelligent people, and talk about a lot of various things, but why can't some people keep their hands to themselves? I'm not talking about a hardy handclasp here. I'm talking about those people who just have to nudge my arm and my shoulder over and over to talk to me at all, and then have nothing on their minds to back it up with. It takes a third party to get the conversation going at all, beyond the most basic greetings, and even at that, The Hand does not seem to know what to say for itself. Besides which, it's various people touching a man repeatedly, in the course of conversation, for reasons I just cannot understand. That's not acceptable.
What's on your mind, buddy? Keep your hands to yourself.
Then there's the ladies who are just such sweet and lovable people, that all I want to do is melt into their arms, and be coddled like a child. They are long on hints of promises, and there is never any delivery of anything whatsoever. They are constantly apologizing for their omissions, and never really giving anything except their invitations, coupled by their omissions, and there is never anything else to our interactions. Push me, pull you, as they say.
What I can't understand is how to come ahead and back off, simultaneously. If they don't want any interactions with me, why do they make their overtures in the first place?
Life is so confusing.
Then there are the most beautiful people here and there in the world, and I crave to let them know how totally beautiful they really are in my eyes. I want them to know in their heart of hearts, how much I adore their images, whether I know anything else about them or not, but the one person who tells me that very same sentiment scares the Dickens out of me, and makes me want to run away from her completely, wanting to go to another city, or to another country, or to another part of the world altogether, just to get away from her, so I'll never have to hear her say that thing she said to me ever again.
She is not beautiful in my eyes, but she says I'm “a beautiful man,” and I Can't Take Hearing That From Her! It's not right somehow.
Why can't she understand that?
Then there's another person who has me babbling backhanded compliments at her, over and over, with all my complete and total self-consciousness in her glorious presence, and I think I make her feel just about the same way about me that I feel about the other person I've just mentioned.
Life is so confusing.
I don't understand what to do about any of these things.

Chapter 9

There is a certain person here who has the most glowing, sparkling, radiant smiles for me whenever she's on duty, whom I have shared my compliments with regularly enough that she knows full well I enjoy seeing her. She does not confuse me with complicated, jumbled feelings compounding in my heart in the slightest.
She's just a nice, sweet young lady, working her job with dignity and grace, who is pleasantly disposed enough to accept a compliment in a kindly spirit when one is given.
All the palpitating heart stuff does not apply to our interactions at all, unlike the other one, who has such an overwhelmingly glorious presence, not so much like anyone else anywhere, but absolutely unique to her own, undefinable way, which baffles me utterly. Why I can't stop babbling at her and about the other one, I can't understand. My friend just glows with warmth when I speak to her, and I bask in the sunshine of her grace, but I can't seem to get anywhere near the same rapport with the other one, though I try and try.
I think what I may do is stop trying. I'll let go. It's a great idea, but I'm so entranced by her presence, springing herself on me unawares the way she does, the few times I see her in her official comings and goings which have nothing to do with me. I really don't have any occasion to see her or speak to her, unlike my friend, who works with me regularly.
I seem to have a certain need of all this silly prattle, over the various people I notice in my comings and goings in life.
For instance, when The Hand comes again, reaching out to touch me the very next time, I'm going to tell him to stop touching me, in so many words. It almost seems like a rude thing to say, but it's only a direct statement of my wishes. I don't like to be touched. Call it odd if you like, but I don't want to be touched by these beautiful young ladies I'm going on and on about here, anymore than I want to be touched by anybody else. It's a level playing field that way. I enjoy seeing and being seen, complimenting and being complimented, but I am not prepared to touch or be touched.
It's where I happen to be in my life at the moment.
No thank you. Keep your hands to yourself, please.
***
Look at the clock and the late hour. Where does the time go? I'm writing a little bit. Crocheting some. Practicing guitar some. The clock indicates the end of my day so quickly and so definitely, I want to rebel and ignore the hour. Stay up and continue doing the things I love to do.
Furthermore, I want to be alone in my apartment here at the Brighton Dam Apartments, doing as I please, without ceasing. But convention overtakes me by a certain hour each night, probably because of my need for help sleeping with my medicines, and I'll have to surrender to the night soon, whether I want to or not.
The doctor has made certain chemically that I get groggy by bedtime, when for a long time I had no