I was born in the fall of my thirty-fifth year in 1985. I say this because nothing happening before really mattered very much once she said yes. I hadn’t planned to ask her to marry me. I thought I was too scared to ask as in “already twice burned” scared. As I asked I looked intently into her hazel eyes and noticed they turned from gray-green to bright green. I have learned over the years that green doesn’t always mean GO! Sometimes it means run like hell and be prepared to duck while you are doing it.

I don’t know when I first met Linda Gail, my ex-roommate’s on again, off again girlfriend. We disagree on that particular moment but I am sure I know when I first noticed her. She had an inflated pumpkin on her head preparing to celebrate Halloween. A year later, in the year of my birth, All Hallows Eve was on a JV game night and I had to attend as a function of my position as a coach and athletic director. Linda Gail and her friend Jeanie were going out to a costume party without me. Those two events should have been exclusive of each other but this particular night they became inclusive. It was raining and I had invited several of the booster club members to join us in the press box to stay dry. Booster club members being entertained in the press box was not an ordinary occurrence and had never happened before until this night. As the game went on, someone knocked on the door. My booster club president opened the door and found two pretty ladies opening their trench coats and exposing their somewhat revealing Halloween costumes. One was a vampire mistress of the night in a short black mini dress with lots of zippers and chains, the other a French maid complete with fishnet stockings, crinolines and a whole lot of cleavage showing … a lot of cleavage showing. I tried not to fall out of the press box window while everyone else was speechless. Utter and complete silence ruled until our booster club president paid them a left handed compliment and confessed that “If I had known it was like this up here I would have come up a lot sooner.”

This is an excerpt from the story “My Birth” found in my new book release, THROUGH THE FRONT GATE which can be purchased in Kindle form at https://goo.gl/4rBPhW or in soft cover at https://goo.gl/Yu3vRm