2 comments/ 15073 views/ 1 favorites Strange People By: magmaman Fresh out of high school I got a job working for Mr. Carlson. I was happy to get any kind of job at all, this one was setting chokers up on the back side of his big ranch. Mr. Carlson had a TD-14 International dozer, it was a good machine. Outfitted with a hydraulic blade and a big bull drum on the back, he was harvesting Fir trees up on the back side of his place. He took one long look at my 6 foot lanky frame and hired me on the spot. It wasn't until much later that I realized he hired me because I was strong and had no idea at all how dangerous the job was. He got me cheap that way. "You be careful son." My Dad told me when I mentioned the job. "Keep your eyes open, and never get below a log, OK?" He patted me on the shoulder. I was barely 18 years old, close to invulnerable. I mean, what could happen? I set the choker cables, old man Carlson hauled them out of there, that was pretty much it. By the end of a week I was thinking I was very good at climbing up and down the hillside, and I always tried to get behind a stump or something. "Stay out of the bite!" He yelled at me maybe two dozen times. Good thing, too, because Mr. Carlson got one big log hung up, instead of dropping it and letting me reset at a different angle he tried to force it. The choker broke and dropped the log, it came down the hill at an angle, my way. The log hit the stump and bounced right over my head, I was trying to get all of me under my hard hat at the time. One big limb did clip me as it went by, caught my shoulder. I never will forget that, it hurt like hell, still does to this day, some 50 odd years later when it gets cold and damp out. "You OK?" He yelled down the hill at me. "Yeah." I stood up, rubbing my shoulder. When I got to the top of the hill Mr. Carlson took one look at me, then shut down the big dozer. "Let me see that." He said. I undid my heavy shirt, he looked at the red bruise, it was about three times as big as a Coffee cup and rapidly filling with blood. "You better take the rest of the day off." He said, and sent me home. There was no such thing as workmen's compensation back then. Not for a job like mine, paid in all cash at $1.00 per hour. Going home wasn't good, it was 19 miles down the bay road to our place, I had no car. We didn't yet have a phone, there had been some talk about putting in lines but that meant a mile of telephone poles. In fact, we didn't even get electricity until I was 14. My Mom dropped me off at 7 in the morning and picked my up at around 6 each day, and it was not even noon yet. So it was sit on my butt and wait, or walk all 19 miles. "I will drive you home." Mr. Carlson said, picking right up on my expression. We went over to his barn, he climbed into a 1950 Chevy business coupe. For any of you that don't know what that is, it is a shorty cab car with no back seat, just a place to put stuff. Chevy built that for travelling salesmen, there were quite a few of those back in the early sixties. The car was pale green, I liked it. My Dog Boo would fit right in there, he was part bulldog and part...well...he was a Dog. I happened to mention the Mr. Carlson that I really liked this car. Anyway, by the time we got to my place Mr. Carlson was talking about maybe selling me the machine. 14 year old cars were considered pretty much done for back in those days, so they weren't worth very much. I ended up buying it for $95.00, a shade over two week's pay. Mr. Carlson did take out taxes from my pay, of course he never paid any of it in to the government as I found out later. +++ Being young, my shoulder healed up all it was going to in just a few days and I went back to work. Mr. Carlson did tell me the old Chevy had highway gears in it, so to get it going took a tricky bit of getting the engine speed just right and the clutch tugging, then release it all the way and it sort of chugged a little before it got to moving. That let it go over 60 MPH in 2nd gear, of course the steering wheel began to wobble so bad at that speed that it scared me. It didn't take me very long to figure out that if I sped the old 216.5 cubic inch engine up pretty good and sort of popped the clutch, the rear tire would squeal for a second or two, that was fun. If I was in gravel it would really spin the right rear tire. About a week later we got done fairly late, it was almost dark because we had one tree that was very big. So big we left 30 feet of the butt cut there in the canyon, now way in hell would that fit on the truck anyway. The guy Mr. Carlson had falling trees was named George, he was a huge man and he had a saw with a bar on it 8 feet long. Even with the saw being that big, he had to cut it from two sides, the use big wedges and a sledgehammer to get it down. That tree measured 11 feet across and the truck would only hold 8 footers. "Mill can't saw that, truck can't haul it, guess I will just cut off pieces for firewood." Mr. Carlson told me. He did, too. He carried a ladder down there and cut the huge log across the top with a 24" saw, then used wedges to lift chunks out of it. So we were done, I climbed up out of the canyon and headed home. There was a tiny little store a couple of miles down the road, I stopped and got myself a soda and a candy bar, one of those big nut logs over caramel that were a full meal by themselves if you ate a whole one. Off I went towards home, just as I put the column shift lever into second gear it felt funny. I pulled it out and put it back in, the engine sped up but the car was coming to a stop. I got the machine off the road, it smelled funny too like something was burning. Nothing left to do but walk, I knew the clutch was probably burned up but I had no idea how to fix that. I also knew it was still about 16 miles to our house and fat chance of getting a ride. There might be maybe one or two cars an hour on the road during the day, usually none at all at night. So off I went eating my candy bar and drinking my soda, nothing else to do. I did have my coat, thank God. I pulled it snug around me, the breeze off the ocean a half dozen miles away was downright cold. About a mile on down the road I looked back and saw headlights coming. I stuck out my thumb, maybe I would get lucky. A big old Pontiac station wagon went by, then it slowed and stopped. Those were very big and fancy cars, not many folks around could ever afford one of them. He pulled off in a wide spot, rolled down the window. "Need a ride?" The man driving asked me as I walked up. He looked to be maybe 40 or so, receding hair line, glasses. "Yeah, thanks. I live about 15 miles on down the road, a ride would be great." I told him. "Ok, Hop in." He smiled. I went around and opened the door, there was a woman sitting there. She scooted over to the middle of the big bench front seat to make room. "This is Sharon, my wife. I'm Ted." "Dan." I nodded at her. The woman was very tiny, hell, she couldn't be more that 5 feet tall if that, maybe in her middle 20's. She had on a dark sweater and a skirt, that was all I could really see in the inside light. "You smell like pine trees." She told me with a smile. "Yea, I am a logger." I said. The bay road had no lights so it was very dark out, also very dark inside the car. I noticed the man was driving extremely slowly. "Want a drink?" Ted asked me. He handed me a bottle. I took it and smelled it, I knew what that was. Moonshine, Mr. Tollofson made the stuff and sold it for three bucks a quart. I had bought a bottle of it to spike the punch at our Senior prom, which resulted in several stories I could tell later. Like the one about Mrs. Baker ending up in the girl's bathroom with Paul Miller, one of our jocks in school. Mrs. Baker was our science teacher, she was about 45 and sort of chubby. Yep, Mr. Tollofson made darned good shine, everyone around knew that. I took a sip, man was that good stuff. I handed it back. "So. Do you have a girl friend, Dan?" Ted asked me. That sounded odd to me. "No, not really. No way to date since we live way out here. I just got a car but it broke down." I told him. "That your Chevy we saw back there?" He asked. "Yeah." We rode along in silence, Ted was driving maybe 15 miles per hour, I had no idea why. Then he pulled off at a wide turnout next to the river and stopped. We could see one of the river marker lights flashing from there. He left the engine running, reached down and turned the heater up higher. He handed me the bottle again, I took another sip. Sharon just sat there looking straight ahead, her hands in her lap. "Why don't you turn on the map light, honey?" He asked her. "Ted...." She said. "It's OK. This is perfect." He told her. With a sigh, she leaned forward and turned on a switch. The light was down low on the dash, it lit up her legs. I could see her skirt reached to just above her knees. "What are we doing?" I asked, handing the bottle back. "Just relaxing. Sharon and were driving around looking for some fun." He grinned at me. "You like to have fun, don't you?" He added. "Yeah, I guess. Sure I do." I was thinking he meant the drinking. Then he reached down and tugged the hem of Sharon's skirt up. That I didn't expect, she had no panties on and I could see her pubic hair plain as day! "Ever see one of these before?" He asked, then he chuckled. "No." I said, and that was the truth. I had no idea at all of what was going on, things like this just did not happen. "You can look all you like, Sharon doesn't mind, do you honey?" Ted reached over and slid his hand underneath her sweater. I sat there and stared, I had no idea at all of what to say or do. I couldn't really see Sharon's pussy, all I could see was pubic hair. "Go ahead and feel her other tit if you want to, she has nice ones." Ted's voice was now catching in his throat. With that, he pulled up one side of her sweater. Then he put his hand underneath her tit and bounced it, the sweater slipped back down, so he reached over with the other hand and held it up. I looked at Sharon's face, her lips were pursed and she was still looking straight ahead. I could see her nipple, it changed as I looked at it, got smaller and stuck out. I couldn't help it, I reached over with my right hand and felt her right tit. Her nipple felt hard as a rock. I tugged the other side up too so I could see them. They really were nice, I had never seen any real ones before except in National Geographic. Some of the kids at school got a few copies of those, they showed native women in Africa bare breasted. Most of them sagged way down. "You can touch her pussy if you want to." Ted encouraged, still with that husky tone in his voice. So I did, I reached down and pressed my fingers in there. Sharon relaxed when I did that and opened her legs some. She let out a tiny moan but that was the only reaction. So there we sat, me rubbing her damp feeling pussy lips, Ted was feeling her tits. This was amazing, I never would have ever dreamed anything like this could happen to me. "Go ahead, Honey. You know what to do." Ted whispered to her but I could hear him. Sharon reached over and felt my crotch, then she found the buttons and began to undo them. I wanted to stop her but I didn't, she got the buttons undone and felt around in there. Then she reached up and undid my belt, my pants fell open. She tugged around for awhile with not a lot of success since I was sitting down. "Lift up." She said, looking up at me. Then she grinned. I lifted up, she quickly had my pants down to my knees. By then I was as hard as I ever got, sticking straight up with the dash light shineing right on it. Using one hand, she skinned my foreskin back. Sharon turned and got onto her knees, bent over me. Her tiny mouth slid over the head of my cock, I nearly jumped out of my skin when her mouth clamped down. Her behind was pointed towards Ted who was busy doing something back there that I couldn't see. I lasted about 15 seconds, then I blasted off in the most incredible sensation I had ever felt. She lifted off me, her hands still going up and down on me. "He is pretty big, honey." She said over her shoulder. Then she let go of me, turned and sat back down. I was still hard, sitting there with my pants down and my cock sticking straight up. Sharon looked over at me and giggled. "Do you want to?" Ted asked her. "Do YOU want me to?" She answered. He handed me the bottle again, I took a sip. The stuff was good, already my head was beginning to spin. "So, Dan? Have you ever had any pussy before?" He asked me. "No." I admitted. "Virgin, huh? That's cool. Would you like to fuck her?" Before I could answer, Sharon squirmed around and with a struggle, managed to get into the back seat. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to follow her back there or not, I looked over at Ted. "Use the door, I don't think you can get back there over the seat." He laughed. I opened the door, my pants were down so I had to tug them up. I got the back door open and climbed in. Sharon was leaning back, looking at me. I swear there was amusement on her face, I must have looked ridiculous. I got the door closed, hesitated. She slid around and lay down, pulling up her skirt. I reached out and pushed her sweater up again, she stopped me and just pulled it over her head. I slid up on top of her, she turned her head and looked at Ted. From somewhere he produced a small flashlight, he shined it right on us. I looked down, there it was. Her pussy, all swollen up and clear as a bell in the intense light. "Go ahead, put it in!" Ted sounded eager now. I let myself sink inside of her, she let out a moan. I stopped, thinking I hurt her, but she grabbed my bare behind and tugged. That first sensation of having my erection completely enveloped was something I have never experienced. It felt nothing at all like my hand. Everything I was doing was by instinct, Sharon was my first. Her hips began to lift against me. I could see her face, it was contorted in what appeared to be agony. "Oh, God, he is big! It's so hard! He is fucking me, honey!" She was saying over and over. Then she let out a series of squeals and her body shook, she went stiff for several long seconds. "God...damn!" She gasped. I was pretty proud of myself, I knew she had an orgasm. Then Ted was muttering in the front seat, I knew he was jacking off up there. I felt myself start to go limp, but when I withdrew, I began to stiffen right back up. I wanted to put it right back in but I didn't. We sat up, pulled our clothes back on. "Was that OK, Honey? Did you like that?" She asked Ted. "Yes, beautiful. Was he good for you?" "Yes, Honey. That felt really nice." Sharon turned her head like she was looking out the window, but it was pitch black outside. +++ Later, the three of us sat in the front seat, fully dressed. Ted was asking about the fishing in the bay, I was explaining to him where to go since I knew every best spot on the entire river. We sat there and sipped the moonshine. Finally, Ted put the car into gear and drove me to our place, at a normal speed this time. "Hey, Dan? We drive around sometimes, if we happened to come by and see your car parked down there, want to see us again?" He asked. "Sure. I would love it." I said. Ted put the car in gear and they drove away. I stood and watched as the tail lights vanished around the next corner. Inside, my Mom asked me why I was so late. "Car broke down, I think it's the clutch." I said. +++ Putting a clutch in one of those old Chevies is really easy. I got a rebuilt clutch disc and had new springs put into the pressure plate. Four bolts and the drive shaft was out, I pulled the three speed transmission back, then the bell housing. The whole thing didn't take me an hour and it worked perfectly. Every afternoon I stopped and waited for around an hour. The days were getting longer so it was daylight on the way home. I even drove back down there and parked after eating my dinner, waiting sometimes until way after dark. Once in town I saw the Pontiac, at least I think it was it. Like I said, there were not very many of those around. I drove around the block a dozen times, then I got caught behind a train. The Pontiac was gone when I came by the next time. I never saw them, although I sure did look. Later I met a girl, we became close and I forgot all about that night, my first time. Sex with her was wonderful, still the memory of that crazy night would pop into my head when we made love. Then along came the war, some silly place called Viet Nam I never heard of before. I got drafted, of course I did. I went down to report like I was ordered to do. The woman behind the desk looked up at me. It was Sharon, I was sure of it. There was not a single bit of recognition in her expression. "Your name is Sharon, isn't it?" I asked her. "Yes, it is. Do I know you?" She asked. "I think we met briefly a few years ago." I said. "Oh. I don't remember, sorry. Dan, it says here? Go ahead and take a seat, I will finish here and come and get you." She smiled up at me. I went over and sat down. Glancing up, I saw she was looking directly at me. She winked at me, then grinned, and went back to her paperwork. Strange People Ch. 02 I was sitting at our kitchen table looking at the papers I got from Selective Service when I heard the phone ring. My Mom came in and said there was a woman on the phone. "Jeanie?" I asked, thinking it was probably my current girl friend. She was a year younger than me, and we had developed our relationship into quite a bit of intimacy. Intimacy in those days was mostly limited to kissing, and perhaps a date might actually allow a feel or two through her clothing. So it wasn't very easy to find a place to be intimate, Mom would have thrown a fit if she knew some of what we had really been doing. My old Chevy had no back seat since it was one of those business coupes, that didn't help. You older folks probably remember just how much a huge steering wheel gets in the way. Plus I lived in Oregon, on the coast. It is either raining or considering it, so doing anything outside was a rare event. Jeanie and I managed though, I spent a lot of time investigating what made her squirm around and gasp, and what didn't. If I got on the passenger side and down on the floorboards, I could get my head down there, and man did that stuff set her off! We were way past the innocent stuff by then. "No, I don't recognize the voice." Mom said, and went back to ironing my Dad's work shirts. I went into the living room and picked up the phone. "Hi, Danny." The woman said. "Uhh..hello. Who is this?" I had no idea at all. "This is Sharon. We gave you a ride on the bay road almost a year ago." Instantly that incident popped into my mind. I was something I nearly did not believe. I got picked up hitch hiking, ended up in the back seat of a huge Pontiac station wagon. My very first time having actual sex with a female. And her husband, at least I guessed he was, watched from the front seat, using a flash light. Now is that insane, or what? I was barely 18 years old, fresh out of high school and I had never even seen a woman's genitals back then, let alone have real full blown sex. Good girls just did not do that, it was the way things were in the late 50's and early 60's. Birth control and free love, flower children and all of that was not far away, the wild times came along later. Sex with someone's wife could get a person killed, and there probably would not even be any charges. "Oh! Yes, I remember." I instantly lowered my voice so my Mom couldn't hear. I was nearly instantly hard, my mind flashing back to her body, the way it looked and felt. She let me see and touch everything, no reservations at all. Of course I understood that the two of them were kinky, strange, but I really didn't care. I had spent weeks parked out there in the evenings, waiting, hoping for a rerun. "Ted and I were thinking, if you happened to be out on the bay road at say, 10 tonight? We will probably be there too." Then she giggled. "I...Yes! Sure, I would love to." I told her. "Who was that, honey?" My Mom asked when I went back into the kitchen. She was still ironing the shirts. Our big farmhouse had a huge kitchen, that room doubled as an everything room like so many did back then. "Just the lady from the draft board, some paperwork thing." I managed to lie to her. Mom looked at me, she never missed anything at all. But she didn't say anything. +++ "Where are you going, honey?" Mom asked me as I headed out the door a little after 9 PM. "Just for a drive." I told her. "Upset about being drafted?" Mom asked. "Yea, a little bit." Mom just nodded, she came over and gave me a hug. "Me too, honey. Me too." I saw the tear in the corner of her eye, I felt kind of guilty about that. +++ There was no one there at the wide spot when I pulled over and parked. The moon was almost full, shining on the river. I could see the big rock sticking out that made the river go out around it, Salmon in the Fall hung up there behind it and if I drifted a red Hotshot into the hole just right, about half the time I could pick up a nice Silver, once in a long time a big Chinook. I had a lot of things on my mind, sort of day dreaming when I saw the headlights coming. The big Pontiac pulled up alongside, I saw Sharon on the passenger side roll down the window. Ted was driving, he gave me a wave. "Want to follow us to the house?" She asked me with a smile. "OK." I said. That would be way better, things inside of a car, even one as big as theirs were kind of cramped. We drove all the way to the coastal town, turned South across the bay bridge and went another 5 miles. They turned off and we went nearly a mile down a long single lane gravel driveway. The house was a two story, it was nice, although it looked like something one might see up on a hill in California than here on the Oregon coast. Once inside, Sharon excused herself, saying she wanted to get into something more comfortable. I guess I was understandably nervous, and now feeling a little bit shy. The one experience before was in the dark, on the spur of the moment. This was completely different. Ted got out some glasses, poured me half a glass of what I knew was Mr. Tollofson's moonshine. I knew that was what it was, it came in a glass Mayonnaise jar. I had one just like it hidden under the front seat of my car, although it was nearly empty. A few sips of that stuff and I had my girl friend Jeanie rubbing her bare titties on my face in short order. She loved for me to suck on her nipples, the harder the better. Just then Sharon came back out, she had on a big white fuzzy robe. She came over and sat right next to me, Ted was in a reclining chair, his feet tipped up. "I suppose you want to know why we called, don't you Danny?" "Well, I guess I am curious." "Ted likes to watch me, he likes to see me enjoy...things. I like to make him happy." She smiled at me. I glanced over at her husband, at least I thought he was her husband. He just smiled and shrugged. Sharon stood up, slid the robe off and let it drop to the floor. I half expected her to be naked but she had on a pair of soft pink panties and a matching bra. What was amazing is that her skin was an even copper color, everywhere that I could see. "Undress me." She whispered. I did as she stood there right in front of me, that really did not take very long. Then she tugged me to my feet and began to undress me as I looked down at her. When her mouth engulfed me, once again that sensation was overwhelming. I stood there and she vigorously worked my solid erection, I had to reach back and grasp the arm of the couch to keep my legs from buckling. "God, look at how hard he is, honey!" She held my cock out sideways so Ted could see it. That flustered me a little bit but by then I was into the heat of the moment, I would have let anybody see. Ted by now had his own pants undone, he was playing with what appeared to be a somewhat less than full erection, he was flipping it back and forth. Sharon stood up, with a smile she pushed me back onto the couch, climbed up on top of me. "He wants to watch, he wants to see everything." She whispered into my ear. Then she mounted me. I will say my staying power was much better than that time before in the car, and Sharon felt much wetter, far more slippery than I remembered from that one time. I lost count of how many times I invaded her, but it was at least four. Young, virile, and in a crazy excited state, it was amazing. It was after 2 in the morning when I slipped back into my house and went to bed. I hid the phone number they gave me, "any time" were her exact words. The next Morning my Mom mentioned that I was out very late. I told her I had a lot to think about, she gave me a funny look but said nothing. Three weeks later I was on a bus to Portland to the induction center. That afternoon I was on a bus home. I didn't pass the physical exam, they found out I had an STD. I had been beginning to wonder, there was an unfamiliar itch although everything appeared normal. Old Doc Barker shot my behind so full of Penicillin that I figured I would be sore for a week. I did manage to keep my Mom from finding out. I think. She never said anything about it. I just told her there were too many of us, and I was told to report again in 30 days. I did call Sharon and told her. She thanked me, apologized. That was all there was to that. To be honest, I am sure they didn't know, but with the lifestyle they were living? Lucky it was one of the simpler problems, one round of medication solved that. Also lucky for me we had no oral sex, I had no idea of what that even was at that stage of my life. I was home for about a week, when I picked up the local paper. A guy I went to school with had been killed over there. We sat together down at the local dance hall and talked many times, we were friends. Now he was dead. Where I was probably headed. That was the 2nd one of our locals that had been lost. I went into town, walked in the Navy recruiting offices. The guy grinned and signed me up for four years. Sure, the Army was only two years, but I figured being in the Navy I was far less likely to end up with my own name in the local paper. There was a scary moment, when I walked into the Selective Service office. "You are already in the Army! You can't join the Navy!" An older on the rotund side man yelled at me, he had his hands on his hips. Sharon looked up and smiled. "He has volunteered to serve our Country for four years, drafted it's only two? That sounds fine to me." The man looked at her, she looked back at him. I saw what passed between them and I knew. The man shrugged and went back to shuffling papers, Sharon redid my paperwork and handed them to me. I have no idea how that worked out, it just did. +++ Four years later, I was on my way home. The one thing I did learn to do was cook enough Eggs to feed 5000 men and do that in sixty minutes. Yea, sometimes there were a bit of egg shells mixed in there. One day I was headed out to look for work, I walked into a repair shop in town. There sat Sharon, behind the desk. Older looking, her hair sprinkled with gray. There were some lines I hadn't noticed before. I probably looked different myself, my hair still close cropped, my body carrying a good 40 pounds that had not been there when I was 18. "Hello, Sharon." I said. She looked up at me. "Do I know you?" She asked. "We met a few years ago." I said. "Oh." There was no change of expression, no reaction at all. "How is Ted?" I asked her. "Fine I guess. We aren't together any more." A puzzled look crossed her face, I saw her study me, then her eyes dropped back to what she was doing. I turned and walked out. My mind was full of memories, so much so I didn't see the young woman come out of another door until we both went down in a tangle. "Why don't you watch where you are going?" She snarled at me. At first glance I though she was a dwarf or something, then she stood up. "I'm sorry, Miss. Are you all right?" I began helping her gather up her books. "Yes, I will be all right." She stood up again. The top of her head came almost to the middle of my chest. One glance told me she could float on her back with no effort at all, this young lady was... stacked! "You are the prettiest thing I have ever seen in my life!" I blurted out. She blinked. Then she frowned at me. Then she smiled. "Flattery will get you everything." She said. her head tipped back to look up at me. "I sure hope so. How about you let me buy you some Coffee?" I suddenly felt full of courage. "Make it Orange Juice and I will." "Orange juice it is, then. I reached out and took her parcels. We got a table, gave our orders, then I asked her her name. "Sharon." She told me. I sat there for a moment with a grin on my face. "I'm Dan." I held out my hand, she took it. Neither one of us let go. We were married 4 short weeks later. +++ We still would be except for one thing. She did like her men, I found that out over time. The military by then had a shortage of targets to send off to their war, I got called up again. They had been asking right along, now they just told me. Navy again, not cooking this time, no way could I stand for doing that any more. Instead, it was a boat, running up and down rivers in the dark. We all knew very well what the winks of light we saw on the banks from time to time were. We cut loose ourselves at those, never knowing if we ever hit anything. Finally one found me. It bounced off a chunk of steel designed to protect us, went in just above my pelvic bone. A tiny piece of the steel came with it and went in a few inches higher. One does not go off and leave a sexually active female home all alone and expect her to be sitting there waiting, virtuous, when they get back. It was two years later when I came home again for good, those two holes in me. What I came home to was not what I thought I had waiting for me, the man that came home was also not the man who had gone off to war. We each went our own way after a few months of fighting over the things I discovered that had happened. I remember reading about the first woman named Sharon I had met so long before in the local paper. The photo looked like she did back then. She was only 46 years old. Something to think about. I bought some flowers, went up to the cemetery on the hill, placed the offering there. I was the only person there that day, it was raining. I thought about it, perhaps the accident of meeting her that one night combined with everything else to change my own life. I could very well have ended up in the mud over there, a target. Perhaps another name, another soul, long forgotten? Who knows? It happened. Now I sit here, some 45 years later, typing. I can still see her in my mind's eye, slipping that robe off in front of me, her husband sitting there, leaned back, watching. Two very strange people. Was it her, or was it him? Or was it both, with illicit desires? I was a part of that, and that moment created a foundation, a change in direction for my own life. A disease sent me home that first time, who knows where but for that I would have ended up? You step off a curb, or hesitate? Answer a phone call, or ignore it? Reach for a bottle of water, catch a ricochet? Meet a couple by chance? But then every moment in life does that, I suppose. Yes, there are some strange people in our world.