An even earlier memory I have of being enamored with someone as a little girl was in nursery school.   

Every day, I played in the yard and sat with my friends listening to tales about a calico cat and other assorted post-toddler adventures.  I recall checking to see here and there where Spots and Stripes was sitting at story time.   Thanks to the class picture that hung in our home for years,  I will always remember him wearing powder blue corduroys and a striped mock turtle neck shirt.  The appeal here lay in our shared interests.   We both giggled while riding the rocking boat and would both dump sand out of the sensory table just so we could use the carpet sweeper to clean it up.  When the Gingerbread Man seemingly leaped out of the school oven sending the teachers and children of the Blue Room (or maybe we were from the Red Room, see my memory isn’t THAT impressive!) on a wild goose chase, Spots and Stripes was as awestruck as me.

The enchantment ended abruptly though when I saw him walking in the parking lot to school one cold October morning, dressed in a full body pink bunny costume,  floppy ears, red painted nose and black makeup whiskers included.  This made me… uncomfortable.  His parents’ taste in Halloween attire and his willingness to wear it was understandable, we were just three or four years old.  That wasn’t my real issue.    He scared the bejeezus out of me, as did everyone else at school that day.  I thought he had actually turned into a rabbit!

From that day,  Spots and Stripes was no longer my type.  In my preschool aged heart,  little did I know I was beginning to determine what my type was going to be. Though not aware of starting a list of criteria, I knew that it at least had to include remaining human year round.  He was kind,  he was slightly shy, he enjoyed life experiences and laughter with me, and he, like Spots and Specs after him,  had dots.   

Still connecting …

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