Shrinks say that war heightens a man’s desire to be near a girl: As near as “possible”.  They say it comes from a primitive desire to preserve the species, to live beyond one’s own life, and from a war induced sense of our mortality.  Maybe that is what caused me to ask Mary Sue Hutton to go with me to one of those Saturday afternoon matinees when we were both fifth graders at Washington Grade School. World War II was in full swing, however I can not say that I thought about any of those things the shrinks wrote about.  It was just that Mary Sue sat in front of me in school, causing me to become very conscious of her dark brown hair that hung down her back in ringulets, and she was . . . well, she was a girl.  The first one I had ever categorized as attractive or unattractive.  
I confided my feelings about Mary Sue to my mother, if “confiding” describes a communication that is immediately made public.  The sound of my voice must have still been fresh in her ears when I found myself being teased by my older brothers and sister.  “Are you going to ask Mary Sue for a date?” they asked, as though I were Don Juan plotting a libertine tryst.  “Are you going to kiss her?” they jibed.  “Don has a girl friend,” they jeered in that hellish sing-song chant taunters use.  
Mother, my Mata Hari, gamely tried to salvage my dignity and the damage they had done.  “Ignore them, Don.  They are just jealous.”  Her words were like chaff on the wind to me.   But like the cowboy who rode to his death in El Paso to see his beloved “Galena” one more time, my “love” for Mary Sue was strong.  I gathered my courage and asked her if she would go to the Saturday movie matinee with me.  Surprisingly, she accepted.  Mother, perhaps feeling penitential, subsidized me with money to pay the two ten-cent admissions and another few dimes to buy popcorn and drinks.  
Mary Sue and I walked together to the Gregg theater the next Saturday to see a movie now long forgotten.  Now that I had her all to myself I had no idea what to do with the opportunity.  In fact, her presence now seemed to be almost a burden.  We sat in the darkened Movie Theater, surrounded by a dozen or more kids we saw every day, munched on popcorn and drank slightly iced colas from paper cups.  After the movie I walked her home, said something like “Bye” at her front gate and walked the remaining half block to my house.
When Julius Caesar returned to Rome to report on his Gallic campaign he stirred the Romans with his memorable “Veni, Vidi, Vice“  (I came, I saw, I conquered.) I returned home from my first date with nothing to report.  I had came, I had seen, but I had no idea what I had done.  I filed dating away as a senseless pastime and for the several years made to further attempt to pursue what seemed to be a questionable pleasure