Learning About Women at a Young Age, or
I Wish Dad Hadn’t Died When I Was Thirteen
By John Ross

Copyright 2008 by John Ross. Electronic reproduction of this article freely permitted provided it is reproduced in its entirety with attribution given.

One of the Internet discussion boards I visit is an exceptionally civil and well-run shooting-oriented board. There's a "Lounge" section where people bring up all manner of topics. Recently, a member asked "Who was 'untouchable' when you were in school?" Oh, man. Talk about memories...

[Author's note: What follows is accurate to the best of my recollection. The following happened almost 40 years ago. It's problematic to reconstruct exactly what was said back then, and my memory of it is undoubtedly colored by the passage of time and all the things that have happened in my life as I grew older. The actual dialogue probably wasn’t this sharp, but this is how I remember it.]

I was in 7th grade at a new school, John Burroughs High School, in the fall of 1969, and there was a girl in the 8th grade that was achingly beautiful. Her name was Jennifer Kristal. She had stunning natural long blond hair, an absolutely radiant smile, and a figure like one of today's fitness models. All the upperclassmen hung around her, or at least it seemed that way.

I didn't know it at the time, but 1969 was the last year my dad would see Christmas. Dad was a little more handsome than JFK Jr. would ultimately become (and he was an infinitely better pilot.) Women loved him. I talked to Dad about how this girl made me feel when I looked at her. He smiled knowingly.

"Son, she probably won't look that way for long. She might, but don’t count on it. Enjoy looking at her for now. But here's some advice: If you want to do more than just look at her, then don't ever talk about her good looks or tell her she's beautiful."

"Why not?"

"Because everyone else is always doing that, and it gets old. Girls want a challenge, just like boys do. They don’t want the same old compliments, they want a challenge."

"I don't understand."

"When you play shortstop, do you want the boys on the other team to all strike out every time? No, that would be boring. You want them to hit the ball to you, so you can throw them out at first base. Maybe you'll bobble the ball, and the batter will get on base, but you want the chance to make a good play, right? If you tell a pretty girl she's pretty, you're not hitting the ball to her. You're not giving her any challenge at all. You aren't in the game. Get in the game. Hit the ball to her. Give her a challenge."

"How do I do that?" Dad grinned at me when he heard this.

"Tease her about something. Say something about her that makes her jaw drop, and then act a little surprised at her reaction. But always be calm. Don't ever be mean, but give her brain a little tweak, see how she reacts, and then do it again. You're good at thinking on your feet. When a fellow sees a girl he likes, he plays with her, only not with a bat and a baseball glove, but with words and body language and facial expressions. Do that with this Jenny girl. And never back down, no matter what happens. Never break eye contact with her while the two of you are talking—let her be the one to look away. Think about it." He saw my face register some comprehension, and he added another thought. "Don't worry so much about her. Make sure you have fun. Figure out a way to tease her. And have fun."

Understand that at twelve years old I was maybe 5 feet tall, my voice hadn't changed yet, and I didn't shave. This 14-year-old girl was half a foot taller than I, had a fully developed woman's body, and dressed in prettier clothes than anyone in the school (1969 saw a lot of shapeless hippie-type attire at my school.) In spite of this, I thought about what Dad said for a long time. The baseball parallel made more and more sense. This was a new sport, and one that I wanted to get good at. I was determined to learn my new sport by practicing with the Varsity.

The major problem was putting me in the same place at the same time with this girl. I realized that the only practical opportunity to have this happen was at lunch. The 7th and 8th grades ate at the same time and the table assignments intermingled the students from the two grades.

I did some research and found out that the table assignments, which changed every two weeks, were made by a very pretty dark-haired woman in her twenties named Penny Stein. I think she was the school's assistant librarian. I went to Miss Stein and told her that on the next lunchroom change, I wanted to be put at the same table as Jennifer Kristal.

"Why?" she asked, but she was smiling, and I think she knew, but wanted to see what I'd say.

"Because she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and the lunchroom is the only place I'll ever get a chance to see if she's a good person, too."

"Isn't she a little, ah...mature for you?"

"You mean she’s out of my league."

"No, I-"

"I'm sure she is, Miss Stein. I've never had a girlfriend, and probably won't for several years. But I won't be this short and have this high voice forever, and I'd like to... practice, you know?" Miss Stein looked at me for a long time with a curious expression on her face, and the hint of a smile.

"Practice..." she said finally, with narrowed eyes. I shrugged.

"If I'm going to get laughed at and dismissed by a girl, it might as well be by the best looking one at the school."

Miss Stein laughed. She seemed to like my attitude. "I shouldn't do this..."

"You think I want anyone to know I set this up?" She gave me a look.

"I'll put you two at Mr. Prelutsky's table. That's back in the alcove of the dining room, where it's not quite as noisy. And I hear he's pretty easygoing about things." I grinned. We were co-conspirators. Albert Prelutsky was my science teacher, and he liked me. He was an absent-minded professor type, of Polish extraction.

"And let me give you a little advice. Don't tell Jennifer she's beautiful, or even compliment her. At least not for now."

"That's what my dad said. He said to tease her. Give her a challenge. Tweak her brain a little bit." Miss Stein's eyes got wide.

"Is your father Walter Ross?" It was obvious Dad had made quite the impression on Miss Stein, who was half his age. "Your dad knows exactly what he's talking about. Listen to him. And good luck. Tell me what happens." Then she reconsidered. "Forget I said that." I thanked her and left. She was shaking her head as I walked out.

The following Monday I checked the posted table assignments and Miss Stein had been true to her word. I had a rough script in my head, one that I thought had some good potential and I judged had only about a 50% chance of absolute disaster. That seemed like a pretty good risk/reward ratio, given the girl I was thinking about...

I looked at the list of other kids at our table and saw that Miss Stein had done me a favor I hadn't thought to ask for: There weren't any of the cool guys from Jennifer's class seated with us. Not one.

The big sticking point about my plan was that the coming dialogue required that Jennifer introduce herself first. Fortunately, she was a friendly person (from what I had seen), not stuck up, and I hoped she'd speak first if I ignored her. At lunch period Jennifer took a seat at one of the two spots at the end of the rectangular table, farthest from Mr. Prelutsky, who served the food. I took the other end seat next to her, while seeming to be distracted by something else.

"Hi, I'm Jennifer." Bingo. As Jackie Gleason used to say on his show, "And awaaay we go!"

"I'm John Ross, but you know that," I said, looking her straight in the eye. "Look, Jennifer, before you say anything, I am NOT going to tutor you in math. Sorry." Her jaw dropped, and I thought Damn, this might actually work...

"WHAT!?"

"Every girl that introduces herself to me like you just did is about to flunk math, and wants me to help her. I don't have that kind of time. So let's get that out of the way right now."

"What are you talking about?"

I shrugged. "Girls aren't good at math. They spend all their time doing things like bleaching their hair instead of learning how to think logically, which you have to do for math." I was ready for her to unload on me about my logic comment, but that didn't happen.

"I don't bleach my hair!" (Hunh? Why was she talking about her hair?) I tried again:

"I didn't say you did, I just said girls do stuff like that instead of learning to think logically." (This was sure to get the game going...)

"DO YOU THINK MY HAIR LOOKS BLEACHED?" she demanded. (What the hell? Why isn’t she taking me to task about girls' lack of logic? No matter, I can work with this...)

"Since we just met, I haven't bothered to think about it, one way or the other." I made a point of inspecting her hair. "I guess it's natural..." I said dubiously.

"Of COURSE it's natural!" (What is it about the hair? Doesn't matter, now we're where I wanted to get to in the first place. Time to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima...)

"You're really cute when you're upset. I don't have a little sister, but if I did, I imagine she'd be just like you." (Imagine a smooth-cheeked kid saying this to the best looking girl in the school, who was almost two years older and a head taller.)

"Little sister? I'm older than you are! You're in the seventh grade!" (Now for Nagasaki...)

"Well, yeah, but I'm more mature than you are. I don't waste all my time trying on outfits and putting on makeup and finding a bra that makes my chest look bigger and talking for hours on end about nothing." Jennifer's mouth hung open. By now we had attracted an audience. I leaned over so my mouth was by her ear. "So how bad are your math grades, anyway?" I whispered conspiratorially. I was afraid I might have gone too far with the chest comment, but apparently not.

"I got a 'Fair' on my last test," she hissed through clenched teeth. I shrugged again.

"Could be worse." I didn't say anything after that. My heart was pounding like a trip-hammer in my chest and somehow I knew that saying anything more before she responded would be a mistake. Finally she spoke.

"Are you really good at math?"

"Yes."

"But I'm a year ahead of you."

"Yeah, but you're in the regular math class, not the advanced one." (I had no idea if this was true, but she was a pretty girl, so that's the way the smart money would bet...)

"How did you know that?"

"The eighth grade advanced class is all guys except for a couple of fat girls." (This was an utter fabrication, and almost certainly not true, but I was prepared to defend it with some throwaway line like "That's what it looked like to me" or somesuch.)

"You shouldn't say that!" she whispered, putting her head right next to mine, with her mouth almost touching my ear. I could feel her breath on my skin. That was too much for me, and I started laughing. Hard. I guess it was infectious, because the next thing I knew, she was laughing as hard as I was. This teasing pretty girls stuff was really fun. Dad was on to something...

I'd like to end the story by telling you that Jennifer fell for me and became my steady girlfriend, but that would be ridiculous. There were undoubtedly plenty of cool guys (with cars) that pushed her buttons at least as well as a kid that didn't even shave yet. What really happened was we sat together just about every day at lunch, and I continued to tease her gently about stuff, and sometimes she'd hit me on the arm. That's when I knew I was doing things right. I told Dad about it all and he laughed like a loon.

After the two weeks were up, Miss Stein apparently "forgot" to change the table assignments, so I got to sit next to Jennifer for an extra week. I guess Miss Stein had been checking up on us...

The week after that, Jennifer would smile and nod when she saw me in the hall, and she winked at me once, which made me feel really good. Miss Stein put us at the same table about every other rotation, and that was fun. (I'm sure it was Miss Stein's doing because after I started studying statistics, I calculated that the odds of our being paired so often by random chance were something like one in 256,000.) Outside of the lunchroom, Jennifer and I didn't fraternize. She had all those upperclassmen around, after all...

When the next school year started, she was in 9th grade, and they ate with the sophomores, so I couldn't see her at lunch. I noticed her around campus a few times, and she had taken to wearing loose, comparatively drab clothing instead of the cute miniskirts and tight tops of the previous year that had showed off her great figure. She'd cut her hair some, too, and it wasn't as stunning as it had been. She was still gorgeous, though.

But when school started that year, Dad had had pancreatic cancer since the previous spring, and I hadn't done much thinking about girls after he got sick. He died October 5, 1970, and I felt like a big part of me died with him. I missed him every day. Whatever "game" I'd started to develop with his guidance pretty much vanished, not to return for a long time.

Jennifer Kristal's family moved out of St. Louis during the summer of 1971, after my eighth grade year, so after that school year I never saw her again. She had once told me she loved Tarzana, around L.A., so I thought maybe they went to California, but I never bothered to ask around about her. She was gone from my life, just like Dad was. I have no idea where she is now or what she's doing. I suspect she doesn't even remember being teased by a cocky seventh grader who was testing his chops almost forty years ago.

Jennifer Kristal, if by some miracle you're reading this, in late 1969 and early 1970 there was a 12-year-old boy who really looked forward to lunch break...


John Ross 11/29/2008

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