© 2002, Rev. Cotton Mather

They met on the first day of school, and it was dislike at first sight. On that first morning, the early-grades teacher, Mrs. Wells, called the class of 15 kids to pay attention, and she spent the next several minutes learning each child's name. The class spent the next hour or so repeating names, matching names with faces in the combined class, the second-grade kids helping the kindergarteners with the memorization.

Later that day, after lunch and after recess, the kids were scattered around the room. Some were playing with clay, others were drawing with pencils, and Mrs. Wells had the older kids at the blackboard, working on addition and subtraction. Harold, or Harry as he was known then, was just walking toward the closet where there was a big box of wooden blocks, intending to build a bridge or a town or something. Just as he reached the door of the closet, he saw a girl - he thought her name might be Mary Lou - hanging from the edge of the big cardboard box that held the blocks, either trying to pull the box over, or else climb into the box to get the blocks. Suddenly, the side gave way. There was a loud crash, followed immediately by a cry of anguish from underneath the torn side of the cardboard box and a big pile of wooden blocks.

"Oh, no! Owwwww!"

Don't start crying, thought Harry. It was your own darn fault.

Mary Lou started crying.

What a stupid girl, thought Harry.

"What a stupid BOX!" wailed Mary Lou between howls of pain and embarrassment.

Mrs. Wells came bustling over to lend aid and comfort to the slightly injured little girl. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the class came over to watch the entertainment, and to see who was stupid enough to pull an entire box of wooden blocks over onto themself.

To Mrs. Wells, Mary Lou was an unfortunate child, needing little more than a bandage and a soothing word.

To the rest of the children, Mary Lou seemed to instantly become the teacher's pet, and so was immediately considered an outcast.

To Harold, she was, additionally, without doubt, the stupidest girl he had ever known.

It was an inauspicious start to the school year for Mary Lou, who was reluctantly allowing Mrs. Wells to minister to her cuts and scrapes. At six years of age, she was the youngest child in a family of eight, so she was well aware that this accident put her in a difficult position in the classroom. She just fervently hoped that the rest of first grade went better than the first day did.

"Do you remember that time in first grade when you tried to climb into that box of blocks?" Harold wheezed as he laughed. He was gazing down, unseeing, at the jumbled stack of dog-eared playing cards that had tumbled to the table, triggering the memory of an incident from their childhood so long ago. "I think it was the first day of school, too." He started laughing, a breathy, gasping sound that quickly deteriorated into a series of raspy coughs as he sat on the sagging couch in the small room. His face turned a mottled red as he coughed, and he reached for a tumbler of water on the end table with one hand, and struggled to extricate a linen handkerchief from his back pocket with the other as his coughing eased down. He was wearing an old pair of trousers that may have been part of a suit at one time, held up by suspenders stretched to accommodated his large belly. He wore a stained sleeveless t-shirt that might have once been white, the cotton fibers struggling to stay together across his middle. He was almost completely bald, with just a fringe of steel gray hair horseshoeing around his head.

Mary Lou just looked at him, her eyes following everything he did. Her frail, worn body was slumped in her wheelchair, leaning to one side like a worn piling of an old seaside dock. She had some use of her arms and hands, but she needed help with even the seemingly small tasks, like eating or adjusting the tattered blanket that covered her weak and horribly thin legs. Her white hair was thin enough to see her scalp as she leaned against the support post of the back of her chair. Her brain was muddled and confused, but only part of the blame could be from the drugs and painkillers her doctor had her on. She was, after all, 85 years old, and slowly, too slowly, dying.

Old age is not for the faint of heart, she thought for about the hundredth time.

She remembered the blocks falling on her. She remembered Mrs. Wells as if she had seen her just yesterday. Why couldn't she remember what she had for breakfast that morning? Or had she not eaten breakfast that morning? She brushed a strand of hair off her forehead with a hand veined and twisted from rheumatoid arthritis, the knuckles large and bony, the fingers bent and misshapen into nearly useless appendages.

Her eyes fluttered as the drugs took another circuit around her body, sending her brain into swirls of semi-consciousness.

She dozed.

She dreamed...

...they were on a cruise ship, unpacking in their stateroom. (This really happened, her subconscious self insisted. We were on this cruise.) Mary Lou looked over at Harold and laughed.

"What's so funny?" he grumbled.

She sat down on one of the small beds in the tiny cabin. There were two single beds, perpendicular to each other, taking up about 70 percent of the room available. The rest was cabinets, a tiny desk and chair, and floor. They had been bumping into each other almost constantly, getting in each other's way as they unpacked their suitcases.

"You are," she said with a smile. She admired her husband's backside as he took a pile of shirts out of his suitcase. "And you're cute, too," she added.

"Huh," he grunted. "Cute. Since when is a 47-year-old grandfather 'cute'?"

"Maybe I just like 47-year-old grandfathers," she said, still grinning.

He looked over at her in unconcealed surprise. "Really? I would have thought you were more of the younger gigolo type of granny," he teased.

"Come here," she said, a gleam in her eye as she patted the bed beside her. "I'll show you how much I like grandpa types."

Harold raised his eyebrows at her, then glanced at the cabin door to make sure it was securely locked. He sat down next to her and leaned back, propping himself on his arms. Mary Lou leaned into him, reaching up to play with his ear as she closed her eyes and softly kissed his lips.

She pressed against him a little harder, opening her mouth just enough to moisten their connection, and ended up pushing him down onto the tiny bed and draping herself across him. He put his arms around her, quite naturally reaching down to her butt and pulling her lower body harder against his swelling cock.

Keeping her lips against his mouth, she murmured, "Is that a present for me I feel?"

"Might be," he replied, still clutching at her bottom. Her dress was starting to hitch up her legs.

"When do I get it?" she asked, still connected to his lips.

"You can have it any time you want it," he said with a smile. "Just reach down and take it."

"Oh, like this?" she asked. She reached down.

Harold groaned. "Yeah, just like that," he mumbled.

She squeezed him a little harder.

"Or like that, too," he said.

"But not like this?" she asked teasingly as she pulled his zipper down and snaked her fingers into the opening. She had lifted up and was looking at his face by now, gauging his reaction to what she was doing to him. She wanted to be careful not to set him off too early. It was her vacation, too, after all, and she wanted to have her fun.

"Like that is good, too," he said with a struggle. It seemed like all the blood was rushing south, leaving his brain a little starved for oxygen. He was having some trouble putting two coherent thoughts together. Even his hands had stopped their clutching and grabbing as he concentrated on the sensations running up and down his nervous system.

When she saw the look in his eyes that told her she had taken him far enough for the moment, she stopped what she was doing and began unbuttoning her blouse. She pulled it out of her skirt and shrugged out of it, reached behind her and undid her bra, discarded that alongside her blouse. She leaned down, rubbing her swollen nipple along his cheek, tempting him. He turned his head and captured the swollen nub between his teeth, biting down softly before suckling at her breast.

It was Mary Lou's turn to moan. Her breasts had always been very sensitive, and she loved having them sucked on and played with. She gazed down at her husband of 25 years with love and desire as he worshipped at her body for perhaps the 3,000th time, and she closed her eyes and remembered the first time he had kissed her naked breasts...

...Mary Lou and her best friend, Loretta, had planned to go to the Saturday evening picture show. A brand-new movie with a brand-new star had just come out, and both girls were dying to see James Cagney in "The Public Enemy". Their parents had consented (after all, they were 14 years old, certainly old enough to go to a moving picture show by themselves, they argued), but what their parents didn't know is that Mary Lou and Loretta were meeting two boys at the theater. Harold and Albert were both in the same classes as Mary Lou and Loretta. The girls both thought Harold was the cuter of the two. Mary Lou had a huge crush on him, and, since she was her very best friend, Loretta was going to let Mary Lou sit next to Harold at the movie.

They were practically giddy by the time they got to the theater, and they had to wait in line to purchase their tickets. They each had a whole dollar with them, more than enough to see the show, get some popcorn, and maybe stop at the corner drug store for an ice-cream soda afterwards.

The movie was just fantastic, but what Mary Lou would always remember was how Harold, just after the newsreels but before the opening credits of the feature appeared, managed to wiggle the little finger of his left hand against her own right little finger, and they weaved into each other, one finger at a time, until they sat there, hands clasped together, paying as much attention to their own sweaty palms as they did to Cagney growling on the giant screen.

Afterwards, the four friends trooped down to the corner drug store, chattering and replaying scenes in the movie. Albert tried to talk like Cagney and failed miserably, creating howls of laughter at their table as they delved into strawberry sundaes and ice-cream sodas.

Before too long, it became a Saturday ritual for the four friends. It was the Depression, but they each had a little spending money, enough for a trip to the movie theater and an ice-cream afterwards. By the fourth date (Mary Lou certainly considered it a date; she wasn't sure if Harold thought of it as a date, though), the two couples would split up after leaving the soda fountain. Albert and Loretta usually walked down Main Street, window shopping on their way home. Mary Lou and Harold walked through the park, past the band shell, sometimes finding a park bench and sitting and talking for a few minutes before walking back to Mary Lou's house.

The second time they walked through the park, Harold was brave enough to hold Mary Lou's hand; the third time, as they sat on a park bench, she even let him kiss her, a quick and soft brushing of his lips on hers.

Each week after that, Mary Lou allowed slightly more liberties, until finally, toward the end of summer, she got tired of waiting for Harold to be brave enough to get really serious. As they walked hand in hand through the park toward the band shell, she deliberately steered their steps toward the deep shadows inside the shell. They sat on the wooden floor, leaning against the wall, and kissed each other passionately. Finally, nervously, Mary Lou took Harold's hand and guided it to her breast, pressing his palm firmly against her. He was quite startled when she did that, she noted with a certain amount of satisfaction, but he didn't jerk his hand away. In fact, he seemed a little frantic as he squeezed her boob.

She was wearing a dress that buttoned down the front to her waist, and she began to unbutton it. Harold was still involved in their kiss, as well as distracted by where his hand was, and didn't notice what she was doing until she grasped him by the wrist, pulling his hand away from her chest.

He must have thought he had done something wrong when she did that. He was all set to apologize for taking too many liberties with her, when he realized that her dress was unbuttoned, and she had placed his hand on the bare skin of her chest. He could feel the heat radiating off her body through his hand, and her chest rose and fell as she breathed deeply. She held her breath, and gently pushed his hand down, so that his fingers slipped beneath the cottony fabric of her slip and the cup of her brassiere, until he was holding her breast, her swollen nipple searing a spot on the palm of his hand.

"Oh, Mary Lou," he moaned, as he bent to kiss her throat and neck. In his passion, he shoved his hand further down her dress, and her straps slipped off her shoulder, exposing her to the night air as he rubbed and pinched her.

Mary Lou couldn't believe how good it felt to have Harold do this to her. She was very hot, nearly sweating, and there was definitely a lot of moisture all of a sudden in her underpants. Almost subconsciously, she pressed on Harold's head as she played with his hair, willing him to kiss her lower than her throat.

He took the hint, and worked his way down her body, covering her bare skin with kisses and nibbles. His lips followed the natural curve of her, taking in the way her tissues softened and spread as he nibbled his way to her cleavage and the small mound of her young breast. They found the bumpier skin of the areola and instinctively latched onto the swollen nub of her tender nipple.

He sucked on her, all the while holding the weight of her breast in the palm of his hand. She looked down on him in love, wondering at the feelings running through her. She knew she would never ever forget this moment...

...and she hasn't. Even when Harold managed to roll her over and insinuate his knee between her legs, her skirt riding up as his hands scambled to find the elastic of her panties, she could recall that first, tender touch of his lips on her flesh.

Later, after Harold finished and rolled off her, she lay there on the tangled bed, allowing herself to be lulled into a dreamlike state by the gentle rocking of the big ship as it headed out to open water...

...to awaken to the cruel reality of the present. The lazy roll of the cruise ship shifted to the lolling of her head as she opened her eyes, seeing her loving husband bent over her, struggling to lift her out of her chair and into their queen-sized bed. Even at under 90 pounds, she was a burden nearly overwhelming for Harold. She grimaced, knowing she no longer had the physical strength to assist him, miserable that she had come to this helpless state.

Finally, though, he was able to hoist her into bed. Her useless leg caught on the back of the chair, and it hit the side of the bed and rolled away as he pulled her up to set her on the pillow. He was breathing hard, and his face was red from the exertion. He started wheezing, and then the coughing began. He collapsed down onto the bed beside her as his spasms abated. He fished his handkerchief out of his pants pocket and wiped his eyes. He was breathing hard now, waiting for his heart rate to slow down. He could feel the small weight of his wife next to him, a feeble heat from the other side of the bed as he lay there, catching his breath. Unbidden, his mind cast back into the depths of memory to recapture another moment...

...Mary Lou was always a thin girl, he thought to himself as he lay in bed on that Sunday morning. He was propped up on one elbow, looking at his sleeping wife. His pregnant sleeping wife. Seven months along with their second child, and she had gained nearly 40 pounds. He had never seen her so...round. His gaze took in the way the covers mounded over her as she lay there. Her swollen belly, the curve of her hip, were hinted at by the way the blanket covered her. His eyes kept on returning, though, to her breasts. This second pregnancy really made them get big, he thought to himself. He reached over and gently touched one of her swollen boobs.