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First Boyfriend

Only the names have been changed to protect the very innocent…

Kathryn Betts Adams, MSW, PhD
8 min readApr 26, 2022
Photo by Bradley Pisney on Unsplash

The first time a boy actually reciprocated my romantic interest was during junior year of high school, 1973–74. Henry was a senior and different from many of the other guys in my large public high school, even in the era of clothes from India and thrift stores, worship of rock stars, youth protests and free love. Over the year and a half I’d been at the high school, I’d watched Henry come and go with his girlfriend, Heather. The two of them wore dark clothes, a bit goth-like well before that style — she tall and slender, with long black hair and granny glasses, wearing low-cut tops, lacy draped open vests or jackets, and skinny, low-slung pants with bell-bottoms flowing over her platform shoes.

Henry had dark brown hair and a mustache that didn’t look silly. At 17, it looked good on him. He tended to wear a buttoned vest in some antique-looking jacquard fabric, a wrinkled men’s dress shirt that might have been his father’s, a pocket watch with a long chain, and laced-up work boots. I thought he seemed fascinating and would have liked to get to know him better, except that this girl, Heather, was always, and I do not exaggerate, ALWAYS, on his arm, pressed up against him, or encircled around him during the 5-minute breaks between classes, at lunch, or before or after school.

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Kathryn Betts Adams, MSW, PhD
Kathryn Betts Adams, MSW, PhD

Written by Kathryn Betts Adams, MSW, PhD

Gerontologist. Baby Boomer. OnlyDaughter. Mom of two. Writing on aging, health, family relationships, mental health. Find me at https://KathrynBettsAdams.com

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