The next chapter of KIDSTUFF I’m calling CREATIVE JUICES for reasons that will be obvious when you read it. The above equestrian picture of me in the late summer of 1956 is a great rarity. At my sister’s urging, I agreed to mount her horse for a picture—and dismounted a moment later. I’ve never been a fan of sitting on large animals.

My eighth grade year was very busy, exploding with adolescent energy, ambitions, questions, and urges. However, our innocent, now teenaged Ricky got caught philosophically between a rock and a hard place.

On the one hand, the modern world of popular music and TV told me to go out and find myself a girlfriend to get mushily romantic, but meanwhile the Catholic Church insisted that romance should involve absolutely no thought of sex. Besides, living out there in the woods, how was I going to go out and find myself one in the first place—and what would I do with her if I did?

I got around this logistical problem with a novel strategy: concocting a historical story imagining a romance between myself as hero and a TV celebrity acting as the girl. Of course, my fictional romancing led to zilch because I still figured sex was taboo. At least sex with other people…

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