Willy and Jimmy: Or “On Puppy Love”

“Life’s like a maze, Jimmy, twistin’ and turnin’, just when you think your getting somewheres, boom, there’s a dead end. And just when you figure you got it figured out and you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, that big red neon “EXIT”, there’s gonna be some woman gonna put up another dead end with another turn up. Sometime it seems like they do it on purpose, and most of’en they do. It’d be best if you tried to remember that.” Willy finished his statement off with a good old-fashioned slap on the back. Willy was the greens keeper at the city golf course. He was older than jimmy; by how much Jimmy could only guess. Jimmy had asked him how old he was once. Willy just looked down at Jimmy and smiled “Well sonny, I’m old enough to be your gran-pappy, but then again, I aint as old as I look neither.” Jimmy never asked again.

Jimmy usually found Willy out at the utility shed behind the 18^th hole after he had finished his nearly daily round of golf. Mostly they talked about the weather and how Jimmy was doing in school (He had just finished up the eighth grade so lately the talks had taken on the subject of the life of a high school freshman). Today’s talk had taken on the girl that Jimmy had taken after. Pretty little thing in his history class. Her name was Anna. He’d done what he could to be around her when he could, although if you asked Jimmy, it was never enough.

“You see, Jimmy, what you got is a first class case of what I like to call ‘wet-nosed, pee on the floor, puppy-love’.” Jimmy took a little offense to this last comment, although he knew that Willy hadn’t really meant it to be offending. “It’s no puppy-love, Willy. It’s just straight love. The way she smells, talks, carries her books, everything about her. The sight of her makes me get that tingly feeling deep in my guts. No, it’s not puppy-love, it’s the real thing, I just know it.” Willy chuckled and ruffled Jimmy’s hair a little. Willy had come to think of Jimmy as a sort of surrogate grandson over the years. “Trust me”, Willy said as he took up the sprinkler head he’d been trying to fix, “when true love does happen to saunter on up to you and hit you topside the head, you’ll look back at this girl and every other one that will come and go after her and realize that what I’m sayin’ is true. Every girl your gonna have an itchin’ for will break you up jus’ like this one did right up ‘til you find your one right girl. Hell, haf’ the time that one’ll break you up too. Used to be said that girls was made up of sugar and spice and e’rything nice. Well, good ol’ Willy’s here to tell you that that ain’t true. Most the time all a girl’s got in her is boy-breakin’.” Deep down, Jimmy knew that what Willy was telling him was the gods honest truth, but like many a 15-year old he found himself dumbfoundingly in love and just couldn’t see the truth clearly. “Missing the forest for the tree” his father was fond of saying.

“Besides, a boy of your age needs to be t’inkin’ on his schooling anyways.” Willy adjusted a screw on the sprinkler head and set it aside. “Schooling should always be first Jimmy. Don’ go messin’ around with dem girls til you gets your schooling where it belongs.”

Looking back, Jimmy had to admit that Willy had been right. Anna had turned out to be a passing fancy and there were many more after her. Jimmy met his wife his junior year at Westchester University

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