STALKER JIM

When I wrote about Ron the cop, several of you referred to him as a "stalker". Had I not been dating him, that might have been true. However, since I was dating him, technically, he shed the stalker label and slipped into controlling mode. Both a tad scary huh? Well, I did once have a real stalker but this guy was totally not scary and actually at the time this occurred, the word "stalker" had not become part of our everyday vernacular. Nuisance was.

I met Jim while working at the bank. He was a nice enough looking fellow, about my age. He was still wearing his reddish blond hair in a flattop cut during the hippie years when even news anchors wore it long over the ears. His pale blue eyes were not distinctive and if he had a smile, it was quickly lost as he ducked his head when he approached my teller window. Guess you can tell by now, he was one shy fellow. Had he any amount of confidence, he might have morphed into fairly good looking.

Jim's father owned a large hardware store. That is one of those things that existed before Home Depot and Lowe's and has vanished except in small towns. They did quite well and since it had "and Son" in the title, meant Jim was next in line and got a share of the profits.

Jim came in every week to cash his check and once a month to pay the mortgage on his beach home and buy a CD. Yes he bought a CD every month. No youngsters, we did not sell music , that stood solely for Certificate of Deposit in those day.

Every day as my friends and I left the building to go out for lunch, there sat Jim in his yellow Corvette parked under the only tree in the parking lot. Every afternoon when I got off work, Jim was once more parked in the same spot. He always pretended to be reading something. The good thing is that I never saw him follow me home and he would have been easy to spot in that Easter egg colored, flashy car. Any self respecting stalker knows a white, nondescript car works best.

He always got in my line, even when other teller windows were vacant, so my co-workers called him my "Puppy Dog". I don't know why he picked me for there were much prettier girls on the teller line. I could barely scrounge up "cute." Perhaps he thought he might have a better chance with one of the "lesser" girls--- me.

After months of head hanging, Jim finally worked up enough nerve to raise his head enough for me to see his features and would brief exchange generic pleasantries. Then one day, he broke the stalker mode.

There was a big Rock Concert coming to town and I really wanted to go but I was between boyfriends and the tickets were beyond a teller's salary. This will be hard to believe but this was also pre-credit card days. You either had the cash or did without. The festival was a three day event that would host the likes of Janis Joplin, The Moody Blues and the Rolling Stones. I really, really wanted to go.

One day not long after Jim had progressed to pleasantries, he actually got out of his car when I left the building and approached me. With chin buried in his chest, he asked me if I wanted to go to the Rock Concert with him. Eagerly I accepted for I am a tad ashamed to admit, I would have gone with ANYONE and we actually set up a date.

Jim came to pick me up the afternoon of the concert, oddly he all ready knew where I lived with out asking. He was in his idea of Rock Concert attire of chino's, plaid shirt, leather jacket and shiny loafers. I was in my spanky new hip hugger bell bottoms and while it was a cold November day, I only wore a poncho over my tie dyed tee as a hippie wanta be. That poncho was a move I would greatly regret later. With him in his flattop and me in my sprayed stiff curls, we were both going to stand out by not fitting in.

The timing was not far removed from the Woodstock festival and this was my first experience with full blown hippies. Florida was way behind the West Coast. The crowd was huge, in the hundreds of thousands, and I was wild eyed and loving it. The music was awesome but the people were almost more fun.

Since one could get nowhere near the stage or even see the performers thanks to Florida's flat landscape, people watching and conversing with strangers between sets, was all that was available and great fun. I was just blown away by the kindness, generosity and gentle natures displayed by all I saw and came into contact with. Jim was like a germaphobe in a hospital. We did not do drugs but they were everywhere, free and one could get a bit high just breathing.

As the night progressed, so did the biting cold. In all the years that have followed, I can not remember ever being as cold as I was that night. Florida cold is a bone aching, penetratingly different animal than northern cold. I would have killed for a warm coat and not a poncho. My knee caps were jumping rhythmically in my jeans as I vibrated violently trying to stay warm. Jim tried but his bony arms and shared jacket helped not at all. The body warmth of the masses did not help. Fires were started and eventually, as the crowd started tearing apart the outhouses for wood to burn for heat, we left. The Stones were last on the venue that night and I just couldn't stay to hear them. Sorry Mick.

Jim was quiet on the way home but that was not unusual, he was always quiet. I was achingly cold and thinking about all I had seen and heard. I thanked him for the evening through still chattering teeth as he took me to my door. He made no effort to kiss me, said "bye" turned and left.

The yellow Corvette no longer claimed its spot under the parking lot tree daily. Jim no longer came to my window, in fact he no longer came into the bank. Evidently, me in person did not live up to his "fantasy" of me and I had bombed big time as the real thing. I was being dumped by a stalker. How bad is that? I guess he learned like we all eventually do that the "wanting" of something is usually far more exciting than the "getting."

I did not miss him for we really did not have a relationship but my pride was wounded a bit. I had been on "first dates only " before but the lack of a second had always been my choice. Twas a bit sobering.

Today with all the headlines, I might have never gone out with him at all. It is usually the nice quiet men that keep women trapped in cellars for months before they kill them. Those things may have occurred then, but we didn't know about them. In those days a shy man was just a shy man, not a serial killer.

Jim married that same year and as far as I know lived happily ever after. Of course I was curious how he got up enough nerve to ask someone to marry him. There might have been some nice quiet girl waiting in the wings prior to me and he just had to get his fantasy out of the way. Perhaps I served a good purpose after all.