About a week ago, swim asked me, very politely these were not her words, what an old curmudgeon like me was doing hanging around the GG Forum with a roving gang of teenaged girls. I told her I would blog on that topic. But, I have kept putting it off because, frankly, I can't figure out the answer. I know a lot of facts about my relationships with women, but I don't really understand the cause and effect for any of it. So, what I thought I would do is put down some of the facts and let you all tell me what you think the answer to swim's question might be.

I'm going to start with now and move back in time because I think it will flow better that way. First, I have been in a monogamous relationship with my wife for 40 years. Second, and she was the one who pointed this out to me years ago, my best friends have always been women. The former work colleagues with whom I still have lunch frequently and email frequently are all women. But, even in high school my friends were women.

When I was too hearing impaired too practice medicine any longer, but still able to function otherwise, I went into the health plan business as what is called a physician executive. One of the things I enjoyed about the work was identifying women in entry level positions who had potential and mentoring them up the food chain. My best work was probably taking the recent college grad call center temp up to Director of Marketing in three years. There were many others to whom I gave responsibility at a level they had never thought themselves capable of and flourished with it.

That I know of, there are four of my former female patients who are now doctors who have said publicly they went into medicine because of me. Two are even pediatricians. I have former male patients who are now doctors but none of them have ever said that to me, much less publicly.

I'm skipping college because the first year I was in an exclusive relationship that ultimately faded away. We'd still be friends except the depth of the friendship freaked her husband. The Susan thing is a whole blog in itself. And the summer after my freshman year is when I fell in love with the girl I married three years later. So, back to high school where I think this thing started. (In junior high I don't think I spoke two words to a girl and if I did, those words would have been "um er" * deep blush *. I was developmentally behind not only my female school mates, but also behind the girls in the year behind me because I had been skipped in elementary school. Bad Idea. Never skip a boy.

We moved the summer after I finished 9th grade. I voted against that, but nevertheless. So, of course, I know no one and as socially awkward as I was, the prospect of making friends was pretty slim. At the beginning of the second semester I turned 15 and a couple of months later the oddest event of my live occurred.

So that I would "make friends", I was required to go to church youth group every Sunday night. I didn't make any, of course. One Saturday we took a field trip to The Big City to see a road show production of The Sound of Music. At supper in some cheap restaurant, I was talking to a couple guys about where we were going to sit during the show and a very pretty girl sat down across from me and said "I want you to sit with me." We went to the same high school but I was morning session and she was afternoon that year; I'm not positive that I knew her last name. But on the bus ride home she said "I want you to be my boyfriend."

Okay here's weird. I was a sophomore a couple of months into being 15. She was a junior a few months away from turning 18 (she started K a year late). For half of our 18 month relationship she was 18 and I was 15. And, of course, when she graduated, she dumped me like so much manure.

Needless to say, senior year I was not much interested in any kind of relationship. I dated and hung out with girls I knew from church and/or school I discovered the blond sophomores table. And I think it was that year that I learned how to communicate with girls on a strictly collegial level. It helped, too that I was the editor of the school paper with a female associate editor and associate editor of the yearbook with a female editor. And all that spring I was falling in love with Susan and trying to figure out if I dared risk it.

Just as additional background for your analysis: I have three younger sisters. My mother trained as an RN but after 6 kids in fewer than 9 years, she never worked outside the home. Both my grandmothers worked, one as a nurse, the other as a farm wife. I have two aunts who always worked - teacher and nurse (It was the 40s & 50's. Those were the realistic professional choices for women then).

One last thing. This is what my associate newspaper editor wrote in my yearbook: "You have to stop being so sarcastic!!! You can't keep telling people to 'drop dead' just because they don't agree with you."

So, Why Am I Here?