Kelli 1971

She wasn’t THE prettiest girl I knew, but she was certainly one of them. And to my way of thinking, Kelli was the ultimate Girl Next Door – and I’m sure you would have agreed, if you happened to be (as I was at the time) an athletic, fun-loving, mischievous fourteen-year-old boy. She was a year younger than me; we had lived house-by-house since I was ten, when my family moved to that quiet suburban neighborhood of older homes, wide tree-lined streets, deep lawns and a large public park with its own woods that in spring and summer provided a private retreat.

Kelli and I had been friends and playmates since word one; we were both only children of two-working-parent families, and the only kids our age for several blocks around. Her long brown hair and flashing brown eyes, ready grin and playful attitude — not to mention practically inexhaustible energy and daring that matched mine — made her as good as “one of the guys” in all kinds of adventures. At about 5’2″ she was maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet; there wasn’t an ounce of additional flesh on her petite but muscular frame — except, as we grew (and I noticed!) for those two slowly emerging mounds on her chest. They weren’t much more than the size of halved oranges at the time this story occurred — an event that was to change everything between Kelli and me.

It was a lazy June day, and she and I had spent the morning on our bicycles, racing through the trails in the Woods. We made it back to her house and scrounged some lunch – baloney sandwiches and chips we munched on in front of the TV. “I’m hot!” she complained. “Wanna swim?” I haven’t mentioned that the previous year Kelli’s dad had put in a very nice 4-foot above-ground pool with a deck extending out their back porch, which increased his value to me tremendously. “Sure, I’ll be right back!” I responded, and running next door, stripped and pulled on my trunks. By the time I got back she was already in the pool in a skimpy little bikini, and we began splashing and laughing and playing tag and wrestling around as we always did.

She was something to see! When she climbed out on the deck to dive back in, I couldn’t help staring at her chiseled abs and lean, muscular legs — and of course, those two areas of her wonderfully female body no boy my age could help but ogle, barely hidden under the thin cloth of her swimsuit. Maybe it was the cool of the water that was causing those little points in the centers of each side of her bikini top to jut out temptingly, and although I had at that time no earthly idea of female physical geography I could make out a vertical depression in her bikini bottom between her legs that was fascinating to a degree I could neither understand nor explain. All I knew was that the water certainly wasn’t cool enough to keep my fourteen-year-old manhood – such as it was — from twitching to attention as I began to allow myself to wonder what might happen if…

“What’s wrong with you? Getting waterlogged?” Kelli giggled. I had not even been aware of it, but I had been just standing in the pool staring at her for who knows how long. “Not me!” I retorted, and lunged for her. In a flash we were playing tag again. She was quick as an otter, and slipperier than a trout, and not above flailing those pretty little feet at me in escape, for I was the hunter in this game and she the prey.