♪ ♫ I Want To Hold Your Hand ♪

I was walking in the grocery store parking lot today and noticed in front of me a father holding hands with his daughter. The thing about them that caught my attention was the fact that the daughter was a little too old to be holding hands – maybe ten. As soon as I noticed her age (past the point of needing supervision when crossing a street), I was reminded of the last time I was able to hold hands with my father.

If I remember correctly, I was a little younger than this girl and oddly enough, we were also walking together in the grocery store parking lot. I love my dad and I loved holding hands with him and I vividly remember on this day years ago, as I reached up for the familiar touch, he told me no. He said I was too old and that we couldn’t hold hands anymore. At first I was hurt and sad. Although I didn’t have a name for it at the time, innocence lost is one of the tragedies of growing up and I really felt it at that moment. Of course, if you know me at all you won’t be surprised to know that the sadness was rather quickly replaced by a stubborn anger. I was still too naïve to know about pedophiles and those horrors, but I had some concept of age appropriate dating, so I assumed that my father was concerned that the other shoppers at the grocery store would simply think we were dating and that they would frown upon it because he was too old for me. My nine-year-old answer to this was that I didn’t care. I loved my dad and he loved me and we should be able to show affection for each other and anyone who wanted to think dumb things or judge us could go to hell (I doubt I was actually thinking “go to hell” at that age, but I’m sure all the same piss and vinegar was behind whatever I was actually thinking at the time). But it didn’t matter what I thought about the hand-holding because there was obviously no arguing with Dad. Still, it was tough.

So today, as I walk behind this girl and her dad, I smile a little, glad that she still has that pleasure that I had to give up years ago. But then I think it IS a little odd - she IS a bit old for that sort of thing - they ARE making me a little uncomfortable because now I know TOO much about pedophiles and their like and I start looking at the pair differently. I start to check their body language for anything odd - I look at her face to see if she seems unhappy - I look at how tightly he is holding her and if he is pulling her along at all. And then I found my were eyes welling up with tears because my relationship with my father at that age was innocent and I’m sure that their relationship is innocent but it is an evil world we live in and I was so torn between smiling and enjoying the cuteness of the pair and thinking the most horrifying thoughts about them. The back-and-forth in my head was just so utterly wrong (such a warm memory mixing with such a feeling of revulsion) that I cried a little at the mess of it.

All of this in the twenty or so seconds it took for us to cross the parking lot and get to the sliding glass doors of the store.

In the end I was made more comfortable. He let go of her hand, gave her a gentle, very fatherly cuff on the back of the head and reached for a cart. He then said something to her in a language I couldn’t quite place and I relaxed some more under the assumption that their home country simply doesn’t have quite the taboo that America does about adult men and girls. They are probably unaware of how people in this country might react to what they see as a natural, tender act. Or maybe they are perfectly aware of what those of us who are judging them are thinking and they figure we can all just go to hell!

If you're ever on Jeopardy: The original single sleeve photograph for the Beatles' song "I Want to Hold Your Hand" featured a group shot in which Paul McCartney is clearly holding a lit cigarette. When the single was re-released by Capitol on its 20th anniversary, the cigarette was airbrushed out of the photograph. However, by the release of the 30th anniversary, the smoke was firmly back in place.



- lada's tell-tale heart