When I was 19 years old I met a very beautiful 11 year old girl. We fell in love. In those days in some states you could marry at 12 with your parents permission. I hadn't even thought that far ahead. I was in love with Margaret but I had no idea she had fallen in love with me as well. This was many decades ago in a time when one could be in a relationship with someone in a different age group and not raise many eyebrows but even then, 19 year old men did not court 11 year old girls normally.

Her Dad owned a general store. My Dad owned a family farm. Our primary cash crop was an assortment of vegetables. Her Dad's primary business was selling supplies to farmers and selling their produce and meats to the rest of the small town we lived in.

Two months later Pearl Harbor happened and the next day I enlisted in the Navy. Dad was in the Navy in the Great War and Grandpa was in the Navy in the Spanish American War. Seemed to be the right thing to do. I served on a destroyer in the Pacific. We had a really good Captain. We won every battle we engaged in and that was a few. In the one battle we came closest to losing I was hit by a piece of shrapnel and ended up with a purple heart. Seemed to me odd to reward a fella for not ducking, especially since there were so many of my dead buddies who deserved it more than me. Anyway, I was gone less than a year. They shipped me stateside after my injury saying that I was no longer fit for duty. I had a different opinion but the Captain said I had done my duty and now I was to return home.

I got home in time for Margaret's 12th birthday party. I hadn't told anyone about being injured and so when I got to the general store (pretty much where everyone met everyone else and served as a sort of de facto train depot) my Dad asked what the purple heart was for and that was when I told him about my injury and about not going back to the war. Mom was relieved, Dad was proud and understood my reluctance to return but the town treated me like I was some sort of hero and all I did was forget to duck. I honestly felt like an idiot for being injured and a bit guilty. Margaret was in awe of my uniform and asked about every detail. I kept trying to remind her that it was her special day and not mine. I probably paid her far too much attention. I kind of felt like an uncle doting on his niece all the while thinking bad thoughts about her.

The girls my age paid me little attention. Most of them were by then married and despite most being alone while their husbands were at war, none were interested in cheating and honestly I didn't really want to do that either. There were absolutely no single women in my town between 15 and 30 and I had no interest in anyone over thirty. I ended up spending more and more time at the general store constantly looking for excuses to go there. Margaret was working there after school and on weekends now that she was 12 and old enough to work a paying job. I ended up getting a job there as well and Margaret's Mom and Dad seemed happy to have someone interested in paying their daughter some attention while keeping the store in good condition and so they started to take weekends off leaving Margaret and me to mind the store. In those days people didn't do their shopping on weekends. Most people went to the store during the week and it was mostly women who did the shopping then. Men who needed to transact business usually did so right after work or on their lunch break or could take some time off but that was not often. Most of the weekend business was with men who could not take time off from work. We were open Monday to Friday from nine in the morning to five in the afternoon and Saturday from ten in the morning to three in the afternoon. Nobody was ever open for business on Sunday. I don't think it was legal then.

So this meant that on most Saturdays, Margaret and I were alone together and since it was a slow day, we didn't really have a lot to do. We made sure we did all the chores by close of business Friday so that Saturdays would be easy. We ended up doing a lot of talking and a lot of checker playing that year. One Saturday after we locked up and just before I started to walk home and Margaret went up stairs (they lived over the store), she said she loved me. It was a very casual thing. She didn't say it with a particularly serious voice. I simply said it back to her without thinking. I meant it of course. I just never dared say it and I think she did the same thing. She simply blurted it out without thinking. Then we stood there and stared into each other's eyes. But I was not about to do something so bold as to kiss her or make a pass at her. She was only 12 and I was 20 and had dragged the ripped apart bodies of dead sailors across a blood soaked deck. I had shrapnel in my body. I had completed boot camp at the hands of some extremely evil Marine D.I.'s for god's sake. I was a MAN. Men don't court little children. But I couldn't help feeling the way I did. We swore each other to secrecy and I went home and so did she.

Over the next few weeks Margaret and I became more and more bold with each other. We hugged, kissed, on the cheek and talked about romantic things lovers do. One Saturday after closing she asked if I'd kiss her. I wanted to very badly and held back even trying. But I lost all self control and leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. What I didn't tell her was that was my very first kiss. Despite being 20 and spending he better part of a year in the Navy, I simply had never had any romantic experience at all. I was way too shy in high school. By the time the war came I was too busy thinking about all the Japs I wanted to kill.

So that became our thing, Saturday after work we would kiss, sometimes for more than an hour.

Then one Monday while Margaret was in school her Dad asked to talk to me in his office which was basically a desk and chair in the back of the store. He asked if there was something I wanted to ask him. I was at a loss. Then he said that usually when a man courts another man's daughter it was customary at some point to ask the father for permission to propose marriage. I could not believe my ears. I told Margaret's Dad that I thought that he would think she was way too young so I was going to wait until she was a little older and the potential relationship would seem less scandalous before making such a request. It was the only thing I could think of to keep out of trouble. He then confessed that he had begun courting Margaret's mom when she was only ten and he was 16 and they married two years later and that she was 26 years old. I confess, I had thought she was a little older, perhaps in her thirties. Discretion kept me from confessing that out loud. He seemed completely unphased by the age difference between me and his daughter and I questioned him about that tactfully and he said that Margaret was obviously in love and I was obviously in love and it was legal in our state so why put off the inevitable and besides he would be proud to have a "war hero" as a son in law and he had no sons and thought of me as a son already.

So I stood there for a second to gather my thoughts and requested his permission to propose marriage to Margaret. He said he thought I'd never asked and said a resounding YES! and then took me over to where he had some catalogs and offered to help me pick out a ring and loan me the money to buy it. We recruited Margaret's Mom to figure out her ring size and then realized that she would grow bigger and need a bigger ring one day so we got a style with a gap in the ring so we could just bend it to fit. He mailed the order before Margaret got home from school. That afternoon, right after closing, I got down on one knee with her parents standing at the counter and I popped the question. She turned to her dad as if in disbelief and he and her Mom smiled at her and she turned to me, flew into my arms and screamed YES!

A month later we were married.

My parents were shocked by the whole thing at first but on my wedding day they were as happy as the bride's parents. All 79 residents of our tiny town attended the wedding. This was not the first wedding in our town between an adult male and a 12 year old girl. It wasn't the last.

We had seven children and 27 grand children. But before all that we waited until she was 14 before we fully consummated our marriage. I was concerned that pregnancy would do such a small child harm. She didn't want to wait and wanted to lose her virginity on our wedding night. But I tried out something I had learned from a shipmate in the Navy. I ate her out. I guess that was enough to satisfy her sexual cravings for a couple of years.

She gave birth to our first child when she was 15. Both sets of grandparents lived long enough to hold all of their great grandchildren.

I eventually took over management of the store. My brother took over the farm though I owned half and helped out when I could. When Margaret was 30 we were in a position financially and the older kids were old enough to help out so that I could sent Margaret to school. She finally got her high school diploma going to night school then she went to college and got her business degree and finally her M.B.A. She turned our little general store into a chain of small discount stores and by 1980 we had 60 stores in the region. She retired in 2000 and I still manage the original general store and my brother still manages our family farm.

I once asked Margaret if she thinks I'm an evil monster for seducing her at such an early age and she said she was the one who seduced me and that her only regret was that we couldn't have gotten married when she was around seven which she had confessed was the first time she saw me and said to herself that one day she would marry me. She said she was ready for me to take her virginity by the time she was ten and would have thrown herself at me had I given her the chance and the only reason she held back was because she thought I was shy and she might scare me away. Talk about role reversal.