Step Passions
Private Lessons in Love
Ralph was your run of the mill average teenage boy. He was the youngest of three children. He was bright, intelligent and above all that, he very skillful in fixing things.
Even as child, he was taking things apart to see how they worked then he would put them back together again just for the fun of it and to learn more about them.
As Ralph progressed into his teenage years, he could take something that wasn’t working, disassemble it, analyze and determine what needed to be repaired, fix it, then put it back together again good as new.
Ralph was also very knowledgeable about computer systems both on the hardware and software sides. He loved taking old run down computers that were considered obsolete and reworking them and updating both the software and hardware and thereby restoring them to current standards of technology.
You would have figured with skills like these, Ralph would be quite popular, well in some since he was. Whenever anyone he knew needed something to be repaired they knew they could call on him and he would repair it and make good as new again and sometimes even better.
Yet with all this going for him, Ralph still had one thing that kept him held back socially, in that he was very much a quite person and an introvert. Above all that he felt nervous and awkward when he was around girls.
He really didn’t know how to communicate with them that would make them see him as a desirable mate. The girls he knew in high-school liked him but only as a “friend” in that they didn’t want to date him.
It wasn’t because he wasn’t handsome. Physically speaking he stood about 5’11” tall with a somewhat slender to medium build. He had short dark brown hair he kept cut fairly short hazel eyes and weighed about 170 pounds.
Ralph wasn’t the most handsome guy around but he wasn’t butt ugly either. He was just an average looking boy who really never seemed to have any luck with women.
As a result, he pretty much kept to himself and focused on what he was good at fixing things and his other exceptional talents of being a great artist and creativity when it came to writing stories, mostly epic adventures of which he could control.
In these stories Ralph made himself the epic hero and someone who the women flocked to and longed to be. This allowed him to live vicariously through others and Ralph immersed himself in this world because it seemed to fill the void he felt he had in life.
Shortly after Ralph’s 16th birthday his mother divorced his father because she felt she was lacking something in life. The truth being told she felt that she wanted to shed the responsibilities in her life and live a carefree adventurous life.
In her own words “She wanted to sew her wild oats while she was still young enough and before they all turned to Shredded Wheat.” She felt since her two oldest children were grown up and had their own lives and since Ralph was sixteen and pretty much grown up himself, this was as good of a time as any to spread her wings and fly.