Blame it on Gramma.

When I was young, I dreamed about getting married. Dresses, knights in shining armor, poetry, the whole generic sappy thing. It was quite pathetic. I wish I could go back in time, slap myself, and say, "For God's sakes woman, dream about traveling the world, not snaring a man!!! What is wrong with you???" And then younger me would be like, "Hey, I could have done without the slap, that was really mean!" And I'd be like, "Yeah, sorry, just trying to add a little drama." Anyway, I digress...

The point is, I blame it on my Gramma.

"Well, that's a little weird," you might say. How is this crazy girl's romantic mental illness her poor old gray haired Gramma's fault? Well, I'll tell you why... That sweet old lady? She had a secret passion... A dark habit. Yes, dear old Gramma had a taste for the bosom heavers, the smut novels, a bit of the "dirty pages" if you will. And one day when I was at her house, all of 13 years old, I stumbled upon one and I was never the same.

That's right, Gramma got me started. I would sneak one of her little novels home under my shirt every time I went over there. Yes, it's true! I did it!!! I stole from my own Grandmother!!! Just to get a taste of that sweet, sweet romance. I was an addict and I didn't care how I got my fix.

The historical ones were how I preferred to get my kicks, but really... I would take anything I could get. For a 13 year old kid in a town with watchful librarians, sexy novels are hard to come by.

(This was my favorite one... I read it at least 5oo times.)

I would rush upstairs when I came home and hide them under my bed, then feverishly read them when I was supposed to be sleeping. Growing up as a pretty sheltered, innocent girl, reading those books was as naughty to me as smoking a cigarette... It was wrong, wrong, wrong, filling my head with that sleaze but I did it anyway. Gram would always tell people she skipped over the steamy parts, but I can tell you something... I didn't.

Had I only known the consequences.

Those damn novels warped my little brain. For years after that, my romance-novel saturated mind would swirl and spin in pink cotton candy visions of that perfect happily ever after scene as the story book closes at the end of a fairy tale.

A deadly combination of Gramma's novels and teenage hormones created a sort of love gas in my brain that clouded my judgement about boys for years to come... I envisioned a heart of chivalry and gold inside each dorky college boy that quite simply wasn't there... I obviously had a very active imagination. Going through my old photo albums is beyond cringe-worthy. If a heart of gold or any semblance of chivalry was in there, it was quite well hidden.

So the moral of the story is, friends, keep your daughters away from the romance novels. They were quite obviously written by 50 year old spinster virgins, but 13 year old ones can't tell the difference. Their little psyches will be warped well into their 20's by that stuff... And they will never again be able to think of a man's part as anything but "turgid manhood," even in anatomy class.

P.S. If you could all avoid telling my Gram that I blogged about her personal stash of "lady porn" I'd appreciate it.