prince charming

I like most typical girls growing up in American, faced at a very young age, the unrealistic fantasy that Cinderella’s Prince Charming afforded us. Throughout the years the face of Prince Charming changed for me, most of the time drawing heavily on the influences of the current television programs. John Schneider and Tom Wopat from the Dukes of Hazard both held places in my heart, as did David Hasselhoff from Knight Rider and Richard Dean Anderson from MacGyver. We can’t forget the influences of movies on my girlhood fantasies: Luke held my heart for the first Star Wars, but Han Solo quickly took his place as I got a bit older and wiser. Han Solo understandably morphed quite easily into Indiana Jones, and I’m sure at least a dozen other leading males held a momentary spotlight as my teenage heart throbs. Although my tastes have changed slightly in whom I find attractive, there is a general y-chromosome common denominator.

I spent last weekend in Catalina with my mom. We stayed at a lovely Bed and Breakfast Inn and met some very interesting people. One of the nights we enjoyed the company of a couple of young women who I was fairly certain were more than friends. They both were very beautiful in their own way, one a dark haired brunette, the other a fair-skinned long wavy-haired blonde, and both very athletic. They spoke of their adventures earlier in the day kayaking, and they were planning an early morning hike up the mountain. We were all sitting in a quaint alcove next to a blazing fire in the fireplace. The conversation turned to making fires, and my mother bragged of my fire-making abilities having learned from growing up with wood-cook stoves as our main source of heat; she likened it to Little House on the Prairie. The dark-haired girl smiled and commented that Laura Ingles was cool, and then there was a look between the two of them, the kind that carries with it so much more than can be voiced at the moment. Let me just say this particular intimate glance made me very aware of girlhood fantasies that I didn’t know anything about. It seems that Laura Ingles was their Prince Charming, or should I say Princess Charming… x marks the spot in their hearts.