We moved to California at the beginning of my junior year of high school. I played basketball that year at Tulare Union High School. Practice went until about 6:30. Since we lived 15 miles away and I had no car, I usually walked a couple blocks to the bookstore on Tulare’s main street and waited for one of my parents to pick me up.

As I stood there browsing through magazines, a short guy with stringy hair wearing gym trunks, a tank top, and flip-flops came and stood besideme. In a whisper, he asked me if I wanted him to perform a certain sex act on me. Being a naive preacher’s kid, I was totally flummoxed, but I managed to mutter a “No.” (Honestly, I wasn’t even sure what he was asking, but I knew it was bad.) He then gently placed his hand on my thigh. I batted his hand away and quickly exited the bookstore, my heart racing.

The next day, I saw him at school for the first time. He was a teacher. Another time, I entered a restroom and looked down the long line of urinals. There he was, along with a very strange student, standing side-by-side at neighboring urinals. Gross. I immediately turned around and left.

That was 1973. I never told anybody about the guy. The idea was unthinkable at that point in my life. Nobody talked back then about reporting things like this. I was new to the school, and couldn’t imagine telling anyone what the guy had said to me. I saw no upside. I didn’t even warn my younger brothers about the pervert (both graduated from that school).

The experience had no lasting affect on me. It left no residue whatsoever (please don’t play amateur psychologist and imagine affects buried so deep that I’m not even aware of them). It was just something that happened, and that I kept to myself. I almost never think about it.

But yesterday I came across an article about a predatory teacher whose signature move was to put his hand on a girl’s knee. So it reminded me of him. Curious, I Googled his name. It turned up a few times. One article identified him as a retired teacher from Tulare Union High School, with a $30,000 pension. So it sounds like he taught at that school for another 30 years and never got caught.

I should probably have done something, but I’m not sure what. Even now.