The sight of a girl getting her socks wet or messy or muddy is a wonderful sight, probably the most beautiful sight imaginable for as far back as I can remember. I can't recall a time when it didn't carry me to a better world or fill me with a sweet cinnamon-sugar rush of sensory overload.

As a kid, I was too young to recognize this feeling as anything sexual. I only knew that the sight of a girl's wet stocking toes as they changed both color and transparency, and as the now sopping wet fabric draped across all ten little toes and suddenly revealed a full set of tiny pink toenails ... such a picture filled me with an almost otherworldly sense of pleasurable giddiness that I only knew on Christmas morning.

As I got older ... probably by seventh grade ... it became sexual, and lying under the covers at night was my escape to a fantasy world of very sweet and always wet dreams, all made possible by the memory of some recent damp or muddy misadventure of one of the many girls in the neighborhood.

My memories of the day as I lie there in bed ... my powers of recall ... were amazing, but my imagination was even better. I wrote entire screenplays, producing and directing and acting in incredible epic films, sometimes hours in length, involving nearby swamps and water-filled ditches and muddy vacant lots. These films always starred any one of the neighbor girls dressed in standard 60's-fare party dresses, or skater skirts with blouses, and always with white mid-calf socks which were frequently ruffled or trimmed with a bit of lace on the cuffs.

But why? Why was this such a turn-on? I grew through adolescence and into adulthood asking myself this question. Life and time whizzed by, and it wasn't until my early fifties and all four kids had gone and Wife Number Three proved to be the right girl all along ... it wasn't until then that I remembered how and why.

A few years ago, I was showing my new bride all the different areas and neighborhoods and points of interest around Seattle that I grew up in and around, sort of a "This Is Your Life" without Ralph Edwards. Eventually, out in the sticks a bit, we visited my grandparents' house: an abandoned three-bedroom rambler on two acres south of downtown Seattle, with a huge sloping back yard that ended in a marshy woods. And then ... as we stood there in the breeze, smelling the wet swampy soil, I remembered Jackie.

Raising four kids is hard work. I know, because I've done it and so did my folks. When Mom and Dad needed a getaway, they'd pop us into whatever year of Ford Galaxie my father was driving at that time. Dad was a Ford man the way other men were Baptists or Methodists. Anyway, they'd drive us out to my grandparents house and drop us off for ... sometimes a few hours, and sometimes for a few days.

As soon as we'd get there, the neighbor girl Jackie would be knocking on the door and asking if I could come out and play. I was probably a first grader, in Catholic school, and Jackie was about nine or ten.

On more than one occasion, she and I would play "Doctor". Or, more appropriately, "Nurse". It was her favorite game, and we played it a lot. I was the patient, and no matter how often we visited my grandparents, it was always time for my annual checkup. She always conducted her examination at the end of the property, where the meadow morphed into a kind of bog, and then into a small deciduous grove. Standing in the very same spot with my wife, I suddenly remembered the sensations and the emotions I felt so many years ago as Jackie conducted her "examination".

Firstly, I remember feeling embarrassed all those years ago because, as Jackie and I both stood there with our underwear around our knees, I suddenly realized that girls were different. Jackie had a much more aerodynamic design than I did. Until that moment, I had never really given my penis much thought. I suppose if I had thought about it, I would have just assumed everyone had one.

Secondly, I remember pleasure. She continued with my check-up, and as we stood there in several inches of mucky water, I had the most pleasurable feelings I could ever remember. Probably flush with embarrassment, I remember looking down. Jackie always wore a pair of thin socks ... sometimes white, sometimes yellow, sometimes pink, sometimes robin's-egg blue ... and through the open toes of her saltwater sandals, I could make out all ten painted toenails looking up at me through the muddy water.

I said nothing to my wife, and we left.