I had one of my earliest crushes on a girl at 6 years old around 1958 with an older girl (by around 3 years) named Mercedes who occasionally helped her mother, my first grade teacher (as I remember). I thought Mercedes was beautiful and she was so nice to me. The next year Mercedes was not so nice and she threatened to beat me up a few times for something I did. That ended that crush and the last time I saw Mercedes was a few years later in 1964 or 65 or maybe it was 1966 when I went to play basketball at the PS 69 indoor ground floor court and some pretty girl who I didn't recognize came over to me with a smile and started talking. I said "who are you". She smiled and said "don't you recognize me?" I took a long look and said unsurely "Mercedes"? She smiled and said "yes" and we had a nice long talk and she mentioned she was going to some performing arts school in Long Island. I never saw her again unfortunately but I never forgot that moment as that was really the first time I ever talked/flirted with a good looking teenage girl. Somehow like an idiot I never put two and two together until recently when I realized that she was Mercedes Rheul. I had seen her in many movies including The Fisher King and TV Shows and somehow never connected that she was Mercedes who I "knew" as a kid. Duh!
