HWA's First Girlfriend

This is from Chapter 1 of HWA's Autobiography. HWA is describing something that occurred when he was about 16 years of age.

My first date with a girl took place at about this time -- a date to escort a next-door neighbor girl in my class in high school to some school function. At that stage I was pretty much in awe of girls, and felt awkward in their presence. It has always been a puzzle to me that so many boys around that age are afraid of girls, ill at ease before them, and yet girls seem not to be shy or bashful in any way in the company of boys. For the next 8 years I continued to date this girl on and off, (not what today is termed "going steady," however), but never did I put my arm around her, kiss her, or as they would say today, "neck with her." (It was called "loving up" in those days.)

In the September 1957 issue of The Plain Truth (p. 22) this paragraph has another sentence at the end. It is also present in the 1973 edition of HWA's Autobiography (p. 31).

It just wasn't generally done in those days--or, if it was, my eyes had not yet been open to the practice.

So Herbert Armstrong, when he was about 65 years old, wrote, "girls seem not to be shy or bashful in any way in the company of boys." That is not true. What an astoundingly sexist and ignorant thing to say. What a fool this Herbert Armstrong was.

And to think a man so narrow minded about women would dare tell his followers what to do and how to view sexual matters. Everyone would be better off finding better instructors on these matters.

Also it seems odd to see him present a relation that existed in some form or other for eight years as not being that important.

And why was that last sentence cut out? Did they worry that it would show HWA as being woefully naïve about real life?

On another matter it is impossible not to think about certain things that HWA did from around 1933 until 1943.