In the hustle and bustle of today's world, it does one good to stop and appreciate the beautiful once in awhile.

Stop and smell the roses, so to speak.

Tonight, 17 of the prettiest girls in Alabama will glide across the stage in hopes of being crowned Miss Greater Greenville. 17 beauties will gladly spend three hours of their young life in the Ritz Theatre, exhibiting their elegance, composure, talent and poise, for strangers. They'll smile and dance and laugh and answer questions and generally be all they can be. And they'll bask in the applause and by the end of the night one will secure herself a crown, won by hard work, dedication and the courageous ability to set one itty bitty foot in front of the other; to walk out onto a stage, under the lights, in front of an audience and be beautiful.

When does one first discover beauty?

For a boy, life is one big conglomeration of football, baseball, hide-and-go-seek, Six Flags, toy guns, yo-yos, video games, cartoons, homework, grandma's kisses, ice cream, Reese's cups, comic books, and swimming pools during the summer. Then, one day, your body kicks on the afterburners and your heart becomes all a-flutter (you know, like in Byron or Shelley love poems) and suddenly that goofy little girl whose hair you used to pull in class, doesn't look all that goofy. By George, you think, she's beautiful.

I think I fell in love for the first time watching Linda Carter on television. With her big hair, sparkling eyes and red, blue, gold and white Wonder Woman costume. Linda was so lovely. But she was television lovely and not real life lovely.

Then, a few years later, I discovered real life lovely.

As many remember, Mrs. Roberta Gamble and her Old Gym Players used to put on stage productions that were the closest thing to Broadway this side of the Mason-Dixon Line.

The first one I ever attended was as a third grader because my sister was involved in some minor way, (which she would later parlay into a performance as Maria in &#8220The Sound of Music” four years later).

But in this particular incident I became smitten with a senior named Debbie Owsley, who played the title character, &#8220Mame.” Blond haired and statuesque Debbie Owsley, who made the roof of my mouth dry up every time she smiled.

I had my first crush. And on an older woman at that.

For weeks after, my sister trafficked letters to Debbie, letters I had scrawled out upon faded notebook paper with a whittled down No. 2 pencil.

I would be her knight in shining armor, I said. I wanted to beat up her boyfriend, I said. I loved her, I said.

And then Debbie was gone, as quickly as the passionate letters I sent and never saw again. A school year later, a cute, freckle-faced angel grinned at me the right way and it was love, deja vu.

Such is the cycle of a boy becoming a man.

And I'm not sure we get over it as adults.

Kevin Pearcey is Group Managing Editor of Greenville Newspapers, LLC. He can be reached by phone at 383-9302, ext. 136 or by email at: editor@greenville.advocate.com.