There’s probably a name for it in our word lexicon by now. You know, when you Google something and someone’s name whom you know shows up on the list. It happened to me the other day. I was Googling a subject, and way down the list a name caught my eye. Someone from my very distant past. Turns out he’s an authority on the particular subject I was investigating.
He was the boy next door, and my first love. He had raven black hair shaved up the back, with long bangs, parted on the side hanging loosely over his forehead, shadowing green eyes with golden specks. He rode a black horse that tossed his mane the way he tossed his hair to one side. We literally grew up together, but he paid little, if any, attention to me, as far as I knew, anyway, until he came home for Christmas vacation from his first semester at college. I had, of course, been aware of his presence for quite some time. But I was a freshman when he was a senior: a vast chasm of separation in high school. I was a petite, pony-tailed country girl, and quite “under-developed” compared to most of the girls my age. His affections were then captured, I took note, by those lipstick-wearing B-cups with the teased hair and tight capris that treated me like air. And once he was off to college, where an over-abundance of those types roamed unencumbered by curfews and liberated by the Summer of Love, I turned my affections back to Elvis, who was no less attainable and every bit as gorgeous.
I was, then, quite surprised by his attention that December. It seemed as if he had come home and found a new girl living next door. Perhaps he had. I was by then two months shy of my 16th birthday and not lacking for dates. Long, straight hair was in, and hip-hugger pants with bell-bottoms were simply made for my trim little figure, shaped by good genes and years of ballet.
His two younger brothers were the same ages as my two younger brothers and I was accustomed to hanging out with them occasionally, having no sister to offer a more feminine diversion. But previously it had been playing soft ball in the empty sand lot on the corner, or roaming the orchards and climbing trees, having green apple fights. Now that he was home, and could drive, he took us all to the bowling alley and the drive in. Somehow or other, I ended up sitting next to him in the station wagon, with the four little brothers occupying the other seats with their usual pre-pubescent rowdiness, oblivious to the chemistry igniting in the front seat.
The first time he kissed me was in the darkened garage, after the boys had exited the car. I lingered. He put his arm around me, and moved in close. The smell of his aftershave rolled over me like a warm fog and I closed my eyes as hot, moist lips carried the combustible spark that ignited an emotion in me that I was not to experience again for more than a decade. For years afterward, I bought Aqua Velva Redwood aftershave, just so I could smell him again, and feel that burning rise up in my soul.
Our romance continued when he returned to college in the New Year, and included a healthy stash of love letters scented both ways. On the margin of one he proposed, prematurely, it turns out. “When do you want to get married?” And I, being only 16 and not nearly old enough to consider it seriously, still, treasured the idea of it while dreading the thought that it had come too soon and therefore couldn’t last.
Spring break brought the inevitable. I cried for days, red-eyed and unable to speak to anyone with a shattered heart that left me voiceless, as well. We moved away soon after that, and I never saw him again.
I resisted the momentary urge to hit the “Contact” button on his web page. To send him a “blast from the past” email. He thoroughly broke my heart once, long ago. He was, as he said when he broke up with me, merely infatuated, not truly in love. Sara McLaughlin sings, “I will remember you, will you remember me?” Surely, he is a grandfather by now. A lifetime has passed between us. Perhaps he does remember, occasionally. But I prefer to keep my memory to myself, just in case he doesn’t.
He was the boy next door, and my first love. He had raven black hair shaved up the back, with long bangs, parted on the side hanging loosely over his forehead, shadowing green eyes with golden specks. He rode a black horse that tossed his mane the way he tossed his hair to one side. We literally grew up together, but he paid little, if any, attention to me, as far as I knew, anyway, until he came home for Christmas vacation from his first semester at college. I had, of course, been aware of his presence for quite some time. But I was a freshman when he was a senior: a vast chasm of separation in high school. I was a petite, pony-tailed country girl, and quite “under-developed” compared to most of the girls my age. His affections were then captured, I took note, by those lipstick-wearing B-cups with the teased hair and tight capris that treated me like air. And once he was off to college, where an over-abundance of those types roamed unencumbered by curfews and liberated by the Summer of Love, I turned my affections back to Elvis, who was no less attainable and every bit as gorgeous.
I was, then, quite surprised by his attention that December. It seemed as if he had come home and found a new girl living next door. Perhaps he had. I was by then two months shy of my 16th birthday and not lacking for dates. Long, straight hair was in, and hip-hugger pants with bell-bottoms were simply made for my trim little figure, shaped by good genes and years of ballet.
His two younger brothers were the same ages as my two younger brothers and I was accustomed to hanging out with them occasionally, having no sister to offer a more feminine diversion. But previously it had been playing soft ball in the empty sand lot on the corner, or roaming the orchards and climbing trees, having green apple fights. Now that he was home, and could drive, he took us all to the bowling alley and the drive in. Somehow or other, I ended up sitting next to him in the station wagon, with the four little brothers occupying the other seats with their usual pre-pubescent rowdiness, oblivious to the chemistry igniting in the front seat.
The first time he kissed me was in the darkened garage, after the boys had exited the car. I lingered. He put his arm around me, and moved in close. The smell of his aftershave rolled over me like a warm fog and I closed my eyes as hot, moist lips carried the combustible spark that ignited an emotion in me that I was not to experience again for more than a decade. For years afterward, I bought Aqua Velva Redwood aftershave, just so I could smell him again, and feel that burning rise up in my soul.
Our romance continued when he returned to college in the New Year, and included a healthy stash of love letters scented both ways. On the margin of one he proposed, prematurely, it turns out. “When do you want to get married?” And I, being only 16 and not nearly old enough to consider it seriously, still, treasured the idea of it while dreading the thought that it had come too soon and therefore couldn’t last.
Spring break brought the inevitable. I cried for days, red-eyed and unable to speak to anyone with a shattered heart that left me voiceless, as well. We moved away soon after that, and I never saw him again.
I resisted the momentary urge to hit the “Contact” button on his web page. To send him a “blast from the past” email. He thoroughly broke my heart once, long ago. He was, as he said when he broke up with me, merely infatuated, not truly in love. Sara McLaughlin sings, “I will remember you, will you remember me?” Surely, he is a grandfather by now. A lifetime has passed between us. Perhaps he does remember, occasionally. But I prefer to keep my memory to myself, just in case he doesn’t.
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