Your Voice: Run Away! Run Away!
[This post comes to us from one of our newest bloggers, Alex. While he is new, he is surely becoming one of our most prolific. This post highlights young love, and we think it is a good tale. We hope you enjoy it.]
March 6th, 2008
I was talking with a virtual friend today. Virtual in that I know virtually nothing about this person, yet for some odd reason have absolutely no problem telling them anything. Anyway, after the conversation was over, I felt compelled to write something about my first. No, not that first, but close. It’s my first love, that rara avis, the girl that started the proverbial ball rolling.
I won’t mention any names. You know who you are. Name dropping would just be wrong and uncomfortable, or for that matter just downright wierd (yes, I know this is spelled wrong, there is a method to my madness dear broccoli lovers). So names aside, let me say she was one unique little gal.
I was a sophomore in high school, and she was a senior. Need I say more? For a young man of sixteen, this is equivalent to floppin’ a royal flush … twice in a row. Fittingly, she was blonde, and had what was a smoking car at the time. It was one of those really weird Subaru’s they came out with in the late eighties, when Subaru decided to morph their all wheel drives with some kind of futuristic sports car looking thing. Regardless, I pretty much thought it was perhaps the coolest object on the entire planet. Now I know this all sounds shallow at this point, but hey I was sixteen. I will make up for it in the near future.
Firstly, to bring everyone back to earth while shedding a little perspective, this story doesn’t take place on the football field, or during the prom, but rather in that pit of popularity known as the high school band room. At this time anyway, there hadn’t been an avalanche of girls showing interest in me and I’m not sure that this one really did either, but I assure you I was going to give it a Boy Scout try despite the consequences.
The whole “how we met” part gets a little muddled at this point, and in general my memory is fair to middling at best. But, in the grand scheme of things I suppose it really doesn’t matter. What do matter are the lessons she taught me, starting with the most important one. Look for a girl with brains.
Don’t take that the wrong way; she was a great looking girl. Outside of that, she was extremely intelligent, unusually witty, and equally creative. We used to spend inordinate amounts of time sitting in her basement watching Monty Python and listening to the Nylons. To this day I cannot listen to a Nylons song without starting to tear up.
New found emotions like these are quite powerful, and they made lasting impressions on me long after we had parted ways. I received my first love letter from the aforementioned female. I kept it for probably ten years or so, until I lost track of it. It was the kind of letter that really tugged at a young man’s heart strings. She told me, “when I saw you my day brightened like a thousand suns had spawned from one.” To this date, that is one of the most romantic things anyone has ever said to me. Coincidentally, I then proceeded to parlay that line into many a one night stand, and possibly (gasp) may have even used it to rope in the current and permanent love of my life. Once again, I say thank you.
So, if you’re out there, three cheers for all of the above. I hold those memories in the highest regard, and truly value that brief moment in time we got to share. You were instrumental in forming my belief in romance. You were my first love and my first heartbreak. Sorry about that whole puppy thing.