Facebook is great for rediscoveries. I recently stumbled upon one of my very first boyfriends. We were so young — back then when going together meant sitting next to each other in the lunch room, or secretly holding hands on the band bus, en route to an event.
teenage awkwardness
Teenage antics. There was a dance called the ‘morp’ – the opposite of ‘prom’ – in which roles were reversed and the girls asked the boys . I wasn’t planning on going, and at the last minute, my girlfriends said they were going, so I decided to jump on the bandwagon and find a companion so I could go too. I ambushed this poor boy with my invitation, after school on the day of the dance. I was a sophomore, he was a senior. I think he was stunned, but he agreed, and barely had time to rush home, take a shower, and return. I don’t think we’d spoken a word to each other prior to the ambush, and we may have barely exchanged a word throughout the entire dance. In fact, I might have actually ignored him completely, and hung out with my girlfriends.
And that is where we began.
puppy love
We never actually went out, other than the morp and the prom. We were kids, poor, living out in the country in different directions from town, with very little freedom to wander. But we were an item for that school year, and we’d sit next to each other in front of our lockers, and hang out whenever we could. It was so sweet and innocent. We were so sweet and innocent.
I’ve always had fond memories of that year; that chapter of my life. I was coolly pragmatic, though, and when graduation time arrived, I let him go, broke his heart, and didn’t look back.
Through the years I’d wonder about him, off and on. In my early twenties I heard through the grapevine that he had kidney troubles and might not have long to live. I remember it was hard to hear that sort of thing, and I felt guilty for dropping him like a bucket of hot rocks and leaving him to pick up the pieces of his shattered heart and somehow patch them back together again. I couldn’t process the thought of death at that time, so I did the cowardly thing and put my head in the sand, and went on with my life.
Thirty years passed. The world wide web arrived, opening the floodgates for rediscovery.
Wonder of wonders, he survived the kidney failure(s) and is alive! And not only that, he lives relatively nearby. I apologized for my youthful cruelty, he graciously let bygones be bygones, and we arranged to meet, to catch up on the last three decades.
There is something warm and comforting about reconnecting with childhood friends. We shared those formative years, and perhaps the bond feels tighter because we grew up in such a small town where everybody knew everybody. It was a sweet reunion. As adults, we live out of the hub in opposite directions, just like when we were kids, only the hub is much larger and the distance is much further. We met in the city and walked arm in arm along the downtown streets and talked for hours. We stopped for coffees, got drenched in the rain, stepped around puddles, and strolled and talked and talked and strolled. We shared our stories of our families and friends, and reminisced about the innocence of youth. Every now and then we’d giggle over catching glimpses of our childhood selves in expressions that crossed our aged faces. We walked and talked the night away.
It was just what the doctor ordered. I’m inspired to reconnect with more of my childhood friends, and awaken more fond memories.
