I'll never forget my first love. We sat next to each other in class because our last names were one after the other alphabetically. He always sat sideways looking at me. He had dark brown eyes and black hair (very Brando-ish). We would always meet at basketball games and he would saunter in with his "posse" in his red jacket and sit right next to me no matter where I was sitting. Everyone knew we liked each other, but we never got together. We were both very shy, obviously both afraid to make the first move.
He drove me home from school every day, me sitting in the middle right next to him (as cars had one wide seat in the front in those days). His best friend sat on the other side of me. Sometimes he would take the longer ride home. He always played classical music in his streamlined 1956 blue and white Oldsmobile that smelled like pine needles.
OMG, how I loved him. Then graduation came and since he didn't ask me to go to the parties with him, I went straight home on the bus. Suddenly, one of his friends came to our apartment and said "Walter's looking for you," and talked me into going to the party. When I got there, he took my hand and we walked down the street to his car and got in. He kissed me for the very first time and I thought my head was going to explode. There were at least ten kids all jumping up and down outside the car yelling "Finally! Finally!" It was the happiest night of my young life.
It was summer after that, school was done. He took me on a double date to the drive-in once. He tried more than kissing and I was not ready for that. It ended that night, after one date. I saw him with one of the girls from school about a month later. I was standing on a corner of Main Street and they drove by. She was practically sitting in his lap. I stood frozen for many minutes.
I saw him again, 21 years later in 1977, standing outside of his father's gas station when I was in a car with coworkers coming back from lunch. I asked the driver to stop the car for a minute. I got out and by this time he was under a car. I said his name and he pulled out. He had changed a lot. He said calmly "hey, how you doin'," as though it had been just yesterday since school. We talked for a minute or two and then my friend started honking the horn. He asked if he could take me to lunch sometime and I told him that I was moving to South Jersey that coming weekend, which I did.
I did see him one more time. I looked him up online about four years ago and discovered he now owned that gas station with his son, but it was a huge in-state trucking enterprise by then. He came down a couple of weeks later, both of us old now, my hair was white (which he said he liked) and he was still the soft-spoken, laid back guy he always was. We spent about an hour talking about old friends, many of them gone already, and he did mention "my wife," and I knew then and there that this would be it. He took my phone number and asked if he could come down again. I said yes, but we both knew he never would, and he never did.
Do I still think of him? Yes. But we were just never meant to be.
Formerly Ford1224
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Elie Wiesel 1986
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