rosie, I’ve been reading those, and yeah, young love is a BIG story. I wasn’t in a sharing mood much, but here’s mine now. Call it a rainy day story, since it’s raining. Also since I looked at the calendar just now and realized this coming Monday will be the 30th anniversary of the day I met this girl.
I’ve discussed Susan, the present day semi-stalker who was married when we had our torrid love affair, of 23-24 years ago now. I was over the moon for her, but aside from my wife, if there’s a one true love of my life, the One That Got Away, but only because she had to for the sake of both our sanity - it was Kay.
I played baseball during high school, not for my school, but for a club team that played in a Legion league. All the year before, then again that spring, my friend Tony was trying to fix me up with one girl or the other. One day he came to practice raving about his neighbor (T lived in the next town over) who had JUST gotten dumped by her boyfriend. Kay went to one of the area catholic high schools, and was dating Mr Big Jock on Campus. T is all over how pretty she is, and so nice and he’d go after her, but he had a girlfriend he loved and blah blah and I HAVE to meet her.
I’m skeptical, because honestly, as much as I liked his girlfriend, T had very different ideas than I did about what constituted pretty. But he tells me she’s going to be at our game that next day, so I’m pretty much committed to at least meeting her. T’s folks were having a party at their house the same day and we’d planned to go right from our game, so his big plan was for her and I to spend time with each other, because we were SOOO perfect for each other.
On the field, pre-game, we’re taking infield warm-up. T played shortstop, I was at 2nd. He sidles over next to me and says “There, next to (whatever the hell his girlfriend’s name was, I forget it now), they just sat down. I look up, see his girl sitting next to someone that looks cute enough, but she’s 100 feet away. A few minutes later I look back and see the girlfriend pointing right at me and talking to Kay. Infield practice is over, and we’re walking back to the dugout, the girls are sitting right behind there and they get up to say hi before the game. Now I see Kay close up. And get introduced, and lose my heart forever.
She was, to this day, the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. Spring-fresh. Scrubbed squeaky clean. All-American apple pie blonde. Smelled like lemons and angels. The most luminous blue eyes ever. Wearing a pair of daisy dukes and no one, ever in this universe did them justice like she did. And a t-shirt from her high school (it was Kelly green with white letters, I close my eyes and still see it), tied at the waist. sigh
His girlfriend introduces us, Kay, this is Tony’s friend Bus Guy, BG, this is Kay. She smiled at me and said “Hi, all Tony talks about is you. Nice to finally meet you. You going to hit me a home run today Mr. Ruth?” I laughed nervously….OK, I had some power occasionally, but I was a single/double hitter that stole bases and annoyed infielders. But, of course, I say “Yes ma’ma, maybe 2, just for you” We laugh, I go into the dugout and the game starts.
Ahem. 9 innings, a win and (count ‘em folks) TWO home runs, a triple and a single later, I’m everyone’s hero. T and I are walking back to my car, the girls meet us there and Kay is just grinning with a smile that made the sun look like an eclipse. We make small talk, and agree to meet at T’s parents later.
He and I get to his house, I use his shower, change and go downstairs. BBQ is in full swing, maybe 50-60 people, neighborhood folks, family….But no Kay. Tony explains, she said she may come over later, but that she had a huge headache from being in the sun all day and was lying down for a while. Then he pointed out her house, right behind and over one from his. Kay lived there with her mom, and two younger sisters.
After an hour or so, Tony suggested I go over and invite her over. There’s a trellis leading to a flat roof right outside her room, he says he uses that to knock on her window and they sit there and talk a lot, I should do that. I load a plate with some chicken and potato salad, stuff a couple cans of Coke in my pocket and climb the trellis. Try that holding a plate someday.
I knock on the window, she laughs at the audacity of my using her secret entrance, I blame Tony and invite her out for some dinner. We spent a couple hours there, just talking, laughing and watching the sun go down. After dark, we went back to Tony’s and sat on his parent’s porch swing with him and talked until the sun came back up. We never touched, we never kissed.
At dawn, she jumped up and realized she had to be at work in 3 hours. I walked her home, and asked her out that night. That night, we went to a movie, where no more than 10 minutes into the show, she was sleeping with her head on my shoulder, holding my hand.
When the movie was over and she woke up, I got my kiss. It tasted like that strawberry lip gloss everybody wore back then.
Kay and I spent the next 7 + years dating each other or not. We’d break up, we’d get back together. I loved her so much, but I was not the type then to settle down to one girl. Life was a smorgasbord, and I had a lot of plates to fill. In that entire time, she never, ever dated anyone else. When we would go our separate ways, she would just wait for me to “ come to my senses”, because she knew I always would.
In all, we were probably together 2/3 of the time over those years. I could do no wrong in her eyes. I never cheated on her, in the sense that while we were “on”, I was faithful. But we’d fight, we’d go off and I’d find someone to ease the pain. Then, I’d come back. It was always me, I could never make her ask me out or call me first.
As she got older from 16 to 23, she only got more beautiful. She got a good job with a home builder in their accounting department and bought a HUD home in my town. Friends and I helped her rebuild it, and she lived there until 4 years ago. We finally called it quits for good late in 1983. We stayed friends, even close friends. When I met and married my wife, she stayed in the background as the ex that my wife shouldn’t meet. She probably knew how transparent I’d look with my wife there. About ten years ago, they met by chance at a fundraiser we were all at. Later, my wife asked if that was “that Kay?”. I said it was, and she just said, “well she’s very nice, obviously you have good taste in women”.
Four years ago this coming June 30th, I got a call on my cell phone from Kay’s kid sister. Kim, the youngest, we always called Baby Sister, was the most precocious of the 3 sisters. Kim was crying, but I got out of her that I should get to Kay’s house right away. 2 police cars and an ambulance were there when I arrived. It turned out that it was an aneurysm that killed her in her sleep. On the wall in her hallway was a framed 5 x 7 of a picture a friend took of us at Great America after her senior prom. I was sitting on a brick wall, she was sitting on my lap, legs hanging over mine with her head laying down smiling that smile and kissing my cheek.
Kim took it down and gave me the picture. I keep it tucked away in a drawer and every so often pull it out for a look. Per her will, she was cremated and her ashes dumped off a cliff in the southwest of Ireland, the name escapes me now. But it was a place her sister and her visited years before and she fell in love with.
So, that’s my young love story. I think in the long run, she was hurt more by knowing me, than I was by knowing her.
I’m very excited. I’m also determined to do some furniture rearrangement, so that will be fun.
