A few years ago I was inundated with emails enthusiastically proclaiming the joy I would feel as I reconnected with old friends in the gala setting of my fiftieth high school reunion. I remained steadfastly unmoved to action. I never responded, not even to fill out the contact information form they included. I didn’t want to encourage communication. I had very carefully abstained from participation in any high school alumni activity for almost fifty years and wasn’t about to change at this late date.
There was a little tug, however, when I noticed that the girl who first captured my heart as we sat across from each other in the sixth grade was one of the organizers of the event. I remember her as being cute, athletic and what I would now call strong of character.
What attracted me most was that she had lost a portion of a finger in a threshing accident. Her family had immigrated to the United States from their farm in Germany shortly after the war (the big one, WWII). My imagination ran wild when she casually mentioned that, while living in Germany, her finger had become caught in the mechanism of a thresher and was severed. Nothing in my young life had been so exotic or so thrilling.
The memory of this girl, like so many other memories that relate to girls in my young life, carries the sting of opportunities lost. She was one of the gang, one of a group of my friends, boys and girls who shared casual and easy relationships. Although I felt my world orbit around hers, I’m quite sure that she never realized it.
There was one time, just one time, when I dared to single her out for special attention. It was a simple, innocuous and fairly meaningless act that led nowhere. Yet I remember it still. How pathetic is that.
We were being taught ballroom dancing. (Do they even do that anymore?) Each boy in the class was to approach a girl and formally ask her to dance. There was a rush of boys to ask the only girl in our class who had started to blossom (if you get my drift).The boys began to argue and the girl began to cry.
While this was transpiring, I approached the girl of my dreams and asked her, as formally as I could, if she would like to dance. She seemed more interested in the mayhem that was occurring a few feet away from us. I didn’t know if it was fear or envy of the girl at the center of all the attention. Just as the teacher sent us all back to our desks, angrily ending the ballroom dancing session before the first dance, the girl of my dreams turned to me and said, “sure”.