One glorious summer I had a romance with my best friend's sister's best friend. She and I were both teenagers at the time, but she was three years older than I, which was quite a feather in my cap with my friends.
In our teenage eagerness to act the part, we thought that being in love meant kissing a lot and touching each other in dark theaters, so that's what we did.
Her name was Jenny, and my yearning, angsty teenage heart thought that we just might last forever.
We were no more brainy than any other teenagers, so she and I and the friends we hung out with would walk to a local school around midnight and goof around in the schoolyard. More than once, our running around and giggling woke up locals who threatened to call the cops, and we had to split quickly.
One night on the way out or on the way back, a ring slipped off of Jenny's hand and into the grass of a yard next to the sidewalk we were following. Jenny was distraught and insisted that everyone search for the ring in the grass.
The ring was given to her by another guy, and I didn’t give a damn whether she found it or not. On the other hand, I didn't want to look like a jerk. I looked for the ring with everyone else, not knowing what I'd do if I did find it. I still don't know what I would have done.
Jenny didn't find her ring, and it dampened the evening. About halfway through the summer she or I (ok, it was her) lost interest and the relationship came to an end.
I was young though, "Wayne's World" was a new movie, and I had no idea that "Bohemian Rhapsody" was an old song getting in a good second run. Life went on.
I saw Jenny not long ago, working at a local restaurant, and the memories came flooding back. Now that I don't have to be a lovelorn teenager anymore, I can remember her and the ring that I didn't want found--but still looked for earnestly--with a fond smile.
1 comment:
Every word of this story is the God's honest, absolute truth. When writing it occurred to me a few weeks ago, I found that even though I had already gone to bed, I couldn't sleep because I was afraid that I'd lose parts of the story before I got it typed.
I'm still not quite sure why it came so urgently, and I thought at the time that I'd post it over at EMB with some kind of business lesson tied to it.
It isn't a business story though; it's a story about a dumb kid in love. So it's here instead of at EMB.
But I will say this: A couple of weeks ago, I was in Wyoming with a gaggle of friends. None of them were involved in the story here, but my good newly-married friend, Leon was there.
At one point he was out in a hay field fooling around on an ATV, and his wedding ring--which he hadn't even been wearing quite four weeks yet--slipped off of his finger and into the grass of the hayfield.
He called me over, and when he told me why, my heart skipped a beat for him. Even though I wasn't thinking about this story consciously, I was genuinely frightened.
But then I looked down, and to my great relief, his ring was in a clump of grass almost right at my feet.
I guess sometimes you're meant to find the ring, and sometimes you're not.
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