The Thunderbolt

I had something really good. A truly Grandiose Rumination, replete with Minutiae and I decided to dink around Facebook for one second longer than my memory allowed and now I have forgotten. So, I retraced my steps to try to figure out what it was. Then I got distracted, checked my e-mail, watched a video of troops coming home and surprising their kids, had a good cry and here we are. Back to no ideaville.

But now it pops into memory.

I had a friend in high school. It was high school love at first sight. I was literally emboldened the first time I saw her. She was a year behind me, a Freshman, dating a senior. So clearly she was precocious. I like that in a girl. The first day I saw her, holding hands with her boyfriend, I walked up, pried their hands apart, took hers in mine, looked her in the eye and said, "You will be mine. You may as well say your goodbyes to this guy now. It won't be long," or words to that effect.

If I were Sicilian, they would have said I had been hit by "The Thunderbolt", described as a rapturous and uncontrollable desire to be with someone upon first glance alone.

It turns out, Thunderbolt went to my church and she started coming to youth group after our encounter. Coincidence? Probably because she never showed much interest in me. We became very close friends. We hung out a lot, even went out to movies and dinner, just we two, but we weren't dating. That's what she said.

So, I employed a move that I would use again a year later under a different circumstance with a different girl; a story which I will reserve to a later blentry... I started taking her best friend out.

O.K., I know what you are thinking, about how awful it is to use someone like that, but I really liked the friend. She was a nice girl and we had fun so I wasn't using her. I certainly wasn't struck dumb each time she walked in the room or anything, but I liked her. The fact that their houses were kitty-corner to each other and Thunderbolt could see me picking up her best friend to go out on a summer night in my shiny navy blue Mustang had nothing to do with the strategy. I insist.

It wasn't until more than a full year after I began making inroads that she decided it would be okay to date me. I was elated except for I had just happened into a relationship with a girl whose last name I didn't know.

We were on a bus trip to Stratford, Ontario to see either Romeo and Juliette or Richard III, I forget which for I went twice to the Shakespeare festival that year. My friend Sam had a girlfriend who was kind of cute. Long story short, by the end of the day Sam was not my friend and I had gained a girlfriend.

I didn't know until a day later that she was 'that' girl. A girl of some ill repute. Certainly not fitting of my high station regardless of whether her reputation was well earned or ill bestowed. Thunderbolt knew this. She watched the drama play out on a bus in front of an all too willing to watch audience. If we indeed went to see Richard III that day, the bus drama was certainly better than that which the Bard provided us (I don't like the play).

Thunderbolt indeed stopped playing hard to get and actually went on the offensive. I think I have given you, dear reader an unvarnished view of my lack of scruples and so the 'other' girl had to go. Couldn't I just be straight with her? Let's imagine that conversation, shall we?

"Hey, I like you, but I found out you're the one with the reputation (and the alliterative nickname to go with it) for being a lusty strumpet (sticking with the Shakespeare) and I am still Catholic at this point in my life and therefore chaste, at least for another couple years and so I don't think it's gonna work out. I mean, I know I literally stole you from my former friend in front of 70 people in a big shiny metal box rolling down the highway like some sort of deranged Agatha Christie plot, but only 4 short days later, I am done with you."

That wouldn't do. The conversation went like this instead:

"My grades are suffering (they were not, I had just received an academic honor award) and my parents were shocked and appalled that in this time of academic crisis I would choose to divide my focus between school and you, dear one. So, while it pains me ever so much to say it, I must go. Be free, and know, I'll love you until you turn the corner of this hallway and leave my life, forever."

Thunderbolt and I immediately took up. Immediately. Like, five minutes later.

It was the greatest 30 days of my life. She dumped me over the phone while trying to make plans one night. I took it hard, but in those days, I had a lot of guy friends and a reserve stock of girlfriends, so I bounced back pretty quick.

We remained friends. For years we were very close. I never stopped loving her. I really did love her. Even looking back my feelings were genuinely strong and real for her. Eventually, they just became a part of our dynamic, which is to say didn't factor in too strongly. It was there, but is was not there.

Sure, I visited her in college while I was dating someone and she was dating someone and it didn't seem to matter that weekend. Sure, there was more than one weekend like that. And sure, maybe we made out several times while her boyfriend was in the very next room and my friends were running blocker for me. There was no decorum. There were only hormones.

It occurs to me as I write this, I actually took her as my date to my Friends Regina and Matt's wedding! And I had a girlfriend at the time. What a slug. Since we are on a tangent, let me take this time to tell you that Thunderbolt dated a fraternity brother who was in the same house as my very dear friend Dave (whom I reference often). When Dave and I met many years later when he and my other very dear friend, Greg began a relationship, we found out we were in the same room at the same time at the same party and watched the same couch catch fire and be pushed out the same window. It was then I made my exit not wanting to be arrested that night. The rest of the story, known to me only through lore is hilarious. That was nearly a decade before Dave and I would "meet" for the first time.

Back to the main story. I took it hard for a long time that Thunderbolt rebuffed my many and varied advances. Truthfully, not a lot of girls did. But she did and that never sat well with me back then.

The last time I saw her was a week before my house burnt down which would have made it October 1997. She was with a new boy, I was with the same girl. We had a very tense dinner and a party afterward. It was a great Halloween party. Not because it was a great party, but because it generated a lot of stories and was a harbinger of the big fire that would happen only a week later. She left in the morning with her entourage and her iguana while I was still in a stupor from the night's events and I never saw her again.

Today is her birthday. The Ides of March. A day to beware (see now the integral nature of Shakespeare in this blentry?). I went to her Facebook page to wish her happy birthday whereupon stumbled I some photos of she and her husband (my attempt at iambic pentameter).

HE LOOKS JUST LIKE ME! Bald, heavy, goatee... Seriously, we could be twins! So, all these years later at least I can assume it wasn't my physical visage she found unattractive. Which means she probably viewed me for something else entirely; a stupid oversexed boy with no discernible character not worth the time or effort it would take to make me a solid citizen in her world.

I can accept that.

Besides, it looks like things worked out really well for both of us. If you read this, Thunderbolt (and I really hope you don't because unlike Ms. Christie, I have left not just a trail of bread crumbs, but large neon signs pointing to your true identity and I don't want that to offend you), happy birthday. You are a very fond memory and our story is a very good story.