July 31, 2000
PRC3
I am the nostalgia queen, and I have an odd memory for dates. This combines to make me insufferable at times. What is it today, you might ask cautiously? Well, today is Bob's birthday. Who's Bob? Bob was the most serious relationship I had in high school. We met while we were both working at McDonalds for the summer. We started dating as the result of a prank, really. A very "Much Ado About Nothing" sort of situation. One of our co-workers kept coming up to me and going, "Bob really likes you, you know." He was trying to embarrass me. Wait. No, if memory serves, he actually said something more like "Bob's got the hots for you." Meanwhile, the same co-worker was telling Bob pretty much the same thing about me. It wasn't long before we were dating.
It was one of those very sweet cases of first love, one that ultimately ended because of parental pressure (on his side) due to a difference in our religions. (He was Mormon, I wasn't, and showed no signs of converting.) We dated for almost my entire senior year, though, breaking up just a few weeks before I graduated.
The last time I spoke to him that summer was on his birthday. He was dating someone else by then, a nice, parentally-approved Mormon girl, but I called him on his birthday for two reasons, partly to wish him a happy birthday, and partly because I'd just received some horrible news and wanted to talk to someone who knew me and knew the situation. Essentially, that was the day I learned that my father had pnuemonia and likely only had a few days to live. Bob had helped me through several crises around my dad during the nine months we dated, including one evening when I got so upset and panicked that he ended up coming over and just holding me while I cried. I thought he might understand.
Unfortunately I called when his new girlfriend was around, so all I got was a cold, impersonal "I'm sorry to hear that". I remember how that made the hurt that much worse, how betrayed I felt. Of course, the fact that I was still not over him and was more than a touch jealous might have been involved there too.
Geh. Nostalgia sucks. I'm remembering how much guilt I had over that relationship ending. Part of me still feels like it was my fault. I mean, it was a doomed relationship. Obviously. The religion issue just wasn't going to go away, period. I still wonder though, what might have happened...
The last time I saw him was in 1992, about a year after I'd gotten married. It was a Saturday and I was working as a bank teller. His little brother came in and spotted me. He didn't say a word, just finished his business with another teller and left. About forty-five minutes later, Bob came in, obviously freshly-showered (damp hair and all) and wearing a shirt and tie -- on a Saturday. I remember being oddly touched. I also remember being touched at how disappointed he looked to find out that I was married. About that time, Gary came to pick me up, fresh (or not so fresh) from his job in a machine shop. So, I introduced my freshly-scrubbed ex-boyfriend to my grimy, sweaty, stinky husband. Can you say 'awkward'? But it wasn't awkward for long, because as soon as Bob figured out who Gary was, he mumbled something about having to go and beelined it out of the bank.
Of course, given how the marriage turned out, my mom's comment was that she wished I'd stayed with Bob. Last I heard, he went to BYU. I wonder where he is now...
Posted by Lisa at July 31, 2000 11:41 AM
