I was busy with newspaper and yearbook obligations as a junior in high school, and I was hoping for something to happen in the romance department.
I had been doing a few columns with my long-time friend Paul for our school newspaper. He tended to be more of a serious reporter type than I was. I wanted to add satire to serious news stories. I wrote things that I liked and hoped others might too. He was into hard-hitting exposes. After a few times writing together, we decided we would be better off working alone.
One spin-off of us hanging out together as writers was meeting Carol and Barbara. Carol seemed more interested in him, and Barbara, maybe a bit in me. We were all too shy to actually do this right. I eventually lost track of how this turned out for him and Carol, but there was a time after weeks of meeting and talking, that I decided to call Barbara on the phone one night. As I would later find, it is all about timing.
Calling a girl was a big deal for me at that point. Even though we had spoken enough for me to know she liked me at least a little, calling her up made it more official, somehow, for me anyway. And then, unlike now, there was usually only one phone in a house. Well, maybe two phones, but no matter how many extensions you had, you still only had one line.
So, of course, when I finally got up my nerve to call, she did not answer. One of her parents did. Barbara was called on the phone. She seemed OK with me calling, and we had a moment or two of awkward small talk. Then I heard some commotion in the background.
She tried to quiet it down so she could talk to me, but it seemed something was going on that she wasn’t aware of. She went away for a moment, then came back, saying she had to run. “The house is on fire!”
I thought, “Sure, it is.” But, it did seem more creative than “I have to go wash my hair.” I really thought it might be an excuse to not talk to me. But after she hung up, I heard the fire trucks leaving with sirens and horns blaring from the station a few blocks away. If she was faking it, she certainly knew how to sell the lie.
I found out the next day that they had had a small kitchen fire. She thanked me for calling, but also said her father was not OK with me calling her again. Evidently, once things had calmed back down to normal, they had discussed who I was, and maybe a yearbook picture was shown, and he did not approve of my hair. Things with her cooled off right then. Not that they were all that hot, to begin with.
Later in the year, I started hanging out a bit with two young ladies, both named Cindy. I have no memory of how this started, and in the end, nothing came of it. But, there had been enough flirting for me to know one or the other or both might be interested in me. Thinking of the possibilities for my senior year helped pass the time during the summer. Or, maybe it made the summer drag on more than usual.
Then, early in my senior year, I met Sarah, and I never saw either Cindy again. Of course, even my relationship with Sarah didn’t last. But if we hadn’t met, that seagull flying into the sunset photo wouldn’t exist.
Memory is the Key 