First Love

I'm at that age where most of my friends are married or at least on the road to marriage. I of course took a wrong exit somewhere and am frantically looking for the on-ramp back to the right highway. But it got me to thinking of my first love. Her name was/is Corey (I'll leave her last name off so no one goes ahead and Googles her, and on the off chance she reads this, although she does know.) I think it began back in 4th grade. Corey lived somewhat down the street from me. I say somewhat because the street she lived on was actually a dead end road, but if you cut through the woods behind the dead end, you would end up on my street. By coincidence, the other end of her street was across the way from the path that lead to school, so years of kids walking through the woods had created a small path. So on random mornings I'd walk (in a group of course) to school with her, or back home from school. Did I ever tell her back then that I liked her? Of course not.

I was never in the 'popular' group, and that's something that went with me throughout my schooling. I was always in between; I hung out with a lower class of person, but I was on friendly terms with the cool kids, so I got a pass. I don't recall ever being tormented that badly growing up (except for one year at summer camp, but that's a whole other story). Corey was one of the cool kids, so she was 'dating' another one of the cool kids. To this day I'm not sure what 'dating' entails at that age, I just know I wasn't part of it. Corey wasn't the hottest girl in school, but she was very pretty, had a lot of freckles, and was left handed. These are the random things I remember about elementary school. Anyway, I think the reason I fell for Corey was because she was nice. Even back then the girls that everyone considered to be 'hot' were stuck up about it. I've never liked that in a person and today I still go for the pretty and nice girl.

I remember this one time my friend Alex was having a birthday party at his house. Alex was the first person I knew with divorced parents, and they let him get away with a lot. Well this party was the first one that included dancing. Not only dancing, but Alex decided it would be fun to have all the girls put their name into a hat, and have the guys pick out one of the names, and that was your partner. I was terrified! Not only would I have to dance, I'd have to dance with a girl! I reached my hand into the hat and as luck would have it, I picked out Corey's name. I was actually happy because as I said, Corey was nice and I knew I'd have a good time dancing with her (relative speaking of course). But something happened - someone complained or a name was missing - and we had to start all over. I ended up picking another girl's name from the hat. I barely knew this girl, except for the fact that she was taller than me and that intimidated me (another thing that has carried over to my current life. I'm suddenly starting to realize my life was formed in elementary school. Odd.) I was afraid I was going to be stuck with this new girl, when, thankfully, there was another re-do of the hat. This time though, the girls picked the guys names. And as I was standing off to the side, Corey comes up to me with my name written on a piece of paper.

I still don't like dancing, but back then it was all foreign to me. The music started and it was like a serving line - two long lines of people facing each other. I couldn't bring myself to get in the line opposite Corey, even though everyone else was dancing. I vividly remember violently throwing down my Red Sox baseball cap on to the ground, sucking in my nerves, and dancing. I looked down the line and saw some of the guy/girl combos actually touching each other while dancing! Of course these days that might be something bad, back then it was just hands clasped from a distance of a few feet. I remember thinking, am I gonna have to do that with Corey?? I never did, but she did wear my baseball cap. It ended up being a pretty nice time.

After 6th grade, I got shipped off to a private school, while all my other friends were off to public. I never saw Corey after that... until... flash forward many, many years and I'm back in Connecticut, working at a hospital. One of my jobs was to look at competing hospital web sites. As I'm looking at our main competitor's web site (the only other major hospital in the city) I happen upon a job listing and at the bottom it says 'Contact Corey *** for more information.' I was floored. My first thought was, hey, she's not married! So I quickly send off an email asking if this in fact was the same Corey from elementary school and if she remembered me. She wrote back shortly thereafter, just as shocked as I was, saying of course she remembered me. We traded emails back and forth a few times that day.

Now for those of you that know me, you know that I live with my head in the clouds. I firmly believe my life is a movie and therefore I will have some kind of fairy tale romance. So when I see that the first girl I ever had a crush on still lived in my hometown and happened to work at a hospital, I thought this was perfect. Think of the stories I could tell the grandkids. Your grandmother and I knew each other when we were young, didn't see each other for years and years, but fate brought us together. It was almost perfect. So I asked Corey if she wanted to get together for a drink the next night. She replied with 'I'd love to but I'm looking at houses with my boyfriend, maybe another night?' Ahh... I should have known better! So we never did get together for that drink. Fast forward a few more years and during that time she and I keep in touch. I know when she got married, I know when she got pregnant, hell, I even got pictures when the kid was born.

Then one night last summer I'm back home with my family, including my relatives from India who were in town for my sister's wedding. We're getting ice cream at a place called Maggie Moo's and sitting off to the side is none other than Corey. She looked almost exactly as I remembered her, except for the 2-week old baby in her lap. It was honestly like looking into the past when I saw her. I froze and wasn't sure what to do. After almost finishing my ice cream I finally got up the nerve and went over and said hi. She's still the friendly girl I used to know. Even while sitting with her husband and 2-week old child, she was talking about how the next time I came home I should call her so we could go out and catch up. I re-introduced her to my family and everyone awwed over her kid and then we left. Haven't talked to her since. I suppose it's time for me to send an email.

I probably wasn't all that close to my fairy tale romance, but I'd like to think I was. I guess I still have time for all that to come true. Hmm... The second girl I ever had a crush on was in junior high. Her name is Carrie. I wonder what she's up to these days :-)