Twue Wuv, Or, Dear Princess Bride: You Still Rock After All These Years

So I’m a little torn over how to start this post.

On the one hand I could talk about how my husband and I were watching this week’s episode of “Castle”, and how the case he and Beckett were working on brought him back to his lost love, “the one that got away”, and how even though they still had feelings for one another he happily watched her get married to another man, and it was so beautiful, blah, blah, blah.

OR I could open with the session I had with my coach this week-where this conversation actually started-the session where the only thing I had any energy left to discuss was a dream I’d had the previous evening. A dream in which the “dream me” was visited by The Boy That I Was Totally In Love With All Through High School.

I was kinda reminiscing, and talking about the last time I actually saw him (gasp…choking) 19 years ago, at a party for a fellow classmate who was in her summer of being a debutante.

My Coach: “…(silence)…What?!”

Me: “You know, debutantes. ‘Coming out’ to society, and cotillions, and all that stuff.”

My Coach: “I thought all that stuff was made up.”

Me: “Oo-h no. It’s real. I mean, I was never a debutante, but yeah, it’s a really big deal down here in the south.”

My Coach: “I don’t know how to talk to you anymore.”

Which is what she always tells me, laughingly, when I make her head explode. Which, as you might imagine, is a pretty common occurrence.

So then I just started rambling on with some stream-of-conscious memories, and as soon as I said, “Yeah, he was really smooth-he really knew how to work a room,” she said, “Um, yeah, he wasn’t into you at all, was just full of shit. He just knew all the magic things to say to keep the girls interested in him. Because guys are not complicated. If they like you, they ask you out.” Which actually made me feel a lot better. I didn’t have to worry anymore that maybe if I had just done something differently, or somehow been able to be different, then this situation would’ve turned out differently. And that was a huge relief.

My Coach: “Almost everyone has experienced a strong first love, and experienced it not working out and then having their heart broken.  So he was a dick, I’m being totally un-coachy and un-politically correct here, and, moving right along, what else is going on?”

Me: “Well, my 20-year high school reunion is this year, and I’m not sure whether or not I’m going.”

My Coach: “Well it can be fun to go and see people like that, because maybe they’re all bald and fat now.”

Me: “You know, I did see a picture of him a few years ago in our alumni magazine, and he actually is.”

My Coach: (bursts out laughing) “That’s so funny!”

Me: “While I, of course, have become more striking with every passing year.”

My Coach: “I KNOW!”

And truly? Can you put a price on that kind of friendship? I THINK NOT.

And then she said, “And you know. You were probably that person for someone else.” At which point my head exploded and I immediately thought, “Uh, whatever, Lynne.” But because I was trying to be all coach-able and grow-ey  I was all, “Oh yeah, you’re probably right.” {Wink, wink} Because, uh, I know me, and a less likely candidate for being a person that someone would have a crush on is truly unfathomable to me.

(Important Side Note: I actually wondered for a long time why my  husband (then boyfriend) wanted to go out with me. Like I had somehow “tricked him” into thinking I was a person he would want to date, and any moment now he would shake himself free of my spell and see me for who I really was.

And of course, the irony was that he really did see me for who I was, and saw that it was good, and kept on seeing it until I could see it for myself.

And then one day he left me this quote to find by e e cummings:

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”

And even though I was only 17 at the time, I do believe that the moment I finished reading those words was the exact moment I decided that I WAS TOTALLY MARRYING THAT BOY! And so I did. And as it turns out, he was even more incredible than I knew.)

And so there I was, happily secure in my Rightness Of Knowing Just How Wrong Lynne Was, when not one, but two boys from elementary school popped into my head, boys who I know without a shadow of a doubt were totally ga-ga over me. After which I silently and telepathically sent a Giant Stink Eye to Lynne.

But she was totally right.

Back in the third grade there was this boy named Stephen P. who, apparently laboring heavily under some kind of delusion, was pretty crazy about me. He was always bringing me my lunch box at lunch time, and hanging his coat next to mine on the coat rack, and my delicate, feminine response was, “OMG, YOU ARE ANNOYING THE SHIT OUT OF ME!”, in the gracious, open-to-receiving affection manner possessed by 8-year olds.

And then in the seventh grade there was this boy named Wes G. And I was so mean to him. Because he had a hair-trigger temper (*cough*, as did I), and it was so easy to get a reaction out of him. And we were WAY too much alike. (Do you remember that “Friends” episode in the second season where Rachel is going out with Russ instead of Ross, and they are exactly alike, only she is the only one who can’t see it? And then Monica is trying to be supportive and think of reasons why yes, they actually are different, but the best that she can come up with is, “Oh, sure-they’re just like ‘Night’ and…’Later That Night’? ” Yeah. That was us.)

And now all I can think is, “DUDES-I’m so sorry. Why did you waste that precious First Love experience on me?” But hopefully by now they have both found their own True Loves.

Because, in the immortal words of the Impressive Clergyman: “And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva…”