This story is for Mic, the Beautiful Mess, who asked, “What fiasco?”

With the birth of my third grandchild imminent, and a fourth from my younger daughter due this summer, my thoughts are much on my dear Long Suffering Wife, Karyn. That we’ve had such a wonderful ride together these 26-1/2 years is amazing enough; that we got together at all is just shy of a raising-the-dead miracle.

While I spent my whole second half of high school pining (OK….whining) for Karyn, she didn’t see me as much more than the dreaded friend. A very close and beloved friend, mind you…but a friend. Except for that one week….

Fall in New Jersey almost makes the place look beautiful. Yeah, there’s all the colorful leaves and stuff. But for me, it was too things: the marching band season (some people called it football season) and falling in love. Yes, I know…falling in love is for spring time. Well, the great poets aren’t from north Jersey. There was just something about the air turning cooler and darkness coming earlier that brought out the romantic in me. That’s the time of year when my best friend Hudson and I would go for long walks in the woods behind the Cedar Grove resevoir, talking about the unimabinables in life–would we be famous some day, would we travel the world, would we ever have girlfriends. In summer, you just feel too lazy to bother with deep thoughts like those. But in the fall, somehow you were reminded of your mortality, even as an invincible adolescent. And somehow, that made me feel more alive than at any other time of year.

It was in the autumn after Karyn became a follower of Jesus Christ that The Week occurred. For months I had been begging her to go out with me, never expecting any results, and not finding any reason for those expectations to be disappointed. And then, without warning or reason, she said yes. We were at some kind of event–can’t remember if it was a cast party for one of our plays or Campus Life, whatever–and she just turned to me and said she would go out with me.

After my head reattached to my body, some kind of instant transfomation occurred. It was like I ripped open my shirt and there underneath was a costume that said “Super Boyfriend” across the chest. I wasted no time. That weekend I walked across Rtl. 23 to the Newberry’s department store and spent $4.95 on a little cross necklace for her. Nothing too good for my woman (now, please remember, those were 1973 dollars!). On Monday, we had a snow day. I walked from the south edge of town, where I lived, to her house on the north side. And that must have been National Super Boyfriend Day, because everything went as smooth as the ice on Bowden Pond near her home. I hit it off with her kid sisters, who all thought I was adorable. Even her mom seemed to like me. Karyn and I went sledding on the tiny hill across the street, behind D’Amico’s Drug Store. We did the whole snowball fight thing, the whole rolling in the snow thing, the whole pushing snow in each other’s faces thing…the whole basic we’re so in love scenario.

Now for the real test…an actual “date.” Now, I have no idea what it’s like in high school today, but in 1973 in Essex County, NJ, no one went out on “a date.” Not, at least, like you’d see in the 1960s series Dobie Gillis when Dobie would take Thalia Menninger to the malt shop. No, you were either “going out”–which was just short of being married–or nothing at all. But somehow, Karyn and I slipped into a time warp back to the 50’s, and decided to take Hudson up on an offer to double date to a movie with him and his girlfriend.

You are about to learn why I have never been able to watch Doctor Zhivago since that day.

Doc Z was the chosen movie. The date progressed swimmingly. By the time the Russian Revolution was under way, I already had my arm across Karyn’s shoulders. Hudson, being three weeks further along in the art of love, was going at it good with the girlfriend person. They were basically using only one seat.

I was at a movie with the object of my desires…we were on an honest-to-God date…and I was invincible. The movie spent its required one-and-a-half hours winding up to its stirring climax…soon it would be Karyn and me in the back seat of Hudsons trusty Plymouth Valiant…the music rose to a shimmering crescendo…and then words appeared on the screen. Words etched on my mind. Words I will never forget.

INTERMISSION

This movie was only half over. An intermission in a movie…I’d never heard of it! And in that 20 minutes of intermission, without the movie to provide the romantic backdrop, without snow to roll in and push in each other’s faces…something passes away. Something climbed over our feet without even saying excuse me and left the theater. I never will be able to explain it…but somehow that intermission in Dr. Zhivago was the kryptonite that killed Super Boyfriend. At the Campus Life meeting the following Friday night, I got the official “lets be friends” post mortem.

And so I sit here tonight, married to this incredible human being now for over 26 years. Not on a date, not even ‘going out’, but married mind you. How that happened is a story for another time. For now, let us dream of crisp New Jersey autumn evenings, the gentle scent of the oil refinerys in Hoboken on the wind, the traffic on Rt. 46 providing its musical background. And let us smile at teenagers in love.

Downtown Cedar Grove, NJ. where love blooms in the fall.

The high school of rumorsage and the LSW from outer space.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2004 at 10:54 pm and is filed under It`s All About Me, Tell Me a Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.