Reply #43: Johnny, let me tell you a story

[DancingBear]

I was a very quiet young man in high school, and I watched girls from afar. I knew girls who wrote my name on their notebooks, and who signed the cast on my broken ankle "love, xxx." I tried to talk to them, I really did, but I felt as if I was watching a birthday party that I never got invited to. I couldn't see the invitation that was waiting for me - I couldn't believe that someone would actually ask me.

College, at first, was no better, until one day I realized I was far from home, and among strangers. I decided, then and there, for reasons still unclear to me today, that I was going to show these people here that I had something to offer. I knew I did, and here, now, was a place to bring it forth. I started to believe in myself, and the introverted kid let the extroverted kid drive the car.

She was, as all us boys called her, "the little one", and I talked to her that first night from my dormitory window. My hands shook as as I stood by her door on our first date, but I had to be the person who went to the party this time. So I screwed up my courage, and the skinny kid with the stringy long hair went out with the little one. She told me stories of her father and his insistence that she learn how to solve mathematical equations, and I told her all about Connecticut. She had the bluest eyes, and as the night grew late we held hands as we slept.

She still can't figure out mathematical story problems, and I never lost the confidence I found that day. We still hold hands as we sleep, and we grow old together knowing we are the missing pieces in each others' lives. I found my best friend 34 years ago, and it had nothing to do with what women want.

But everything to do with what one man needed.