My First Childhood Love

(The following excerpt is from a book I am working on, currently entitled, "Dabbling with Dating Disasters" which I might some day get up the courage to submit for publication. Right now, this is the only non-snarky story I've written for that book.)


One of my earliest romantic memories is of my next-door neighbor, Jimmy. I was madly in love with him at the ripe old age of 5 or 6. I knew as certainly as I loved Smurfette, that I was going to marry Jimmy someday. I mean, I was five. I already had a lifetime of being asked if I had a boyfriend and who I was going to marry when I got older. All the adults in my world were married at one point, (my parents, regretfully, still were at the time, as, equally regretfully, were Jimmy’s) and naturally, I was going to follow the same miserable path everyone around me did. How dare I want more from life than that?

With all the innocence of my young heart, I loved Jimmy. I’m sure if you talked to my mom about him and me, her stories would vary wildly from mine, but that’s the thing about a memoir, I’m the only one whose story you get to hear. And my mom? She doesn’t get a chance to speak!

Anyways, I was wildly in love with Jimmy in a childish, but no less sincere way that only kids and truly genuine people seem capable of. I knew I was happy with him and happy being at his house where his parents didn’t fight in the same way mine did. I knew that I loved being able to play with his G.I. Joes and not being constantly told that I was a girl and should have girl toys to play with. I think he was even radical enough to play with my Barbies occasionally (although what is more likely is that he wasn’t radical at all but he was away from the scrutinizing eyes of his dad and was able to see for himself what all the fuss over Barbie was about).

We rode our Big Wheels together. We sat on the porch and held hands, caught fireflys, swapped secrets and knew, just knew, that we would always be together like this. He even told his dad he was going to marry me one day and gave me a red lifesaver to prove it. That was the happiest day of my little life.

Ah, childhood.

Naturally, nothing that pure lasts for long. His parents finally got a divorce, as they should have, and snatched Jimmy out of my life, as they should not have, for nearly ever. He moved with his mom to some miserable southern state. I think it was Georgia. Sure, he came back to visit his dad in the summers and his dad brought him to see his grandparents who still lived across the street from us, but it was never the same for me.

By then, my parents were getting a much needed divorce which wrecked havoc on all aspects of my life, even if it was for the best. I thought my parent’s divorce, even though I secretly prayed for it every night, was my fault. I spent those years in some of the lowest points in my life and I could never bring myself to see Jimmy without being forced to do so.

As a kid, even a kid of 8 or 10 or 12, I still believed, on some level, that the world revolved around me. So naturally the news of my parent’s scandalous divorce must have reached all the way down to Georgia and to Jimmy’s perfect ears. I convinced myself he would think less of me for what I had done, what my family had become.

That was the end for Jimmy and me.

Sure, I made a point to peek out the windows, between the slats of otherwise tightly guarded blinds to see what he was up to, what he looked like when he came to visit. I still swooned over his wavy blond hair and perfect blue eyes. In moments of weakness I even allowed myself to wonder if he still intended to marry me. I was still Catholic then and I prayed fervently that he would notice me, sitting there, locked up like Rapunzel or Sleeping Beauty, even if it was my own exile, and come rescue me.

It never happened.

And slowly most of the parts of him faded out of my life, almost forever.