I've recently been in sporadic e-mail contact, via Facebook, with the subsequent "best friend" of the girl I loved my senior year of high school and "left" when I went off to college at UT Austin. (I put "left" in quotes because neither of us knew anything about "love." She and I were very close. Closer than I've been to anyone since. Once I went off to college, Ginny found a new "best friend"; she left me.)
A couple of weeks ago, I Facebook-messaged the friend: "Happy Birthday to Ginny!" (who had died in 1988).
She messaged me back, saying she'd called Ginny's mother on that day...
I replied back with my shallow memories: "I remember that Ginny always spoke harshly to her mother; and is her father still around? I remember that he always drank a dozen Cokes per day..."
What was I trying to prove? That I also had memories of Ginny's parents? Ginny and I used to want to explore different religions. We once tried to find a Unitarian church in Fort Worth and got lost. Her parents questioned us upon our return --- we didn't look like we'd been to church. I also traveled with the whole family to Georgia in the summer of '83 to visit Ginny's grandmother. The car trip, the hotels, the bedroom, the return...
At the time, I thought, "Oh, this is just the end of high school. I'm going off to college. I'm a hotshot. I'll experience hundreds of other intimate moments like this." In fact, I have never since experienced such intimate moments.
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