You’re My Obsession

One lovely benefit of the Interwebs is the ability to Google your whole backstory. You can look up old jobs, old home towns, historical events, and even better, historical men (come on; you know you’ve Googled your high school crush).

But something gets forgotten…if you can Google, they can Google you back. And that’s exactly what happened to me last night, and I’m still wondering what exactly to do.

mimi has never thought of herself as a particularly bewitching sort of woman. Fetching, perhaps. Charismatic in a Pied-Piperish kind of way (there are benefits to working with young people all the time). Definitely infuriating (at times) and stubborn (most times), but not bewitching. Well, apparently mimi doesn’t know her own strength, for in her email was a note from a long-lost man in her past, and man, did it contain some food for thought along with the trip down memory lane.

Turns out “Preston” hunted up my college roommate and got my email and emailed me. Cool! I love hearing from old friends. What left me flummoxed (gobsmacked, poleaxed–pick your adjective) was Preston’s declaration that basically he’d fallen in love with me at first sight in college and has carried ye olde torch ever since, through two marriages and a passel o’kids. Now if that won’t throw a spanner in your day, I don’t know what will.

Complicating things is the fact that Preston and I shared one of those college moments that you tend to remember as if they’ve been set in a snow globe. Just the once, and nothing really serious, but memorable. So now a couple of grown folks are reminiscing about when they were young and foolish folks and playing the what-if game.

It never would have worked (obviously didn’t, as there is an entirely different, quite wonderful male installed here at Chez mimi), but that doesn’t stop you from wondering what if it had. What I find more interesting is how truly unsure and weird you are when you’re in your early twenties, despite your announced certainty that you know everything and if the cranky old folks would just hand over the keys to the universe, you could fix it all and still have time for dinner and a movie later.

Now that I’m closer to cranky old folks age, I realize how adrift I must have been. Thinking the perfect relationship was the way to solve things? Hah! My faculty advisor used to tell me he hated the spring because that was the season where the engagement shrieking began in the women’s dorms, and every shriek was another bright young future dimming because all her attention would now be on a wedding rather than herself. I’m not knocking those people who do find the right partner early and live happy lives; I’m just saying I think those cases are rare, and I certainly wasn’t one of them.

Clearly, you never know sometimes exactly how you come across to people. To me, I was young and untried, uncertain of who I was or who I wanted, and generally kind of screwed up and weird. To Preston, I was the unattainable perfect woman (and trust me, I have never once looked at myself in the mirror and thought, “Yeah. That’s the look for today…unattainable perfection!!”), the one who got away and was always neatly stored in the closet of regrets. Funny how that works sometimes.

I emailed back. Sent him pictures of our family on horses on a Pacific beach and a closer shot of myself with Frick and Frack, all smiling and laughing together. He sent me pictures of his wife and three daughters. Two happy families, as it should have been all along. Maybe those college interludes are just warmups for wonderful.