The One Who Got Away
Like all red-bloodied, pubescent American girls of the 50s I certainly did my share of dating.
In junior high school we started to pair off and with little information and probably more mis-information about the birds and the bees, we experimented. (My cowardly parents, rather than having that embarrassing conversation, gave me a not very graphic and not very helpful book entitled From Little Acorns.)
And we indulged in some innocent hanky panky in friends’ houses when their parents weren’t home, but I don’t remember any of those junior high school boys taking me on movie dates or out to dinner.
Then in high school there was more serious hanky panky on couches and in cars, and we girls finally got taken out. More often it was on double dates when we two girls went to the ladies room together to talk about the guys, giggling through adjacent toilet stalls. And I remember dinners at dimly lit Bronx restaurants, eating baked ziti while candle wax dripped onto checkered tablecloths.
I did date one college guy while I was in high school – he had a car, was tall and lanky, and had to bend down awkwardly to kiss me good-night. Years later I heard he served some time for a white collar crime – I always knew he was a bit shady,
Then in college the dating got really serious and there were a few good men in and out of my life. (See Cherry Coke, and Playing with Fire). And then after college, a marriage or two. (See My Snowy Year in Buffalo, Obit, Cross Country by Mustang, Bed and Breakfast, and Valentine’s Day in Foggytown)
And then many years with the same guy. (See New Leaf)
But often when I look back at those dating years I find myself thinking about the one I let slip through my fingers, the one I let get away.
And I ask myself, What if?
– Dana Susan Lehrman
