Ghosts of Relationships Past - Part 3

Lee

Lee was kind of a quiet guy, but what he lacked in volume, he more than made up for in self-confidence. This guy had an ego the size of Texas. He & I met through a mutual friend and the sparks kind of flew almost immediately. He ended up being my first real boyfriend.

Frankly, I'm amazed that Lee stuck with me for as long as he did. My father, being of old-school Latin American dating ideals, INSISTED on chaperoning all of our dates. And by chaperoning, I mean sitting 3 rows behind us at the movies and other fun things like that. It's no wonder that I still prefer sitting on the back row of the theater to this day.

The all-girls school that I attended had a class-swapping program with the all-boys school (where Lee attended). What a god send! This afforded us ample opportunities to see each other (without a chaperon) and be wild teenagers on both campuses. That is until my sneakiness was foiled by a very over-protective father.

One late afternoon, my father showed up at the all-boys school to discover that I had been lying through my teeth exaggerating the truth as to what I was there for each day. I was grounded big time and banned from talking with Lee. I was devastated! And then my memory gets a little murky on this next part. I think the whole thing was so emotionally scarring that I've blocked a lot of it out.

Since Lee & I were pretty much incommunicado, we eventually drifted apart. The nail in the coffin came one afternoon when Lee came over to our campus for a class. He & I went into one of the drama classrooms (how fitting) to "talk". We sat on the floor and I listened to him spout out all these reasons as to why he didn't want to see me anymore. I was devastated and all I could think was that I didn't want to cry in front of him. So, in an attempt to make a really dramatic exit, I stood up and headed for the classroom door, when suddenly...CRASH.

Apparently, the way I had been sitting on the floor resulted in one of my legs falling asleep. However, I hadn't noticed this until I was on my feet ready to run out of the room. I took step one and then step two resulted in my knee buckling and my face hitting the ground. I bit it. Hard. As if I wasn't already upset about this jerk dumping me, I now had to face the embarrassment of picking myself up again and trying to make some sort of civilized getaway. And all that prick could do was laugh. I did manage to exit the room without any additional falling episodes and Lee & I parted ways for good.

I ran into him several years later, while we were both in college. He wasn't as cute as I had remembered, but that ego was still intact. He married some girl and became an attorney (I think). And his Texas-sized ego is now, ironically, living in Texas. Good riddance.

Just when I thought my freshman year of high school was going to be a complete romantic wasteland, along came my saviour...the purple paisley guy.

{to be continued}