I remember that night…It was the last night when I believed that the world was governed by the rules and morals that parents and schools and churches try to impart on us as we grow. I sat in my metallic blue firebird outside an empty movie theatre. The film had been good. I was happy. A temperate February wind whipped Shelly’s clothes around her slender body revealing some very pleasant curves as she stood outside my car door. I was surprised…pleasantly surprised. I didn’t realize that someone so slender could possess those curves. Damn! Now, the wind was warmer than most February winds, but this was Minnesota. She soon stood shivering. Shelly had something that she wanted to tell me. Tears filled her eyes as she confessed how lonely her life had become. Her hair looked so soft. Even now, I can almost smell her shampoo. I would have expected her hair to tangle and snarl against the wind, but her long hair moved in one fluid motion with the wind. She was married. She was getting a divorce, but she was still married. A person doesn’t date a married woman…let alone perform any type of action that would make more than adequate use of those beautiful, sweet curves. I believed that within my soul. It was just a rule. It was who I was. Of course, we had just been to dinner and a movie, but I didn’t call it a date. We had been doing this for the past month. I was naïve. Just because a person doesn’t call any particular activity a date…doesn’t mean that a person isn’t on a date. My rules had blinded me to the most amazing experience. I was falling in love, and she was falling in love too. I invited her into my car as a friend, and I comforted her as best I could. I should have invited her into my car and leaned in to sample her pink lips. It would have been a true, beautiful expression of our belief in one another. For a brief time, we were each other’s Santa Claus. Oh, Shelly, we would have been such a pair. John Greenleaf Whittier was correct, “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”
Heart on Sleeve
Minnesota
