The One That Got Away
Jan. 18th, 2004 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
same_skyI had a denim purse in sixth grade. It was about the same shape as the one I'm carrying now, which just goes to show how styles always seem to turn up again. It was acid-washed, mind you, not starchy and new-looking. It was a good purse, and it contained all sorts of good things, like six pens and two highlighters (pink and yellow), a house key with about seven keychains, a wallet with some change in it, Tylenol. I tried not to keep anything too sacred in it--I was well-known for losing purses. I once left a purse--not the denim one, I was long past that by then--in a bathroom in a two-bit town in Tennessee when we lived in Memphis. It stayed there for a week before we stopped to pick it on the way home--I was deeply irritated because they didn't look at my wallet with its carefully-labeled homemade ID card to check my identity but rather a folded note sent home for my parents to sign--permission to attend a safe sex lecture, I believe. Oh, the indignities of being 12--I still have that purse, by the way. I have great taste in purses.
That was later, though, and this tale is about the denim purse, or rather, it's about a particular item in the denim purse. I had it with me the day we moved to Memphis from Augusta. (Georgia, if it matters--not Maine.) I was sitting in the cab of the gigantic U-Haul with my dad. I was depressed because we weren't in a Ryder. We never had a Ryder truck when we moved, and my most recent infatuation was with a boy whose dad worked for Ryder. I wasn't horribly upset about leaving Augusta, though--I'd given up on the boy and I was rather used to moving around by then. If I had known that I would spend the first week crying after school in Memphis, I might have been less enthused, but until then, moves had always been easy for me. I was a little nervous, a little excited, a little sad, a little annoyed at leaving after only six weeks of sixth grade, which was at a junior high that you had to walk outside to get to some classes.
Anyway, somewhere between the old life and the new, I inevitably got bored. I put down my book and started looking for something else to do. I rummaged around in my purse, probably looking for one of those pens, and I noticed a piece of paper. I didn't exactly remember what it was, so I pulled it out.
I had no idea that I had ever had a secret admirer! My heart was in my throat. I unfolded the letter carefully.
It was the first love letter I ever received, and I never did find out who my anonymous sender was. I don't know when he put it in my purse and I don't know what he saw in the quiet little girl with glasses covering her whole face and her nose perpetually stuck in a book, but it made me smile like nothing else in my life had up until that point. I put it in my under-the-bed box of keepsakes and papers with my 4H badges and honor roll certificates and it's been there ever since. I cleaned that box out a couple of months ago and tossed most of the stuff in it, but I couldn't bear to throw this faded and worn piece of paper away. I've had letters since then from boys who can spell better and from one who cared enough about me to marry me, but I guess there will always be a special place in my heart for that one and the boy who made me feel like I was the one who got away.
That was later, though, and this tale is about the denim purse, or rather, it's about a particular item in the denim purse. I had it with me the day we moved to Memphis from Augusta. (Georgia, if it matters--not Maine.) I was sitting in the cab of the gigantic U-Haul with my dad. I was depressed because we weren't in a Ryder. We never had a Ryder truck when we moved, and my most recent infatuation was with a boy whose dad worked for Ryder. I wasn't horribly upset about leaving Augusta, though--I'd given up on the boy and I was rather used to moving around by then. If I had known that I would spend the first week crying after school in Memphis, I might have been less enthused, but until then, moves had always been easy for me. I was a little nervous, a little excited, a little sad, a little annoyed at leaving after only six weeks of sixth grade, which was at a junior high that you had to walk outside to get to some classes.
Anyway, somewhere between the old life and the new, I inevitably got bored. I put down my book and started looking for something else to do. I rummaged around in my purse, probably looking for one of those pens, and I noticed a piece of paper. I didn't exactly remember what it was, so I pulled it out.
I had no idea that I had ever had a secret admirer! My heart was in my throat. I unfolded the letter carefully.
It was the first love letter I ever received, and I never did find out who my anonymous sender was. I don't know when he put it in my purse and I don't know what he saw in the quiet little girl with glasses covering her whole face and her nose perpetually stuck in a book, but it made me smile like nothing else in my life had up until that point. I put it in my under-the-bed box of keepsakes and papers with my 4H badges and honor roll certificates and it's been there ever since. I cleaned that box out a couple of months ago and tossed most of the stuff in it, but I couldn't bear to throw this faded and worn piece of paper away. I've had letters since then from boys who can spell better and from one who cared enough about me to marry me, but I guess there will always be a special place in my heart for that one and the boy who made me feel like I was the one who got away.
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-19 12:11 am (UTC)