Trippin' 20/20

It's a system shock to open your inbox and see an email from your very first boyfriend. For kicks I'd found his name on www.classmates.com and emailed him.
We met over the phone of a mutual friend where I was staying the night in January of 1988. I don't know if it was a hoax or if she really hoped we'd like each other. He was 15, I was 13, and we talked for hours that night-or maybe one hour but when you are talking to the first boy who really seems to like you, even one hour is a very long, very good time.
We didn't talk again after that until March. Sitting together in Mrs. Spanarkle's science class, studying minerals, my friend said he'd asked for my number which I enthusiastically gave. I think I can visualize how my room looked to me the first time he called.
I can still see the blue of his eyes that shocked my system so the first time we met, for just a moment, outside of my grammar school- he on his bicycle and me about to board the bus.
Our first romance only lasted three weeks, until the end of the school year- but I felt magical for all of them.
That wasn't the end of it. We spoke several times over the summer and bumped into each other early that September in the high school library- I was a freshman now. My infatuation never waned but we didn't really date again until my sophomore year and his last year before leaving for college in Florida. The sweet agony of knowing I would lose him but helplessly loving him! I wanted to marry him then and for the rest of high school as we would continue to date every time he came home on break. I really thought it could happen.
That was a different lifetime. For both of us. Hearing from him spurred me to see what a different person I am now. Outside, too. I have lines around my eyes now, and often under them. I know pains I couldn't have imagined at 15.
I do not know any more about his life or past now than he does of mine but I do know he is a husband and a father. And neither is he that slightly too skinny kid riding his bicycle to school.