We all have one.
That one special person, maybe even your very first crush that turned into a boyfriend-girlfriend situation.
But then something happened.
Life.
You moved, they moved, whatever.
As a military dependent living with a very ambitious Staff Sergeant in the United States Air Force, we travelled a lot.
It was our last week in England, before we would head to yet another base in yet another country.
She just walked into the office of our high school where I was flirting with the receptionist, who tolerated me more than anything. I was saying goodbye to a couple people in Administration as I was leaving campus for the very last time.
She had to be six-foot four if she was an inch (she was 6’3”). Sea-green eyes, a beautiful athletic body, and a Texas beauty queen smile that completely stopped me in my tracks.
Back then I thought I was Charles Romance, capable of attaining any girl or woman I so desired.
Talk about full of shit.
I approached her and she was indeed, from Texas. Austin to be exact. Her dad was a Colonel and they just moved here.
Like a dumbass, I fell in love with Annette with six days before we were leaving.
We were inseparable.
I wasn’t required to go to school in the last week before we were being transferred to our next destination, so I mean every available minute of every single day would find us kissing or clinging to each other.
We left in a light snowfall heading to Germany.
Once again, I cursed at the military, my parents, and my peripatetic lifestyle.
So technically, she wasn’t the one that got away, because I never had enough time with her.
I preferred to have one steady girlfriend as opposed to a smorgasbord of players, but that presented a problem for me. I had difficulty in confining myself to only one single, solitary woman.
In Las Vegas.
Up until my girlfriend of six years unceremoniously dropped me like a bad habit, I had never felt the pain of rejection or the shame of abandonment.
She deserved better than I gave her and she was justified in leaving.
She actually tried leaving me once, but I ended up flying up to Flagstaff, Arizona to retrieve her and start our Las Vegas adventure.
I often write about some of the people I knew in Las Vegas and how that city ruined many a marriage.
But I certainly have no room to talk.
I wasn’t married, but our relationship rapidly eroded under the bright lights, easy money, drugs, alcohol, gambling tables, and the gorgeous women.
It was a full deck and it seemed to doom me to a solitary existence, which I took right to, with the smorgasbord and all that.
That is why it made ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE WHATSOEVER that I would want to hook up permanently anytime soon with anyone.
Fast forward to 6/21/87 Santa Barbara, California and I am exchanging wedding vows with a woman I still can’t stand to be away from.
Go figure.
Stay well.
