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Freedom
Asking
you to go steady
with
me on our very first date
in
high school
was
the best thing
I
ever did in my whole life.
You
said yes,
because
you liked me enough
and
felt it was the proper thing to do.
Then
two weeks later
you
changed your mind,
gave
me my stupid ring back,
telling
me I was going too fast for you,
telling
me you needed your freedom.
But
it turned out to be
the
very best thing I ever did because –
over
the next year and a half
you
didn’t date anyone else but me.
We
became boyfriend and girlfriend,
dating
each other exclusively
and
that was that – until college
when
your need for freedom
reared
its ugly head yet again.
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the
worst day ever in my life
Winter,
the end of
our
first semester away at college,
I
decide to surprise my girlfriend,
take
the train like usual,
meet
her in her dorm lobby.
But
she’s nervous, not looking at me,
one
pretty leg folded under the other.
A
beautiful girl, so collegiate, so confident,
fresh
as the new winter snow outside.
“I’m
so sorry, Mike” she says,
“But
I can’t see you today.”
I’m
stunned, didn’t see this one coming.
We
had been together
since
high school, two years now,
and
were serious, at least I thought
we
were serious. “I have a date
today
with another guy.”
My
heart sinks to the bottom of the sea.
“I
need my freedom
to
date other guys to be certain
you
are the right one for me.”
I’m
dumbfounded, shattered, I shrug.
What
could I do? It is useless to protest.
But
before leaving the campus
I
slink over to the cafeteria,
spy
from an upper window
as
she and her new boyfriend
come
in for lunch, she all giggling
and
playful, throwing little snowballs
at
her new beau, her lustrous
brown
hair catching the sun.
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She
Never Succumbed
She
gave me my ring back at the end
of
our first semester of college
so
she could have her freedom
to
date other guys. But she made the mistake
of
still dating me too. And while my strategy
to
overwhelm her with attention
left
her no time for these other guys,
for
two anguished years she remained
open
to dating them. Fortunately for me,
it
never amounted to much.
She
had only one official date (that I know of),
a
blind date with a friend of a friend
who
showed-up on campus for a good time.
So
throughout college
she
never made-out with another guy,
never
went away for a weekend
with
another guy, never got to know
another
guy better in the back seat of his car.
In
short, she never succumbed
to
the attentions of any other guy,
not
her hunky football player friends, not
her
brilliant classmates, not the study-buddies
she’d
meet-up with in the library, not
the
popular, handsome dudes
who
walked her to her classes
telling
her what pretty eyes she had.
Nope,
my beautiful girl, my sweet,
precious,
wonderful girl, who one day
I
would marry, never succumbed
to
anyone else but me (that I know of).
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