Many years later, and several years ago, I was cleaning out the belongings I had left at my parents house and came across that big Tupperware box full of old yearbooks, artwork, trophies, and other useless stuff I will never throw away. In this box was a shoe box. In that box was an inexplicable amount of...notes from girls. The shear amount of them was the first jog to my memory, since I have zero recollection of receiving notes of this kind, let alone keeping them all. But the bigger shock was the content of these notes. As I sat down and began to unfold the pieces of paper that could only have been folded by ancient Japanese Origami masters, I was completely dumbfounded by the content. I remember almost every girl that had so ornately drawn their names at the end of each note, complete with heart dotted i's and lipgloss lip marks, but I have absolutely no recollection of having ever read the contents therein. It was as if I was reading them each for the very first time, which I can't deny might actually be the case (what else would explain how they were still folded up?!). In fact, most of the memories I had of my relationships with these young ladies were apparently very far off the true mark. Girls I thought were just my friends, wanted way more than that, and then wanted nothing to do with me. Girls that I thought despised me, were in fact smitten by my charm and developing virility. And in the most extreme cases, girls that I barely knew, were expressing their undying devotion and eternal love for me. I mean, the passion and strongly worded obviousness of some of these notes should have left some sort of mark in my memory. I can't comprehend how I could have been so oblivious to the things these girls were saying to me, girls that often, I was hanging out with on a regular basis. My point is, that I got all these notes from girls in junior high and high school and it seems that I could not have cared any less. I either didn't care enough to remember any of this drama, or I didn't care enough to even open and read them. I did care enough however to put them all in a dusty shoe box, so there is that ladies! I take peace in knowing that all of those girls, have managed to somehow overcome the grief and sorrow I caused them, and moved on with their lives. They've gotten married and started families, I am still friends with several of them (well, facebook friends anyway). The irony here, is that I doubt they actually remember any of that, and here I am, reminiscing on what could have been, if only I wasn't a block-headed teenager. (and also texting isn't nearly as cool as getting a note)
I haven't even mentioned the saddest part of this story yet though. And this is why I am writing about it now. Just a few weeks ago, I came across a slightly less dusty box, again at my parents house, which held very similar items. Most of the contents in this box was postage. Old birthday cards from passed on Grandparents, Christmas cards, wedding announcements, letters from family and friends from my times living away from home and from people who were away from me. Most of this was pretty standard, and I actually had memories of. But every so often I would pull from the box a letter from a girl. Most of this stuff was from while I was serving my LDS mission in Bulgaria and the years afterwards when I was in college. And again, just like the cheesy notes from high school, it was like I was reading these things for the first time. The hints being dropped, and the fishing questions being asked were so obvious to me now, that I am flabbergasted as to why I was too thick to pick up on them then. It's no secret that even as an 'adult' in college, I was still pretty dang naive about the ways of the woman. I even had a part time flirting coach who, on multiple occasions, had to point out to me what was actually going on with my interactions with the confounding females. Thanks Christie. I should have had you read these letters with me, you know, to help translate. But it seems that once again, I had missed several opportunities to begin, or continue relationships that obviously weren't very high on my priority list at the time. Even in that pre-menacing time when my LDS culture deemed me ripe for the marital bandwagon.
Something many of you in my LDS culture probably don't understand, is that being my age, LDS, and single does not mean that I am sad, lonely, lazy, or apostate. In fact I am completely happy and stoked on my life. In retrospect, of all these lost opportunities I have just learned about, there is only one that I truly regret. (and she'll probably read this). But these two boxes have lead me to amusingly and contentedly ponder, what if...
What if I wasn't such a blundering, oblivious, moron when it comes to dealing with the X chromosomes...?
(and personal kudos to me for using both tomfoolery and flabbergasted in the same post!)
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