Ah, reader, spring. The sun emerges, the snow melts away, and deadly pollen count becomes an issue again. And spring always gives birth to new love. Ah, love. What better time is there in life than that brief window called love? This crazy romantic interlude, which begins when you’ve met someone you can spend the rest of your life with, and ends with your dawning realization of just how long the rest of your life is going to be. Ah, life. But, back to love.
“Love is a many-splendored thing,” as the poets say. Nothing else in human life has the power to reduce your intellect, your will and your self-control into a quivering, jellied pus-pile like love does (pianos dropped from tall buildings being the notable exception; that’ll jelly you up right quick). And that’s just one of the many splendors. Remember: there are many.
Yes, reader, I have loved. Her name was Nina, and she was spectacular. I spent a year gathering the courage to ask her out. Of course, semesters being the length of time they are, by the end of the year she was long gone. So I reluctantly settled for Susan, my dearest Susan.
O my dear, sweet Susan, my delicate Susan, my hefty Susan, with her booming dulcet baritone voice, rising incongruously to an ear-piercing banshee screech during periods of excitement, anger or Twilight. Her supersonic vocal blasts could bring down an armored truck. Her singing in the car was retroactively responsible for bringing down the Hindenberg and the Holy Roman Empire; resonating throughout time, space … and my heart.
Alas, reader, she left me, as the great ones always do. It was Oct. 31. She claimed I wasn’t listening to her. I tried to explain that the blood running down my ears was no Halloween costume, and in fact evidence of my listening to all she had belched out into the world, but to no avail. She away’d, and that, as the poets say, was that. I had lost my last chance at love.
Time passes by, and life moves on. I fill the space in my heart with kittens and scrapbooking. But I’ll never forget my dear, massive, boisterous Susan, and the gap she left in my soul … and the HDTV her squalling had shattered.
