Reunion

Sometimes I start to wonder what ever happened to old boyfriends...and friends for that matter. Just the other day the man and I were reminiscing about old times in the "hole". We asked each other, "Hey whatever happened to the really cool girl that moved here in fourth grade?" And "Did you know that kid that moved in junior high burned his last school to the ground?" So that got me thinking, whatever happened to my first "real" boyfriend. I was a fourth grader full of spunk and rebellion, and couldn't quite fit in with the cheerleaders (we find out later that I never would). I rode the afternoon school bus over to the junior high for my gifted art classes and that's where I saw him. I was smitten with a boy with a rat tail - mullet hybrid, and he was blond! He wore a long black coat and knew how to smoke. He was the classic bad boy. The one and only, that every school in every state and every city has...and every girl has a crush on at least once in her life. Actually he was only the first in a long line of bad boys to come.
He was bold and brazen. I was awkward and embarrassed. Most girls laughed at me, whispered that I was crazy and weird because I liked him. I have always had a taste for the cowboy in the corner, the dark horse with a secret in the shadows.
I looked out the window as we pulled into the junior high parking lot and saw him walking toward the bus. He strutted right up to my window and asked me if I really liked him. Shaken with sickening butterflies, I think I only nodded my head. Voila! We were boyfriend and girlfriend! At least until he moved away, or dropped out...I can't remember.
Which leads me to where he might be now. The man and I both knew him and he lived in our hometown, so we knew of his family. Maybe it wouldn't be too hard to find him?
Knowing several of our friends had walked the rough road after high school, we looked in one last place...
An adult straight sentence for second degree burglary in Laurens county. Look's like he's up for parole next Friday, best of luck! Once a rebel, always a rebel? I don't even know if he would remember me or not. I guess it's a good thing that I only teetered on the edge of darkness for such a brief moment in my early adolescent years...all those nights over at Elisha's, dancing in the den to Metallica and Skid Row...(bands that none of the cheerleaders knew) and fantasizing about James and Sebastian, wishing for our own to come sweep us off our feet. Pure pubescent dreams.

Years later I stepped off the black metal train and met another dark horse, this time he was a little harder to tame and I still don't think I broke him completely-- like Anne Shirley says, "I think it would be nice if he could be wicked but wouldn't be."