If I knew then what I know now posted 9/5/2009 11:24:59 AM | 2 kudos what's this?     report abuse

Nightowl001

My daughter called me late last night, with the usual, a catastrophe in her life she needed to know how to handle. We spoke for a couple of hours, she calmed down, and it turned into a generalized conversation. How work is going, what else is going on. Toward the end of the call, she dropped a bomb.

"You remember your old high school girlfriend, Karen? Sharon?" *

Of course. I remember the first and last name of every girl I ever kissed, and a lot of them I just wanted to. The girl I 'went steady' with for 3 years and had thought I would marry? Unlikely I'd forget her.

"Sharon. Yes."

"She just recently figured out who mom is!"

My ex-wife works for "one of the big box stores" that shall remain nameless. It turns out my ex-girlfriend works there as well.

"Yeah, she was talking to mom and said 'Your name is Bobbie Owl? Do you now Night Owl?' Mom said, 'Yeah, he's my ex-husband.'"

I had to laugh a bit. "I don't know what to tell you. Two ex-girlfriends in the world, and your mom keeps running into both of them. Just bad luck, I guess."

Sharon had been my best friend's sister's best friend. Nineteen year-olds making plans. Window shopping for place settings and juice glasses. What would hang on the walls of our future home. Compromising on tastes in floor plans and carpet designs.

Sharon started college the year out of high school, planning on a degree in early childhood development, while I went to work. Saving my seed money. I wasn't making bad money as a cook, comparatively speaking; It was almost double minimum wage, and I was frugal. I had plenty of time for classes later, when I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. She told me midway through that first year of her studies that she was worried about our relationship. She had read that when one partner gets a higher education and one doesn't, they grow apart. She said was afraid she would learn things, and I wouldn't, and that I wouldn't be able to "keep up" with her as she "grew." I wasn't dedicated to being a teacher and a professional, it was just a vague desire, and she was afraid I would settle into a stagnant rut of just working in restaurants the rest of my life, never "amounting to much. " I pointed out that, at that time, I was working enough hours that I was making more in kitchens than I would get paid being a new teacher. I would make enough to pay cash for a good car, a down payment on a house, have a cushion, and then I could relax and take classes without the financial pressures so many college students face. After all, she had family, lived at home. I had to pay my rent. I had nobody else to fall back on. My priorities were a little bit different.

I didn't see it yet, but that was the beginning of the end. By the spring, she had broken up with me.

Now she's a cashier in a box store.

*Names of all but the author have been changed, but it would be a stretch to claim it was to protect the innocent.

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