At the ripe age of 10, Dr. D and I met one fateful day in grade school choir when the director asked us all to line up according to height. I was taller than him by two inches on that day, and try as he may to catch up to the perpetually “tallest girl in the class,” he never did. Unfazed by our differences in stature even five years later, at the age of 15, he gave me butterflies by stealthily breaking into my school locker and placing small slips of paper in each of my subject binders.
As I opened the corresponding binder for each class period that day, I found a slip of paper containing part of a poem written in D’s boyish, yet painstakingly legible penmanship. Despite having every class in common and being in the habit--as most close friends are--of talking to one another, we somehow managed to go through the entire day acting as if nothing was out of the ordinary. I felt electric anticipation with each bell ringing in the next class period, because inevitably another part of the poem would be waiting for me.
The last piece of the poem that day was found 2 minutes before the final bell rang. It read:
As I opened the corresponding binder for each class period that day, I found a slip of paper containing part of a poem written in D’s boyish, yet painstakingly legible penmanship. Despite having every class in common and being in the habit--as most close friends are--of talking to one another, we somehow managed to go through the entire day acting as if nothing was out of the ordinary. I felt electric anticipation with each bell ringing in the next class period, because inevitably another part of the poem would be waiting for me.
The last piece of the poem that day was found 2 minutes before the final bell rang. It read:
And now as this poem comes to an end,
there is just one thing left to attend.
A question upon which my future does depend:
Will you be my girlfriend?
I'm not sure 15-year-old D could have ever guessed just how much of his future was actually tied up in it all. The rest, as they say, is history.
