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When my kids were young I used to write stories for them. Not a very tough audience, but they grew up fairly well balanced so I wonder if they actually read my stuff.
I still get a kick out of sitting at the keyboard occasionally and watching what pours forth. Here's one I particularly like:
I think I was about twelve when the dreams began. In these dreams there was always a crowd, and in the crowd there was always the same young girl. She was about 14, slim, with long black hair halfway down her back - or sometimes in a pony tail, and dark brown eyes that sparkled like frost in the moonlight. She was so attractive, I always noticed her right away.
After the first few dreams, she began to notice me. She began smiling shyly whenever she saw me looking at her. I noticed that even when she wasn't looking directly at me, she often glanced sideways to see if I was still there.
This was pretty heady stuff for a 12 year-old boy, and I would often wake up in the middle of the night short of breath and my face burning. She was so real, and the feelings her attention elicited in me were so new and so powerful. After awhile though, I got over my initial panic and began enjoying the time spent with my new friend.
By the end of the first year I was completely infatuated with the dark-haired girl, and I was sure she liked me, too, because she started teasing me unmercifully. Every time I walked toward her, she would smile and watch me until I was almost to her and then she would scamper away, laughing. But it was a happy, teasing laugh, never taunting. Sometimes I would even try to trick her by moving ever so slowly toward her hoping she wouldn't notice, but she always did, and at the last moment would slip away, looking back at me with a toss of her long, dark hair.
I never learned her name, she never said a word. Whenever I tried to talk to her she would put her finger to her lips and shake her head no, but her eyes told me she wasn't upset. That was okay, because by now I was totally, overwhelmingly in love with her. Well, as much in love as an adolescent can be.
The dreams lasted for about four years, then stopped as suddenly as they began. At first I was crushed and heartbroken. I was miserable for months, but slowly it dawned on me that these dreams were really a sign that this was the girl I was fated to meet someday, and marry, and we would be together forever. I became as convinced of this as my belief in the sun coming up each morning.
About a year after the dreams ended, I tried dating to see if other girls affected me the way my dream girl did, but the girls I went out with seemed lackluster and uninteresting. Maybe they sensed I was comparing them to someone else. I also felt a sense of guilt about "cheating" on the girl I loved.
After high school I studied engineering. I dated some in college, but it was more for companionship than looking for a serious relationship. I still believed the girl in my dreams was out there, waiting for me like I was waiting for her.
After college I took a job with a small company in Minnesota. Through my twenties and into my thirties I sped. I had a challenging job, a nice car (Jaguar, if it matters), and a great two-level apartment overlooking a lake near Minneapolis. Sometimes on weekends, however, I would succumb to loneliness, but my faith in my dream girl never, ever wavered.
Three days after my thirty-second birthday, our project manager asked me to fly to Phoenix to meet with one of our sub-contractors. The meeting didn't last long, and I had a puzzling feeling that this transaction could have been accomplished by phone. After the meeting I had a lot of time to kill before flying home, so I took a taxi to the zoo. The day was bright and, this being Phoenix, hot, but not uncomfortably so. The zoo was crowded because school had ended the week before. After wandering around the zoo for an hour or so I found an empty park bench and sat down to rest my legs. The sun was lower in the sky now and it was cooling off. I was very content to sit and watch the people going by.
Suddenly, the crowd seemed to melt away, and there, walking toward me, was the girl I had dreamed about and waited for ALL THESE YEARS. Tears flooded my eyes, for she was just as pretty as I remembered...and still 14!
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