"I had waited for time to change her. The only change that came, was over me." --Jethro Tull, "Look into the Sun"
"...the distance in your eyes..." --REM, "Losing My Religion"
When I was in my junior year in college (Northeastern), I was attracted to a girl (freshman). It took me a long time to muster up the courage to talk to her and even when I did that, I mucked the whole thing up. I was definitely NOT at ease. It was fairly obvious to everyone (except me, of course!) that this was not going to go my way. The problem was that I was thoroughly infatuated with her and basically made a pain of myself (not to mention an ASS). Not that I could have been brought up on 'stalking charges'; I was just always in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong idea.
This lady was Nancy Ludwig and about all I knew about her was that she was a CJ (Criminal Justice) major and she was from Portland, Maine.
Why am I saying all of this?
Simple....to apologize.
Now, of course, you can realize now the length of time that has passed (20+ years for the math impaired), but I've found that when you become a born-again Christian, you have to do some strange things. Well, if you're not 'saved', don't bother to get into it, you won't understand.....but that's okay.....;) And, of course, from this perspective, I'm not going to go out and try to find out whatever happened to her, it would be doing stuff like I did all those years ago.
But anyways....
Nancy, I'm sorry I bugged the hell out of you. I could make a lot of excuses, but I won't. I was infatuated and didn't do the right thing about it.
Now, if anyone reading this should know Nancy, let her know the apology is here. If you're reading this, Nancy, well, I'd like to hear whatever happened to you, but it's your call. The funny part, is that, over time, the image of you have become imaginatively embellished to the point where you almost forget who the person really was. Actually, Nancy, or the construct of the imagination, has been a constant character in many of my writings. Whether my characters match reality in any way would be interesting to know! Contact me at didymus7@hotmail.com
We now return to our regularly scheduled memories.....BACK
You know how things go...never like on TV! I broke my promise and proceeded to find where Nancy was now and sent her a letter. In retropect the letter was pretty lame, but I did apologize. I always make the effort to apologize without adding 'but's'. You know, 'I'm sorry that I did that but...' and you proceed to make an excuse. There are reasons for everything we do, however, I like to explain them and not make excuses. At the present time more than a year has passed with no reply from her. So it's time to hang it up again. As I have no way of knowing whether she received the letter or not, there will still be a little doubt. But I made the effort, I apologized.
Maybe I'm a little obsessed with this, but I really have the urge to find out what has happened to her over the intervening years.
Strange things happen. Sometimes they happen 20 years after they happened....I'll explain. I dug out my college yearbook, the Northeastern 'Cauldron' from 1975. While leafing through the pages I came upon the picture below. Now after 20 years I'm not 100% sure, but I think the picture below is Nancy Ludwig Lemieux Pease at the tender age of 20. Why a sophmore would appear as an unlabled picture in the Senior's book is probably due to the fact that she appeared in the section for the Criminal Justice School, which, though not as bad as engineering, has very few women. I still think she's pretty. What do you think?
The rather sour look on her face is exactly what I used to get from her....;-).
Oh, why am I doing this? I figure that one of these days she may actually see this page and get irritated. My bad.
Thus ends this monument to infatuation. If anything ever changes, I'll be sure to let you know!
Did you notice what I did in the picture above? Take a look at which hand Nancy has her watch, then the guy behind her. Either the rare occasion of two left-handers behind each other, or, most likely, the negative was reversed left-and-right when it was printed. In the old days of negatives, that happened quite frequently.