I was
about ten or twelve years old.
Can't really remember for sure.
One day I saw a picture of this girl in our local paper.
It had to do with some Brownies activity.
I couldn't get over her face.
There was something about it.
I said to myself, "I'll see you later." .
This was at a time when guys are more interested in bugs, baseball, and bikes rather than
"GIRLS!".
There
was just something about her face.
So I cut out the picture.
My sister saw me and made some fun of me in front of the folks for cutting out a picture
of a girl from the newspaper.
They all laughed and I hid the picture in my stamp collection.
Every kid who was anybody back then had a stamp collection.
It was a place to hide things.
Well
then after that I just got on with life.
I pretty much forgot about the Stamp collection and the picture.
I forgot about the whole thing and went on to other stuff.
Living does that to you.
I had my usual string of loves through school, graduated in 1966 and found a few more.
All normal parts of being young and growing up.
Finally I joined the Marine Corps and went off to war in 1968.
I had completely forgotten about all that kid stuff and the picture by then.
After serving 14 months over seas I found myself back home and celebrating New Years Eve
at a local bar.
A bunch of us decided to go to my parents house for a few more brews and then back out to
the bars.
About 10 to 15 of us came storming in my parents house to find my little sister and a
couple of her friends waiting for their dates to pick them up.
I was the last one in the house while the rest had filed through and went to the bar in
the basement rec.-room.
I walked in sat down next to this pretty little blonde girl and said hi to my sister. Then
I leaned over and planted a great big kiss on the blonde girl.
Looked back at my sister and said, "That was pretty good I think I'll have
another."
Kissed her again and went and joined the party.
I kind of left the pretty blonde girl dazzled without knowing who I was, and still waiting
for her "Blind Date!".
My little sister told her who I was.
She found out she didn't like her blind date and was soon downstairs with the rest of us
in our little party.
One thing led to another, and after a year of so we ended up married.
I always tell people she blocked my advances until she cut off my retreat. Ha ha!
We had
been married for about 15 years or so when my parents sent us a
box of my stuff, that was in one of the closets.
It had some model cars, board games, school papers, and my stamp collection.
I had forgot about all these things and thought it was really neat.
I opened up the stamp collection and there was the picture of that girl.
I remembered when I had cut it out of the paper.
I kind of chuckled and showed it to Debbie, my wife.
It was a picture of her!
I had cut her picture out of the paper, and put it away about 10 years before we had ever
met.
We have now been married for 27 years working on 28.
I kind of wonder if Debbie and I were meant to be.
I call her my Life Mate.
Hope our story brings light to your day.