Sunday was the longest day of my life. I went to the phone on five separate occasions and listened for a dial tone. We hadn't been there very long, so figured maybe the operator didn't have our number yet. I called and asked.
"You don't know the number you're calling from?" she asked. I didn't have a very good answer. She gave me the number anyway, and I slumped in the kitchen chair and pondered.
"Something's not right," I said to myself. "She should have called by now."
But she didn't. She hadn't called on Saturday night and she didn't call all day Sunday.
"Maybe her parents won't let her call a boy," Donnie said that afternoon after church.
"What? Why not?"
"You do live in the Bible Belt now, you know. People are just that way here. Girls don't call boys. It's not right."
I narrowed my eyes and looked at him with a large amount of skepticism, but when you're in a varitable storm, you take any harbor you can find.
"Yea, maybe that' it," I said, getting back to the football game we were watching.
I didn't sleep too much that night. My mind would not let it go. Why hadn't she called? What would she be like on the bus in the morning? What would school be like?
Monday morning dawned cold and rainy. Standing at the bus stop in front of Carol Robinson's house in the rain was never a fun proposition, but today I got up early and headed down a full 15 minutes before the usual time. Of course, I was alone for a while, but I did not want to miss the bus today. After all, I had to give her the opportunity to sit with me.
The rest of the kids finally joined me at the stop, and when the bus finally came I got on first, taking a seat toward the middle. "This way she'll be bound to see me quickly and will sit with me before she sits with someone else," I thought.
But when the bus got around to her stop, she was not there. I furrowed my brow and scanned the road. She was nowhere to be found. "No! This can't be!" I thought. "She's got to be here!!"
I wondered what it would take to get the bus driver to stop and let me off so I could knock on her door, but by the time I'd come up with a quick plan, the bus was rumbling down the road toward the front of the neighborhood. It was just vicky Carroll's stop and then off to school.
Perplexed and very upset, I slumped down in the seat and waited for the bus to get to the last stop. I put my knees up on the top of the seat in front of me and crossed my arms. The bus ground to a halt and the rest of the kids got on. The door closed with a soft metal clang and the we started rolling again.
I looked up and saw Vicky Carroll, our class's answer to Lucille Ball, standing in front of me in the aisle.
"Lisa said to give you this," she said with a certain amount of melancholy, extending her hand toward me.
"What is it?" I asked hurriedly.
"It's your ring."
I opened the small, lined-paper package I recognized very well and dropped the shiny Yankee ring into my quivering hand. I don't remember the rest of the ride to school, but I do remember sitting there utterly dumbfounded, long after everyone else was in class. I never saw it coming.
Mrs. Pollet finally came out and asked if everything was all right. I looked around me, totally unaware that all of the other students were gone. "I know it doesn't seem like it now, but there will be lots of others," she said.
Her face was contorted from the tears that filled my eyes. I made no response but put my shaking head down in my hands and sobbed.
We sat there for several minutes until I could control myself, then I followed her down the steps and into the trailer that doubled as our classroom.
It wasn't the last time I tried to convince her. For years I'd ride my bike back and forth in front of her house until one day the left pedal on my bike broke off. I raced her dad around the big block and actually won by a foot or two. No dice. She still wanted nothing to do with me. Or so I thought.
Several years later I found out from Vickie that Lisa had started writing my name on her notebooks the day I moved in. She'd thought I was relatively cute, too, but I'd blown it with my ring plan. And I was so sure that it would work.
After the 8th grade, Lisa went away to school at some religious boarding school. She only came home for holidays and during the summer. After we graduated from high school, she went off to college and I went on my mission. She got married and lived in Hawaii for a while and then got a divorce. I came home from Argentina and went out to BYU for a while.
Shortly after I graduate I was at mom and dad's old house playing ball with my nephew in the front yard. Lisa walked by with her dad. We stood and chatted for a little while and I muscled up the gumption to try one more time.
"Would you like to go out tomorrow night?" I asked.
She said yes.
The dream date I'd been trying to get since I was 12-years old unfortunately didn't go very well. We had a good enough time at dinner, but afterward I drove over to the duck pond to see if the ice was thick enough for skating the next day. After jumping on the ice a couple of times, I raced back to the idling car, into the shining headlights, and hit my face on a large, low-hanging limb. It cut my face, chipped a tooith and knocked me out for several seconds, and I never saw it coming.
I honestly don't know where Lisa is today. Her parents still live in the same small house, but I haven't seen her in years. It doesn't really matter, though. She had her chance. Lots of them. Now, after years of dreaming, scheming, asking and trying, I have finally let her go.
I am married to the most gorgeous woman I've ever known and the best wife a man could have. I have three terrific children, of whom I'm very proud. I'm happy beyond compare. And it hit me like a ton of bricks when it did happen. And you know what the best part is?
I never saw that coming either.
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