Not for those who have a limited intake of Sappy

I'm very fond of country and bluegrass music which is not terribly popular in my household or among my group of friends. Well, I do have one friend who had a long ago sordid love affair with George Strait, but since he also knows all the lyrics to Justin Timberlake's 'Senorita', any musical disdain he may have for my taste in music is not particularly harmful to my psyche. I think one of the reasons I listen to country- mainly in my car, where I can turn it up and sing as loud as I like without anyone complaining about the twang- is that a lot of it is about memories and histories and Important Life Events and I love that stuff. Country gets made fun of for songs that make you cry into your beer, but that just means you relate to the song and are filling in your own memories and histories. (Well, okay, there's not a whole lot you can do with 'She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy', but not ALL music is powerful ALL the time.)

My current favorite song is a bluegrassy one they've been playing on the country station- 'I've Forgotten You' by Rhonda Vincent. The other night when Neighbor and I were enduring the interminable wait to see if our husbands would emerge safely from their recording studio, we stopped at Barnes and Noble and I dropped $18 on a live bluegrass CD on which I knew exactly two songs- the one on the radio and a Dolly Parton cover (although in my opinion, no one needs to cover 'Jolene' anymore now that Mindy Smith has done it.) Anyway, I listened to this song roughly 45 times on my way to visit my grandmother yesterday. It's awesome. If you like mandolin, if you happened to hear some Nickel Creek once and were slightly disturbed to find out you digged the bluegrass, you will love this song. Sigh.

But this song! Totally makes me think about the High School Boyfriend because it's pretty much how I felt during the year or two after I moved away from High School Boyfriend, years in which the final accepted definition of the verb "to pine" was determined. Bah. That experience was how I knew I was absolutely not interested in dating anyone unless we were going to get married, because NO WAY was I EVER going to Pine again. (It's also why I was fairly certain I wouldn't date anyone again till I was 30 because one, that seemed like the right age to get married and two, maybe by that time it'd be possible to find someone mature enough to overlook my physical shortcomings and appreciate my Wit and Good Humor and my rad mad spelling skillz. But then I ended up getting married at 23 because, well, it worked out that way and also because God was all, "Dude, this will TOTALLY mess with her head and that will be SO FUN!"

Should I have spent an hour in the car thinking about the High School Boyfriend? I don't know. It really has no bearing on my present, but I do like to dwell in the past sometimes. (As much of a past as a fairly boring 25-year-old has, at least.) And a lot of times it makes me really appreciative of where I am now and where I'm going. I'd be a different person today had there been High School Boyfriend or not, but I don't brush those things off. It might have been silly and dumb and totally deserving of my parents' disapproval (and it SO WAS), but it was also real and I was old enough to know it.

A few years ago I found out that High School Boyfriend had actually moved to my city and was involved in some music scene and had been attending a school right next door to my old office. I'd found this out pretty early on, before Phillip and I were engaged, and thankfully it was more trivia than a potentially Life Changing piece of information. I mean, when you spend a large chunk of your high school career mooning over somebody, you can't help but wonder what happened to them, right? But right before Phillip and I got married, I think I ran into him. I was running a work errand at a hotel and there was a guy waiting there who looked Eerily Familiar. I thanked the clerk, turned around, faced him, and there was the whole exchange of Are You Who I Think You Are Squint Face looks and then a frantic skedaddling out of the lobby. I saved my freak out for my walk back to the office because OH MY GOD and also WAS THAT HIM? I DON'T KNOW, MAYBE NOT, BUT MAYBE AND HELLO YOU'RE GETTING MARRIED.

I didn't tell Phillip about this until just recently actually. I wasn't sure what he'd think, but I am married to Mr. Terribly Secure and Devastatingly Handsome and that is that.(Although he is not allowed to bring up Previous Love Interests because I am decidedly less mature than he is and all discussion of girls who came before incites in me a singular desire to own an icepick.)  I was talking with a friend last night who ran into a similar situation right before she got married and we both agreed that it wasn't the actual person we still found interesting, but the Imaginary Boyfriend we'd created in our heads to fill the space after the real one had gone. It's nostalgia for the completely revisionist and romanticized version of events in our frilly girly brains.

Mucking around in your life history, kindly brought to you by your local country radio station.

My grandmother is in her eighties. She cannot remember where she put a phone number she wrote down or what she needs from the store or who came to visit her yesterday. But if I ask her about my grandpa and how they met and got married, we might sit there for hours while she fidgets with her wedding ring and giggles about the "boys at the army base" and how she waited four years (FOUR YEARS!) for my grandpa to come home from the South Pacific, without even knowing for sure if they'd get married. That's the good stuff, as Kenny Chesney would say. I met my husband when I was 19- I think I'll have a lot of good stuff stored up by the time I'm my grandmother's age. And what I have already trumps everything that came before.