I attended my first high school reunion when I was 19 years old. I spent the evening thinking about love and looking for Paula Prentiss. By the end of the event, I learned there’s love, there’s infatuation, and then there’s first love, a thing apart. And Paula wasn’t coming.

Larry, my date, a 29-year-old astronaut candidate working on his PhD at Rice University, worked for NASA and drove a red Porsche. He spent his work days figuring out how to keep people from burning up during docking procedures in space. I spent my work days in the NASA awards office, wondering what on earth Larry saw in me. I was infatuated and impressed.

Larry graduated from Lamar High School in Houston, and we had been dating for months when he took me to his 10-year reunion. The Lamar High Class of 1956 included Paula Ragusa, who went to Hollywood and turned into Paula Prentiss. No one knew if she would come, and when she didn’t, Larry suggested her lack of interest might have something to do with being called Paula the Bean Pole for three years in high school. She had the last laugh, that’s for sure.

I felt out of my depth with so many grown-ups, so I smiled and said little. Larry introduced me to his best friend from the old days, and I curtsied but kept my resolve not to giggle or otherwise reveal myself to be so young. (In a few weeks I would turn 20, and Larry said he would be relieved not to be smitten with a teenager.)

I resisted the urge to scream when the friend shook my hand and began to squeeze so hard I thought my fingers would scream for me. I looked at him, but he was looking past me, smiling into the distance. He raised the other hand in a combination wave and salute. He didn’t realize he had my hand in a death grip, because I didn’t exist for him. He had seen someone across the room. He dropped my hand and walked away. I asked Larry what that was about.

“His high school sweetheart. First love. That’s her in the blue dress. Still beautiful, I see.”

“His heart still throbs; my hand still throbs.” I shook my wrist, and he laughed. I made him laugh. Maybe that’s why he liked me. Maybe he’d forgiven me for thinking his Porsche was a Volkswagen on our first date.

“She burned him pretty bad. It was rocky at worst, intense at best.”

“Ten years later, and he loved her best?”

“Best? No. He loved her first. There’s love, there’s infatuation, and there’s first love. You only feel like that once.”

The remark rang true; I filed it away for future evaluation.

***

Forget the past? Live in the present? If you like, but I love to visit the past, and to re-experience the good things about growing up in a small town in a gentler time. The past and present are not mutually exclusive, and we learn from the past. Experience smartens us up as much as formal schooling.

Writing about love once may be too often, but I can’t help it. When I re-visit junior year, I think about love. When school started it seemed everyone at TCHS was in love except me. My sailor boyfriend was gone, and the only thing I loved was the fun of dating, especially because while some girls liked “bad boys,” I liked nice guys.

I dated Jerry, the brother of a classmate, a little older, and smart. I liked him and respected him, and I remember him fondly. I dated Terry the lifeguard, who had the keys to the swimming pool, and we sometimes sneaked in after hours with two or three other couples. No one ever suggested we go skinny dipping. The boys were gentlemen, and the girls were ladies.

There was Vic the TCHS track star. His pal Eddie dated Janice. Victor and Eddie crowned us “Track Queens” (no snickering, please), so we dressed up and handed out medals at track meets. We didn’t get our picture in the yearbook, which we both thought was too bad. Vic was unhappy because I wouldn’t promise to date only him. He called to give me “one last chance.” I refused. He stopped calling.

I was having a great time, but I wondered what it would be like to be in love like Karen and Mike. I observed a harmony between them, a calmness under the excitement. I’m happy they stayed together; it would have disappointed me if they hadn’t. I observed other couples, too, who claimed to be in love. The first time I heard the F word out loud was from a girl, screaming in face of a boy she was supposed to love. I didn’t think they would last; they didn’t.

Then I did fall in love. In small towns, you didn’t “meet someone” as it’s frequently put. You already knew them. Everyone had a connection. You knew the brother of that one, the cousin of this one. I knew Charlie because he was Gene’s best friend, and I knew Gene from the time I was in sixth or seventh grade.

Funny, how you remember one morning among hundreds of others. One morning I sat in my BFF Carolyn’s car in the parking lot at TCHS. There were spaces along the curb, even late in the morning, because no one could parallel park. Maybe that’s why I watched with interest as Charlie pulled up and skillfully parallel parked his 1953 Chevy ragtop. The top was down, and he and his friends manually tugged it back in place. It was September, so there would be a raging thunderstorm sometime between 3 and 5 pm. I thought Charlie was attractive, but serious and dignified. Not my type at all.

We had a class together and had spoken a few times, but I was surprised when he called and asked me for a date. I said no, I was busy, but try again some time. He did, and I said yes.

We went to the Thespian play with Gene and Jeannie (compatible then and for a lifetime). To illustrate the fickleness of memory, I recall Charlie parking the Chevy as though it happened last week. The 1963 yearbook indicates the play was Guys and Dolls, and even though a few years later I would perform in that play myself, I had no recollection of seeing it in high school. Memory has a mind of its own.

Soon we were going out every weekend, and soon we were in love, but I disliked his car. The submarine races on the dike attracted couples, and it was the duty of those without dates to honk and harass the young lovers, but I couldn’t figure out how they recognized us in the dark from 30 yards away. They called out to Charlie and me by name. I hated that, but I envied their eyesight, and I said so.

Charlie laughed. “They don’t recognize us. They know the car. Who else has a ’53 Chevy convertible?” Welcome to Small Town U.S.A.

What was it like, then, to be in love? Although the car was unique (I was relieved when it was traded), our romance probably wasn’t, but it was real, it was intense, and it makes me smile to think we truly believed no one else ever felt like that. Judging by the burgeoning population of the world, it should have been evident, even to high school kids, that many people did feel like that, and took it one step further than we ever dared.

If there was anything unusual about Charlie and me, it was that we knew we weren’t a good match. We wanted different things from life. I dealt with it by being angry; he dealt with it by denial, but perhaps that knowledge gave our relationship a poignancy it would not otherwise have had.

I wonder about high school sweethearts who marry and stay married. Do they sometimes recapture the magical feeling of first love? Do they wonder who they might have loved but never knew? Do I wonder what my life would have been like if I’d made different choices? The answer is three times yes. We have to choose, and we do, mostly without regret, but in our minds we all stroll down the road not taken now and then.

* * *

Most men would rather drink an acid martini with exploding olives and a lye chaser than share the smallest inner thought, but writers are an exception. Tom the Writer, a friend from my Atlanta days, had much to say about everything. We were in an adult education creative writing class, and toward the end of the term, a group of us formed the habit of meeting for drinks afterward.

We sipped our beers and pondered our next assignment, which was 2,000 words on the subject of first love. We agreed it was a cliché, usually a high school event 30 years ago for most of the group. But Tom sparked a conversation. He posited that the experience of first love for girls is just a trial run, while it’s devastating for boys. It leaves them gob-smacked, said Writer Tom from Tennessee.

“Girls expect it, hope for it. Guys don’t. We know there are girls around, but some time in high school, maybe junior year, they aren’t girls any more. They’re dazzling young women. You cannot imagine the effect a pretty girl can have on a 17-year old boy. Someone you’ve known for years smiles at you, and you’re gob-smacked.”

I went home to think about that. I couldn’t imagine being a boy from the TCHS class of ’64, any more than I could imagine being a duck, but then again, I knew ducks quacked and lived in marshes, and I knew the boys made a lot of noise and I knew their habitat.

I knew the times, the Saturday night places. The boys pooled their quarters for gas money to drive up and down Sixth Street, or sneak a trunk-load of pals into the Tradewinds drive-in movie, where the concession had the best French fries in town.

They went to the Terrace drive-in restaurant, where protocol dictated the approach. Enter on the left side off Palmer Highway, drive around and across the front to see and be seen, then exit to the right back to the highway and pull into a spot at the back of a row. One night a sophomore half-way through “the drag” hit a support post on the awning, and the awning collapsed on the cars. Chaos. When a car-full in the middle wanted to leave. They all had to back out onto the highway, and as soon as they were clear, the line-up pulled back in, one slot closer to the front, the ideal spot. No more backing up, and when you left, you drove out forward for one last lap.

But was Tom right? Did female creatures the boys only tolerated become interesting, even distracting, almost overnight? Were the halls a river of beautiful, poised, smiling young women, all bright eyes and tight skirts? And OMG, they all had breasts!

I spent a little time with my yearbooks open so I could compare how people looked year to year. Picture to picture like magic, the girls turned into women. As for the boys, if it wasn’t for the suits and ties, they would all look like fifth-graders. Good-looking, yes, but not like grown men. Not yet.

It must have been crazy-making when one day a girl came into class late and smiled. The boy felt weird. He thought, what the hell? The girl slid into the desk in front of him, and he couldn’t look at anything except her long, shiny hair. He had no idea what just happened, but he had to do something about it. He called her up and asked her out.

In one month and six dates he was hopelessly in love. After that, he couldn’t breathe unless he knew where she was, what she was doing, and when he could see her again. And OMG, could he bed her?

And what was the girl thinking? Something along the lines of OK, here it is. Good. Let’s see what happens. Go all the way? Never. Well. Maybe.

But probably not.

Because the girls of the class of 64 were the last convertible, the last of the Mohicans, and the last picture show all rolled into bows, headbands, and big, innocent eyes, sexy without baring all, alluring because they were unattainable. Not that they couldn’t be seduced, but it was on their own terms, with their own conditions, and defined by their relationships. In a few years the women’s movement would change the rules, some for better, some for worse. For all the freedom and new paths open to women, the girls of the class of 64 had one freedom that stands out as it dribbles away. They had the freedom to say no without apology or explanation.

Before all the rules changed, the girls didn’t think much about football or grades. They thought of the inevitable moment when they would fall in love for the first time. They dreamed about it and imagined it, even practiced it in junior high. They knew it was coming, and when it did, it was the right and proper thing. They took it in stride. They were not gob-smacked.

No wonder the boys were stunned at the spectacular transformations as little girls grew up, lovely and comfortable with themselves. The boys would catch up and catch on, and then girls took it all harder, but high school love?

The boys were good-looking and all slicked down and neck-tied up for the photo, but they didn’t change. Yes, Writer Tom had it right. First love, at least in those days, was harder on boys.

***

Now that we have the internet, most wonderful invention in the world, I know how so many stories ended, and what a satisfying thing that is to a storyteller.

Paula Prentiss, who didn’t come to the reunion of the Lamar High Class of 1956, turned out to be one of the rarest of Hollywood stars. She married Richard Benjamin, her college sweetheart in 1958, and they’re married still.

Larry from long ago never became an astronaut. He got cut in the next to last round. He did get his PhD and held several patents, including one for a method to weigh astronauts in a zero gravity environment. He married the girl-after-me, but they were divorced. He had no children, and he died of leukemia in an infirmary in New Orleans in 2012.

But as Tom was right about first love being hard on boys, Larry was right about first love being unique. By definition it only happens once, and you don’t forget it. Falling in love never feels the same as it does when you’re 17 years old. What happens later is better, finer, more lasting, but never the giddy same.

In the spring of sophomore year, I dated John for a short time. I wasn’t in love, but I’ll never forget him because he was the first young man to send me roses. I also remember the first time I had lasagna, at Pino’s near University of Houston, and even though I’ve eaten that delicious dish many times since, I’ll never forget that first time at Pino’s.

Charlie found his lasting love, and so did I. Both memory and feelings are abstract, and it’s twice abstract to remember a feeling. Long after it’s over, everyone remembers how it felt to be in love for the first time. Unless it grew into something else, beyond infatuation or first love, you seldom loved your high school sweetheart best, but you did love them first.

And there’s nothing like the first time for anything, be it roses or lasagna. Or love.

NEXT (Dec 15):  Here We Are, There Ain’t No More . . .