Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Don't Call Me Ishmael

Let me preface this by apologizing to the ex-girls who read this. This is no way a shot at you, just the opinion of yours truly. You are all beautiful women, and I can say this with confidence because, I like to think that other than a few "low" points, I have above average standards on those I consider to be "easy on the eyes".

In this world of MySpace and Facebook and a bunch of other social sites we are able to find some old friends and maybe form some new connections with friends of friends and so on. It can be great but there is a darker side to all this reconnecting. Allow me to give you, Gentle Reader, an example of this dark side.

A few nights ago I was killing some time cruising the Space and I came across the profile of a certain girl that I was involved with in my high school years who, in my somewhat humble opinion, was the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. Even though the face had aged I knew it was her right off the bat, but something was amiss! This was not the girl that used to make all my high school friends envious, she had changed, a lot and, I dare say, it was for the worse.

Is this superficial of me? You bet! Am I somewhat wrong for thinking like this? Absolutely! But I think we all need a White Whale. I've never compared a woman to a whale and meant it to be a good thing, but I digress. What I mean by White Whale is I looked at this girl as perfect and I imagined that she continued to be the perfect woman 10 years later. I come to find out that she wasn't and for some reason I can't stop thinking about it.

Is it because somethings are better left to mystery? Is it because we remember things to be better than they actually where? When I was living in Norfolk, I enjoyed it, but I also thought about leaving and not looking back. When I didn't get to leave on my own terms and was forced to Baltimore I decided that the streets of Norfolk were paved in gold. The streets of Baltimore, the same city that at one point in my life I said that I wouldn't mind living in, were paved in mercury and you would be poisoned as soon as you touched them.

When the Girl and I split it was the days before
every house and desk had a computer with internet access, including my own. It was also before everyone had a cell phone attached to their pocket. I was carrying around a pager in those days and I thought I was on the cutting edge of telecommunications technology. Anyway, her parents decided to move somewhere and because of the aforementioned reasons we just lost contact, that's what you did then. You didn't call long distance on your parents dime so there was no phone calls. We were learning how to use AOL and honestly, what teenager takes time to write a letter. Sure we kept it up for a little bit, but that faded fast. So ever since, in the back of my mind I had an image of this girl who grew into this beautiful woman and just knowing that she was out there kept some sort of mysterious aura about her. I then come across a picture of a girl that I may say hello to in a bar, but I wouldn't necessarily try to pick up. I used the phrase White Whale, and to amplify that point this is like Captain Ahab finding out that Moby Dick washed up on Myrtle Beach last Wednesday. There is nothing in the sea that fascinates him anymore. The positive side to all this: at least this whale didn't kill me like Ahab's did.