My first love

Facebook is a funny thing.

A while ago, my first (and favourite) boyfriend ever, found me on facebook and friend-requested me. He is married now and lives far far away. I hadn't had any contact with him in probably 15 years.

I accepted him as a friend and was directed to define 'how do you know this person' I hemmed and hawed over what to write. Facebook gives you some options...
'we worked together,
lived together,
went to school together,
met through a friend,
we hooked up.'
but none of them were ones I wanted to use. There is one option that I use regularly to describe how I know people and it is that 'we met randomly'. This gives you the ability to fill in how you met using your own words.

I left it blank and over the next few days, anytime I would sign into facebook, I would go to that step and start typing something in for how I knew him. It was never what I really wanted to say though and I always deleted it.

The problem was, that what I wanted to write was that he was my first and favourite boyfriend; that he really was my first love; that he was the person who I most regret treating the way I did. None of these things are problems on their own but coupled with the fact that he is married now, it seemed disrespectful and inappropriate for me to write any of those things.


I first saw J when I was 14 years old at the DMV. I was there with my mom and sister so that ST could get her learners permit. He was there too. I pointed him out to S and said "Check out that guy. He is so cute". Our small town didn't have it's own DMV so we had to drive to another city for one. It wasn't far away but it was the DMV for a huge area. This guy could have been from anywhere. ST looked over at him and said "Oh that's JG, He goes to our school. Actually, he's our paperboy."

The next day I looked for him at school but couldn't find him and so after school, I sat at the front window of our house waiting for him to deliver our paper. I hid behind the blinds when he rode up on his bike and tossed the paper on the front step. I watched him ride around the cul-de-sac delivering all our neighbour's papers too. Then he was gone. I spent the rest of the evening humming and dancing and daydreaming.

This became a regular afternoon activity for me, waiting at the window and dancing around after he left. I also tracked him down at school and was ready to smile at him if he ever looked my way.

As the days went by I got a bit bolder and bolder. I would 'happen' to be outside when he delivered the paper. I'd smile and I'm sure turn bright red and say hi. I'd have friends over after school and we'd be outside 'playing'. I'd take the dog out to play. He now recognized me at school and we'd smile and say hi in the hallways.

I started to get impatient and decided that I needed to do something big to jump us forward a bit. I started by baking him cookies. I got home from school one day with the great idea and got to work. I made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips and cleverly called them peanut butter chocolate chipless cookies. I put them in a paper bag, wrote what they were and something else (I can't remember what) on the bag and put them out on the doorstep. I went and sat in the front window and waited. He rode up and as he got closer he noticed them. He picked up the bag, read it, smiled, opened it, looked around, grabbed a cookie and took a bite. He rode around the rest of the cul-de-sac, delivering papers, with the open bag on his handlebars and ate the cookies.

After the cookie incident, we would stop and talk in the halls at school and when he delivered the paper. One day when he rode up on his bike, my friend C and I were outside with a tape recorder being goofs and taping ourselves singing and reading from an Archie comic. He rode up to deliver the paper and I don't quite remember how things went down but the end result was that after he left, C and I recorded ourselves on one side of the tape talking to him. We went up into my room and just talked about whatever. We described what my room looked like, we talked about movies and music and school things. When we were done, we got on our bikes and rode over to his house and left the tape on his doorstep.

The next day in school, he was wearing a really cool shirt and looking particularly good. We talked by his locker. He thanked me for the tape and said he really liked it. After school, he was later than usual delivering the paper so I wasn't at the window or outside when he came by. When I opened the front door later to get the paper, there was a tape on top of it. I ran upstairs to my room, closed the door behind me, put the tape in my 'stereo' and hit play. It was J and his friend talking. It followed the same idea as ours, they were in his room, describing it, talking about music, cars and wrestling. At some point his friend says I hope you noticed J's shirt today because he wore it just for you. To which I swooned, I'm sure.

I still have this tape. Somewhere. I haven't listened to it in probably 13 years. I'm not sure if I ever will again, but I like that I have it.

After the tape exchange we started dating. He'd deliver our paper with little notes written on the front page or hidden inside the paper. My dad would be reading the sports section and moan and hand me the page and there would be a talking bubble drawn coming out of some athlete's mouth and he'd be saying "Princess K is the greatest" or something like it. It was incredibly sweet and adorable.

School ended for the year and we spent most of the summer together. He'd be going to senior high the following year and I'd still be at the junior high, so we knew we wouldn't see each other as much in the fall. I went away mid-summer for a week with my family and then at the the end of summer he went away on a bike trip with his dad and brother. I missed him dearly for a couple of days but I was having a lot of fun with my girlfriends and I was becoming boy crazy. I was 14 and finally cute (I had spent much of my past 4 years looking like a boy) and now the boys were checking me out and I was checking them out.

By the time J got home from his bike trip my interest had waned. There were so many boys and so little time...I wanted to date them all. Instead of dealing with it in any mature way and breaking up with J, I just avoided him. I didn't know what else to do at the time and so I didn't take his calls and I stopped calling him. This actually became my break up technique for many of my teenage years and I'm not very proud of it. It was cruel but effective.

I bumped into J once, a couple years later. I was sitting at a bus stop and he skateboarded past. I called his name, he looked over and fell off his skateboard. He waited with me until the bus came and while we sat and talked, I still felt an affection for him. We talked on the phone once after that and got together to play tennis once after that. And that was it. He graduated high school with honours in math and a scholorship back east. He moved away and that was my last contact with him.

I think about him every once in a while. I think that I wish I had met him later in life. I have tried a couple times over the years to track him down, by googling his name, or on classmates.com, or facebook. I've always been curious about where he ended up and what he is doing with his life now. A few months ago, my sister called me and she had found him on classmates. He had pictures posted of himself and I was surprised to see that he was a man. In my mind he has stayed 16 forever.

Then a month or so ago I get a ding in my inbox and a subject line that says "JG added you as a friend on facebook". My heart may have stopped for a beat. Just from sheer surprise. I accepted and then was delivered the dilemma of "how do you know JG?"

I finally wrote "He was my paperboy when I was 14".
It was benign, it was respectful, it was the truth, and it didn't say anything that I really wanted it to say.

I sent him a message through facebook that only he would be able to read and I said...

"Hey J,

For the 'how do you know J part of facebook', I wanted to write that you were my first and favourite boyfriend and the one I most regret breaking up with the way I did. I have often thought that I wish I had met you in my 20's instead of when I was 14.

It seemed an inappropriate thing to announce publicly on facebook since you are married and so out of respect for both you and your wife I kept it much more benign with you being my paperboy.

I decided to let you know anyways because I wanted you to know that you have always held a special place in my heart.

I hope you are well and wish you the best!
K"

I sent that about 3 weeks ago. Yesterday, he replied.

"Hi!

Thanks for the interesting reply. I appreciate and respect your comments. Makes me a bit proud too. Thanks. Anyway, life can't be rewinded so don't let it linger in your mind causing unnecessary concern or distraction. I don't want you to think I was ignoring your kind and nice comment. It's nice to hear and know.
Bye for now,
J


And there you have it. There's our closure. He is still my facebook friend but I can't imagine that we will have any contact again. I got what I needed with letting him know that he meant something to me. I didn't need anything back but it made me happy that he replied anyways.