This is a true story, and one I still feel the effects of from time to time. It's about young love and the stupid decisions you make because of a sense of urgency. I look back at it now and wonder how things would have been different if I just would have been patient.
Her name was Stephanie and I first met her waiting on the benches at West Clock waiting for my roommate to pick a few of us up. Being the clowns that we were, we were making all kinds of cracks and jokes about one of our other roommates that we didn't particularly care for. This quiet girl was just sitting listening to us go on and on about how we hated him and wished he would leave. Our nickname for him was Billy Blob and it got so bad that she eventually joined in on the conversation wondering why we disliked him so much. We explained he wasn't invited to stay with us, he was kind of forced upon us so we tried to avoid him at all costs.
Just a random conversation with a random girl. But sometimes that's how things work I guess.
Now, back in the "glory days" of Main Street USA and doing night PAC (Parade Audience Control), things were a lot different. When the end of the parade passed you by, you broke down your position and went straight to break. The quicker you got it down, the longer your break was and it lasted until the end of fireworks. Now what is called the Bistro today was called the Patio back then and it stayed open until 10:00, fireworks time. So if you hurried you could actually get a burger or something good to eat before having to go back out.
Imagine my surprise a week or so after the West Clock discussion, that I walk up to the window in the Patio to order food and come face to face with the same girl. "Hey, you're that guy from the other day!" she said. And because we worked basically the same schedule we began to see each other every night. I got to where I would look forward to that.
However back then, schedules and days off were not very consistent at Disney. It had been a week or so since I had seen her. And because I had never went out on a limb to get her number or anything, I had already chalked it up as "one of those things" that I get my hopes up a little bit for before reality wakes me up from the dream.
And then I saw her in the tunnel as I was walking up towards Cash Control. She saw me too and made a mad dash towards me and basically leapt on me throwing her arms around me. I was standing there holding her off the ground while in my head I was saying "holy crap, holy crap, HOLY CRAP!". She had wondered where I had disappeared to as well. We started dating after that.
It's hard to describe to non-Disney people what it's like to date someone when you work there. Everything is basically magical. There's always something to do or somewhere to go on your days off. Being young and being able to explore the parks for free is something else. You never have a dull time. Everything is a blast, especially for people falling in love.
Yeah, love. The more I learned about this girl, the more I adored her. It was something different altogether. You want to learn a lot about someone? Take them to a bookstore. We visited a mall on one of our off days (mostly to avoid the 98 degree heat) and then that's when I learned how deep she really was. She talked to me about books that are "must haves", books that she reads and tries to live by. Books about life and hope and possibilities and philosophy and truth. And she was smart too. Never had I had a relationship on such an intellectual level. We talked about ideas and creativity and nature and life and on and on and on. I shared with her my music. She gobbled up Yes because it was deep and complex and profound (she gets me!). She opened my eyes to the works of Richard Bach, such as "One" and "The Bridge Across Forever". She loved my Isaac Asimov books. We got the new cassette of Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe and fell in love together again and again listening to it over and over.
Unfortunately, summers come to an end.
She was a local, but I was only down to work on my summer break. I had two more years to go, but I would be down often. There was the six week winter break (LaGrange College combined their Thanksgiving/Christmas breaks into one) and every summer if we could just hold on and be patient. Well, we tried.
I made a bee-line for Florida as soon as finals were done. At the end of the six weeks, we decided we couldn't be without each other any more and she was coming back home with me. We even attempted to rush and get married at one point, which didn't work out. We left the land of magic for the real world, away from everything that made us special. We should have waited. We should have been patient. We didn't.
Car troubles prevented me from returning to Disney that summer. She asked if she could go home and I meet her there a few weeks later once everything was fixed. That should have been a sign. I never made it down. She didn't want to come back up. We tried to work things out long distance, but you know how that goes. It caused a rift between us. Time and distance are always a killer. I didn't even have the chance to come down over the holiday break that year. We had an argument over the phone and I slammed it down, hanging up on her. That was over 22 years ago and I haven't seen or heard from her since. I have no idea what became of her after that.
A year later, I graduate college and moved to Florida full time. I stayed single the whole time. I still think today that if I had been patient, that things would have worked out. There was never any doubt of me returning to Florida, but the rush-rush-rush of being young and having to do everything right now never entered my mind as a bad thing at the time. She would have been there waiting for me, with nothing to hold us back.
But now I only have memories of the one person I truly clicked with and how I messed it up. I'm 45 now. I have never been able to find her. Unfortunately, I've still never met anyone like her either. So if you ever see a copy of Richard Bach's One sitting on my desk, or wonder why I have a poster of Blue Desert (the album cover of Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe) hanging in my bedroom, now you know why.
