Typos

We met when we were both 16.  I used to tell this story to my students every year because I am a horrible typist, and every worksheet I hand out has at least one typo.  Here’s the story…

In the second semester of my junior year, I was signed up to take typing.  This is a class that has 30 manual (or maybe they were electric) typewriters, and supposedly by the end of the semester, a student could type a document by looking only at the document, and not at the keyboard.  By the end of the semester, a student would be able to type quickly without making mistakes.

My GPA was around 3.8 (out of 4.0), so I was afraid I might get a B in the typing course (since it was pretty much a skill).  What if I couldn’t make my fingers do what they were supposed to do?  Then my GPA would go down.  Because of that, I decided to drop typing and take another class.  My guidance counselor told me that the only course that had openings was journalism 1.  OK, put me in that class.

The first day of class, I found out that it was made up of journalism 1 (newspaper) and journalism 2 (yearbook) students.  The teacher divided us up and made the journalism 1 students sit on one side of the long classroom while the journalism 2 students sat on the opposite side.  There were only three journalism 1 students;  me, another girl ,and a boy.  By the next day, the girl dropped the class, so it was just me and the boy.  And,  I thought he was the cutest boy I had ever seen, even though I had a steady boyfriend.  I couldn’t help but look at him (out of the corner of my eye, since back then, girls were not obvious about a situation such as this).  But my heart was pounding so hard because he was just so good-looking.

The second day of class, the teacher came to us and gave us a brief introduction of what a lead paragraph was.  It contained the who, what, when, where, and sometimes why of the story.  So,  our in-class assignment was to interview each other and write a lead paragraph.  Then the teacher went to the other side of the room to work with the journalism 2 students.  Consequently, I got to know this cute boy pretty well, and as the semester went on, I found that I was more and more attracted to him.  Every day, my heart would just beat so hard and fast for the entire class.  I'm sure you can guess who this hunk was.  Yep, it was the man I would eventually marry.

If I had stayed in the typing class, my students would have a perfectly typed worksheet, but I would never have met my future husband.  Then I would tell them that, now, they might forgive the typos on their worksheets.

This story always made my female students swoon, and the male students thought it was pretty cool, too.

I thought he was my best friend.  We laughed all of the time together because I thought he was one of the funniest persons I had ever known, and he thought I was pretty hilarious too.  When we told our children that we were getting a divorce, they exclaimed, “But you two get along so well and were always laughing together."

Sure there were times when we got on each other’s nerves, but that happens in every relationship after 25 years, doesn’t it?  Since I have not been married to anyone for that long other than him, I am just assuming that people get on each other’s nerves once in awhile.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe they don’t.   But who discusses booking a cruise to celebrate their 25^th wedding anniversary and then seven weeks later moves out?  Who????  I guess that’s what bothers me the most.  I had no idea.  Five weeks after we booked the cruise, he says, "I don't love you anymore" and moved out two weeks later.  He just walked out with his books and clothes.  That's all...he didn't want anything else.   I told him he could take a bookcase, and he got mad when I refused to help him move it.  I told him, “I don’t want you to leave, so why would I help you move out?”  “Fine!  I'll do it!” he angrily exclaimed.  I helped move it out because I didn’t want him to scratch the floors of the house that would soon be only mine.  But, I bargained with him and told him I would help him move the bookcase if he would come over and mow the yard one more time. 

I miss the life I had.  I don’t want a life with any other person.  I don’t want a life with the person who did this to me.   I want a life with the person I thought he was.  That’s my dilemma.    That, and trying to figure out who just walks out and never looks back?