Even by the standards of the eighth grade, she was way out of my league. I was new there, having only moved to California in the summer of 1979. It was not an easy move for me. That’s a lousy age for most kids in the first place, and to be taken out of your life-long home and moved across the country to a totally alien environment makes it worse. Still, there was something mesmerizing about her. She was beautiful. She was intelligent. And she was kind.

I’ve written about that era years ago, and although the vast majority of people here won’t remember it, I won’t revisit that memory. This is about a few years later, after the break-up. She was gone but definitely not forgotten.