I was 15. She was 14. It was a very nervous affair where the most physical contact involved holding hands with at least 1 meter between us lest we accidentally rub shoulders. We diligently wrote each other’s names on our hands once day and wrote letters folded into cutesy shapes to each other. But it was great. I had a girlfriend. An all boys’ boarding school is a merciless. Any claim to fame is essential. To have a girlfriend, especially one who is verifiably not your sister, is an especially valuable card to have up your sleeve. It let you off the hook when the older boys came along looking for entertainment. And they left you alone when she was visiting in the afternoons. She did, after all, have other friends who were also female and you know how they all talk. They would not want to scare of any potential. It was GOOD.
Good that is, until that fateful summer afternoon in February, in the quad, under the plane tree. It was HOT, the type of wet, clingy heat that causes shirts to stick to backs and swimming practice to be canceled. You feel you could grab a handful of air and wring the moisture from it. MY girlfriend and I were chatting, about something nonsensical I am sure, in amongst all the other couples. Everyone is eyeing everyone else – surreptitiously of course - the boys watching the other boys to see “how far” they are getting with their girlfriends, and the girls watching the other girls for any one of over 100 things girls find important. All this watching promised a proper audience for what happened next. Whether it was the heat or a lack of some to eat I shall never know but my girlfriend unexpectedly fainted, flopping to the floor with a gentle, lady like thump.
Muggins over here was flummoxed. This was so far out of my realm of experience that I stood there and gaped for a moment while everyone else stopped whatever they were doing and stared. At me. Not at the maiden in distress, ME. I thought she was joking, I thought she was dead, I decided to grab her arm and pull for no apparent reason. I pulled harder, giving it a little shake. Nothing.
Fortunately a teacher wandered by and rescued me from my misery and whisked my stricken girl off to the infirmary. But my humiliation spread like wildfire on that hot summers day. My ears still burn remembering…