I hate Classmates.com!

Who the shit needs to be reminded of the thousand slings and arrows of teenhoodom?

I just went there to check on someone and found that Angela Rogers (nee Truglio) stopped by my page, entry - whatever - back in February.

The Angie Episode is one of those I replay in my head even now from time to time whenever I see something like it on some insipid sitcom or read something about peer pressure or hear the Rolling Stones sing "Angie".

I was a freshman in high school (maybe I was a sophomore - I'm dealing with a thirty-year old memory here).

Wait, okay? I didn't go to the right school...I mean I didn't go to the same middle school as most of the kids in high school did. For three school years, grades 5 through 8, I was bussed out of town to a school that had no stairs for me to fall down. For K thru 2, I went to one primary school and when another was built nearby, I transferred to it for grades 3 and 4. Okay?

So, I'm coming into this high school blinded to the prejudices that have built up in the mush minds of the majority of attendent adolescents. Got it? Good.

I forget how I met Angie. We both smoked so maybe I just met her in the courtyard (yes, Virginia Slim, kids once smoked cigarettes in the courtyard at my high school). Anyway, I know we wound up at a dance and we wound up together (thirty years, remember?). I know we took the "together" beyond that night because we walked home from school together, holding hands. She lived a few street up and a few streets over from me.

All right. I was a freshman (memory dump). I had to have been because this was before my Patty Period.

Angie was the first girl I ever held hands with. She was probably the first girl I had intimate contact with (not as in sex, you freak, as in being very close to in a physical way - hugging, kissing and the like).

I don't remeber her as being "sexy". I remember her as being sweet and nice to be with. I remember that I liked her face.

That day we walked home holding hands was the first and last though. My best friend saw us and after I said goodbye to her and she continued home, he came over and asked me what the hell I was doing.

Now, he was being a good friend. He was trying to keep me from making a big mistake by hooking up with someone who was...well, I never found out what was supposed to be wrong with Angie because I broke up with her like the next day. See, she had this bad juju about her that I missed because I didn't go to the same middle school as my best friend and her. She had a brother named Joe (I think) who was a "fat kid" and therefore dubbed a 'weirdo" by everyone so that didn't help (and it didn't help me that I didn't know or really care about Joe) but whatever was "wrong" with her, I was being "saved" from it.

I gave her some bullshit that I saw on TV about not being "ready" for a relationship.

Don't even get me started on Luanne Handelong, okay ('nother memory dump)? I actually thought she was okay but her reputation was horrendous in high school.

Fuck! Why are kids so mean?!

Okay, let me sew this refreshed wound up.

I can still see her face when she came up to me in the courtyard while we smokers were smoking and said, in tears, "I found out that it wasn't you who wasn't ready for a relationship, it was me." Then she walked away.

The face she wore still breaks my heart today, thirty years later.

But what do I do? Email her and tell her I'm sorry? How do you do anything like that, thrity years after the fact?

Fuck! I liked you Angie! I really did!

I'm sorry.