At ballet tonight, where I danced like a camel, I was the recipient of three compliments after class. I'm on a roll with the compliments here. Maybe because it's the city and long hair is much less common (on any age woman). The teacher said I had lovely long hair and pointed to her back to show the other two students how long my hair was. The teacher also owns the studio so she sees me come in on Fridays for the belly dance class which is when I wear it down. Then one woman asked me how long my hair is. Heh. That was kind of redundant, but I pointed to about the same place. I didn't mentally muster up the words quickly enough in order to expel them all in a row to say "it's to the bottom of my bottom." Yeah, so I pointed mutely. Then the other student said she could never control the fly-aways, so that's what she liked about my hair. (I had it in a Chinese bun with a By Fox hair stick.) I thought to say I do have lots of fly-aways and that dirty hair keeps them smoothed down, but I could see everyone had freshly washed hair so I made an assumption that it wouldn't be well received and I wanted to leave the conversation on the up instead of the "Ewww" with these civilians. Heh. If only I could say out loud all the things I think. I would be so talkative!
When I was dating my husband he broke up with me. I was crushed. I was so terribly in love with him. Well. Plus he was the best, most downright decent, good man, I ever dated. But he was dating several ladies in addition to me pretty much at once, and he didn't figure the love was reciprocal.
So I wrote him a long letter, a break-up letter, left it hanging on his fridge in his apartment, took the photos of me I'd given him, got in my little Toyota and went home. I had to get all my thoughts out since it was the end so I wrote down quite a bit. Generally break up letters are not recommended. In this case however, it worked to my ultimate benefit.
Two weeks later he called and told me he wanted me back. I never, never expected it. We're going on 24 years now.
After we'd been married a few years I found he'd kept that letter I wrote to him scrawled on notebook paper. I was very surprised. He was working in the garage so I took the letter (it was written on paper that had a slight green tint to it and dark green lines) and held it out to him. He was up in the rafters rearranging things he had previously arranged (husbands sometimes have this proclivity) and I told him I found it in a box and asked him why he still had it. He said he wanted to keep it to remind himself of why he loves me. Perplexed, I asked "What do you mean? Don't you want me to throw it away for you?" "No, no. Don't do that," he said.
See, I'm so quiet and when I talk I'm so vanilla. I'm not even French vanilla or Neapolitan vanilla with chocolate and strawberry to liven it up. Just plain, plain vanilla. But when I write I can find words better.
So he said that when he came home and read that letter he was awed at all I had inside me. At the time, after we got back together he said, "Why didn't you ever say to me any of these things you wrote?" I shrugged and said, and this is memorable, "I dunno. I just didn't."
After that, back in 1983, I reeled him in real slow and careful like till he finally asked me to marry him. Apparently he couldn't quite decide whether marriage was a good idea (because I was 24 when he was 42), but I later found out he confided in his best friend who told him to go for it, so he got me a ring. What's he doing? Jumping off a cliff? Walking on hot coals? "Go for it" as a foundation for a lifetime together is any girl's dream come true, of course. (Rolling my eyes here.)
I love him so! After 24 comes 25 and that's gotta be worth something. I told him we'll have a big, giant party to celebrate. Haha! That's a joke because parties make me mental. Anywho, it's a good thing I wrote that letter and it's a good thing he took his friend's oh so very "thoughtful" advice.
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