Photo Turns Back Time.

Recently, one of my professors retired.

Now, I grant you, there have been a lot of professors in my life; whether I was learning from them, or working with them, they all added something or another to the thing that has become my life. But that's not really the reason I've picked up the metaphorical pen.

I believe I've already written about the great and powerful Panowski.

I want to write about a photo that I saw of his retirement party.

My old friend Marty posted a lot of them on his FB site. I was glad that he did, given the fact that I couldn't swing two trips to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in one year. All the old faces, coming back to me in glorious Kodachrome.

Jeez. Even the term "Kodachrome" dates me.

The photo was of Marty and two women; and I've seen Marty since the days of us throwing them back in our halcyon undergraduate days, but the women in the picture I haven't seen since I picked up my last suitcase and walked out off the campus, on my way to Iowa, then to Texas, and on to the life that came after.....

Ravae.

I met Ravae when I was a junior. She was older and younger at the same time: a sophomore at the college, but in her late twenties as I was just entering that interesting but largely painful decade of life. The first time I saw her, she came to a party that Marty had arranged at our apartment in the late summer of '82....she had a nice smile, dancing eyes, a quick and sometimes barbed tongue, and everything else in the places they should be.....

And she was with Mike. And, I instantly hated Mike, even though he was a good friend of mine.

She seemed to like me, too, but the whole idea of Mike was a deal breaker; I wasn't going to go up against Mike, and she wasn't going to cheat on Mike, so my young heart learned to pine. And it was a wholly unpleasant experience.

And then, just like that, we were a couple.

I'm not sure exactly how it happened. I can remember that she was with me when I won my only lottery prize; she was driving me back to my apartment, and I was scratching off what turned out to be a ten grand payout. It was a glorious evening, and she stayed with me that night, holding my hand as we fell asleep on the couch.

To make a long story short, it was a tumultuous relationship; full of arguments and breakups and getbacks and all the things that go along with that. And all the time, I was drinking heavily. And she was the first casualty of my habits; we had one opportunity to put it back together, and I blew it: after a particular bad bender, I wound up passed out on my floor, and although she knocked and called, she assumed I was elsewhere, and left town the next day.

And I never really saw her again until that photo.

And it all came rushing back, kind of like that huge chunk of shaved ice that crashes into your face as you try to get the last sip of root beer out the bottom of the glass. And, once again, like some sort of time travel device, I was twenty again, and smitten.

So, in the unlikely event that Ravae is part of my devoted readership.....

Thank you. You taught me a lot about all the things I was supposed to learn at that age; how to deal with love, how to deal with hurt. You made me laugh, you made me cry, and you were a part of making me the person I am today. And everytime the summer turns to fall, I think back to that first meeting, all the firsts that we shared....and I cannot help but be grateful.

Yes.
You're partially to blame.

And it's rare for me to say this.....
I wouldn't have traded it for the wide world.