OMG! My crush from 6th grade just phoned me up!
“Did you go to San Marino High School?” the deep voice on the end of the non-line of my cell phone asked.
“Yes,” I said. Guilty as charged. It was an intense time, an intense place.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Tom M. I don’t know if you remember me….”
Oh my God!
Not remember him? There was always some connection between us, unspoken but mutually acknowledged. He sat in front of me, the second and third seats in the middle row in sixth grade. He was a compadre, a partner in crime on the high school newspaper that I edited for two years. I could count on him to do what he said, to produce stories that were literate and printable–at least to my 17 and 18 year old eyes. It never went so far as going on a date, but there was always some link. In how many past lives had we known each other? Walking home after school with him was a highlight of my entire 6th grade year. Long story short: he’d just picked up my article, which just came out this week in Open Exchange magazine. “There can’t be that many Kacie Crisps” he noted. “I’m intrigued by what you do.”
I’m always more interested in anyone else’s story than my own–I KNOW mine already. So I asked him about what he was doing. Though we went to high school in the Los Angeles area, we both now live in the San Francisco area. As we chatted, I mentioned that my husband is a contractor (since he is as well), and then I mentioned my son who’s almost 20. No, I’m not old enough to have a son that age! It’s just an anomalous factoid. Only after I mentioned both of them did he mention that he has two kids, a son and a daughter.
What’s so interesting to me is that even now, 40 years later as he pointed out, there was this little frisson, this little nagging subliminal energetic prohibition against admitting that I was married. Okay, so nothing happened when we were in 6th grade or high school. But getting together as the perfect penis and vagina is still the total goal of all life, is it not? Don’t do anything to mess up that potentiality, however slight. Don’t mention that you’re married. That would be a total turn-off! Mustn’t do that! Can’t afford to do that!
Oh My God again! How much more ridiculous can it get? Here I am, having spent my entire life with my husband creating something that works for us, something that doesn’t fit the fairytale and movie script at all, and now I’m sharing with others. Then I get this call from out of the blue from someone I have truly (sorry, Tom!) not thought about in years and ka-boom! The societal program on love and marriage hooks me inside of 30 seconds.
I tell myself how much more freedom and joy could be created if we stepped out of this program and created relationships that work for us. Then I land squarely in the middle of it like a kid jumping with both feet into a steaming pile of cowpies! How does it get even better than this? Is there any hope for humanity anywhere?
Beam me up, Scotty! Let me out of this loony bin!
P.S. Tom’s coming for a session of the hands on body work I do on Saturday. Stay tuned….