Landing the Girl of My Dreams

Learning the difference between infatuation and love is hard

Photo by Aman on Unsplash

To her, I was the Spring Fling. For me, it was a different story. My primary purpose and reason for existence was to marry my college girlfriend, Janice. We’re talking ancient history here. It’s 1983, and you’ll soon learn how a child-minded young man landed near Hollywood.

I’m the boy who couldn’t get a date in high school to save his life. During my first year of college, I discovered radical infatuation when I saw Janice for the first time. As fate would have it, I couldn’t get a date with Janice, no matter how hard I tried. She was untouchable. Only older boys, seniors, had a shot.

We were stuck on a tiny campus in a puny farm town in the middle of Ohio. Most of us drank our faces off. It was colder than a Siberian tundra during the winter. I had to have a solid Budweiser buzz to talk to Janice. We bumped into each other fairly often.

Janice was my dream girl. I struggle to learn the difference between my fantasies and the real world. I haven’t learned about the massive chasm separating infatuation and true, lasting love as in a forty-year marriage.

If you haven’t read Interview for An Escort Job, it’s the story about the job I tried to get following college graduation in 1983 — one of my…