The way you used to tell the story:
“In third grade I got paddled for passing notes.”
Your story after the interview:
The girl with the ponytail sat next to me from first through third grade. In those days, students were seated alphabetically, no exceptions. Back then, I didn’t think much about big things like God, but I did know one thing for sure: the entire universe had been arranged from the beginning of time to cause our names to be consecutive, just so we would be seated together.
After a year of unrequited love, I decided to put my true feelings in writing. I painstakingly composed a note, editing, rewriting, re-editing. and finally copying the final version in my best handwriting using my special fountain pen. By the time I summoned up the nerve to deliver my heartfelt declaration to the pony-tailed girl, it was wrinkled from months of having been hidden in my book-bag. Nevertheless, I caught her eye and offered the small token.
“Passing notes?” the teacher said as she marched up the aisle and intercepted the folded paper before it touched the girl’s hand. “I’ll take that. And you come up to the front of the class.” Mercifully, the teacher didn’t read the note. Instead, she crumbled it into a ball and deposited it into her trashcan.
At that time—in the days of nickel Cokes, penny candy, and milk in bottles delivered to your doorstep—corporal punishment was widely practiced. “Face front and bend over,” the teacher said, grabbing the paddle from behind her desk. I vowed silently that the object of my affection would not see me cry.
The girl with the ponytail never saw the note—the words that had taken three years to write: “Be my girl?”
Before the beginning of fourth grade, her family moved to Albuquerque, only to move back just in time for the last three years of high school.
When I told her this story at our ten-year reunion, she laughed and whispered in my ear. We were married on Easter of 1981, exactly one week after the first space shuttle launch. We saw the premiere of Cats in London while on our honeymoon. Next year we celebrate our 25th anniversary.
