OK I'm hooked, you write beautifully Lisa.
Fragile and strong at the same time. You seem like a person worth knowing.
*sits in a confy puff*
Go ahead, I'm listening...
Daily Kitten Chat Forum » Introductions
Lisa's Story in As Few Words as Possible
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Posted 3 years ago by PipasMumSpain #
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Lisa, I am so glad that I know you!!! {{hugs}}
Posted 3 years ago by BCAMflorida227 #
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Geeze Lisa, what a way to leave us hanging! LOL! I am looking forward to chapter 2--and I hope you write it before I leave tomorrow afternoon for Florida, otherwise, I will have to wait for 6 days before I can get back to my 'puter! I can't stand the suspense!!! AAAARGGGGHHHH!
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Hi Lisa! It's been great getting to know you. I don't know if I posted on your Bob thread, but I remember reading it. I had just lost my beautiful Maine Coon Jiggs of 16 years in early January so my sadness prevented me from posting as often as I did.
Anyway, love your writing & look forward to chatting with you some more!Posted 3 years ago by JoanfromNewJersey #
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hey lisa
I too have lived a crazy life but the best part is my best friend of 45 years we met when I was 2(She was born) our fathers where best friends and we kept it in the family. The best part of having a friend for so long is if you can't remember all of it she'll remember the rest!
I knew I liked you!! Keep the story going PLEASE!!
peace
DoriePosted 3 years ago by 4 kits staff #
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Waiting....please?.....waiting.....
Posted 3 years ago by rainingwolf #
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Okay, I had to go back and see where I left you...
So, here we are...Scott and I met over a coin toss. He lost, we got each other. I'm a freshman, he's a sophmore. Que theme from Love Story...he's rich, I'm poor. He's big city, I'm less-than-small-town. He's in the largest fraternity on the UT campus, I'm there on a journalism scholarship. His parents are not happy. No, no, no, not one little bit. More to the point, they are *beside* themselves.
Keep in mind, I don't know what they're imagining I'm going to do. I was so straight, I thought women only trapped men in Larry McMurtry novels. Scott's parents thought that all *any* single girl could possibly want with their son. They pull tricks. They call and tell Scott he's giving his grandfather heart attacks (that man is alive right this minute--30 years later).
On the other side: Mom. All six feet of her, if you count her hair. She loves her only daughter just as fiercely. But Mom's a Southern lady if you know what I mean. She fights her battles...subtly.
And so by Valentine's day of 1980, the two sides had managed to scare at least one of us badly enough to give up. Scott had choices with regard to college. He was at Texas because it's one of the best schools for Jewish social life. You send your kid there to find a Jewish wife. He could just as easily go to Missouri and save his family thousands in out of state tuition. And so they pulled the ultimate chain. Get rid of Lisa or come home and pay your own way to school.
BTW, they thought my scholarship was a disgrace. They told Scott...only trashy poor people who happen to make good grades go to school on academic scholarships.
So Scott did the only thing he could. He broke up with me, and dated a girl suggested by a matchmaker for the duration of the school year.
Was I sad? Was I depressed? I couldn't lift my head. I kid you not: my mom took off work (unheard of!) and came to Austin from Texarkana to save her daughter from that first hellish week. Young people love strong, hard, and well.
And just two streets over, Scott was doing no better. We reunited a single evening for my dorm's formal. He skipped his fraternity's last big party. That one evening out together hurt so much, neither of us forgot it.
Summer came. Scott went home to St. Louis. I went home to Texarkana. Scott's parents sent a private investigator with me, just in case...
And lo and behold, I fell in love again! Lighting *does* strike twice...
but it wasn't a boy...it was a car!(It just happened to have a boy that came with it.)
Let me know when you're ready for more. I don't want to bore you and I MEAN IT!!!! Also, I'm not re-reading or proofing, so if this is disjointed, ask questions!!
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OMG I am SO hooked!
*makes popcorn*
*sits again*
Go ahead Lisa!Posted 3 years ago by PipasMumSpain #
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PM, can I share the popcorn, I am hooked too!
*sits next to PM and waits to hear more*Posted 3 years ago by cricketsmama #
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Okay, I think I can go another round this morning...
Place: Texarkana, TX, small enough to get around, big enough to provide s social setting
Time: Summer 1980 Hot Album: Poco, In The Heart of the Night
I hadn't been home for summer a full seven days when I met...the car. I'm into cars, always have been, and my favorite has never wavered for a second. It's the 1970 Datsun 240 Z. And there was one lurking around town, just ready to fall for me. It's driver was pretty nice, too. Tall, dark, beautifully behaved, Protestant. His name was Jon, and he took me anywhere I wanted to go, let me borrow the car any time...fun summer romance. Everything they should be. We even made one trip down to the Texas coast--under my Mom's watchful eye, of course, but even eagle eyes can be "foiled."
Fall comes, trauma and drama. I'm not about to leave my scholarship at Texas, and Jon had a sports scholarship to Austin College in Sherman, which was, at the time, the single most expensive private college in Texas. Like it or not, we were going to have to do the long distance thing. I knew in the back of my mind that arrangement had a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. I *didn't* think it would be melted and done before the first day of classes. And I never, ever, ever would have guesses it would be Scott out there cranking up the sunshine.
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Lisa, I love the story. I can't wait for the next installment (takes a bowl of popcorn from PMSpain and CM)
Posted 3 years ago by BCAMflorida227 #
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*runs to snack bar and gets more popcorn, peanuts, sno-caps and drinks for everyone*
Posted 3 years ago by cricketsmama #
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Okay, Fall 1980 arrives, and I come back to school all happy with new clothes (I worked over the summer) and a new long-distance boyfriend/car. Mom's decided she can afford for me to go through Rush, and I pledge ZTA, the most artsy-brainy of the sororities. I become the oldest pledge ever, dangling by a shoestring in borrowed clothes. Huge fun!
The day pledges get their bids, each fraternity house has a huge party later that nigh, and pledges from the girls' side are set up on dates with the new male pledges. Back then, it was customary for your date to send you flowers before they picked you up at your new sorority house (that would be the *last* time you left that house with a boy until the next spring, when you were initiated.)
But the afternoon of my pledge date, three bouquets arrived--one from Jon, whi isn't at all pleased I'm going on this mandatory, although perfunctory date, one from my blind date for the evening and one of all pink roses from....do I recognize that handwriting????
Nahhhhh....it can't be. How would he even know?
But it is.
It turned out some of my loving and loyal--not to mention stealthy--friends had been working in concert behind my back.
Turns out back in the summer, the Jewish young lady selected for Scott by the matchmaker dropped in to meet Scott's parents. She called ahead and asked the housekeeper to make tea, since she was bringing the luscious home-baked cookies.
So the family gets dressed up, waits for the loud and chatty Miss S, continues to wait for Miss S, and just when they've all given up and changed clothes, here she comes, in (if memory serves) ratty jeans and sneakers carrying a half-dozen cut-and-bake cookies on a single paper plate...and you know where that takes the cookies.
Suddenly I didn't look so bad. It least I had nice clothes and good table manners.
Soooooooo...Scott calls a couple of my friends who will be re-uniting with me in the dorm, learns I plan to go through Rush, returns to school early to *watch* me go from house to house...and be there to be my date if I do decide to pledge. I did, and he was. My setup date was totally gracious--he had someone he'd just as soon be with, also.
And that's how my Scott, who was only of the only men I've ever know who could pull off cornball debonaire and make it sweet/funny/appealing wound up picking me up at the Zeta house, the first night of the first week of my sophomore year at UT. We spent one more summer apart, and after that we even stayed in Austin for summer school so we could be together.
We were simply the happiest couple God ever made. He thought I was the greatest cook (I was awful), the prettiest woman alive (no, that's Christie Brinkley), the funniest, smartest, best dancer, best writer. He taught me the fundamentals of golf and attempted tennis (hopeless). Disco was hot, so we learned to dance like the couple in Saturday Night Fever. The Jazz Singer was re-released and we sat and cried all the way through it, because someone made a movie of our story. He taught me to order and drink wine. He gave me my first ever surprise birthday party--my 20th. He would hunt all over town for exactly the right eensy-weensy gift for any occasion. I got a letter every day he was away for the summer--a *letter!* The spring of my senior year, he gave me his fraternity lavalier--gag! A promise ring for grownups! I treasure it!! But he had three years of grad school facing him, and an engagement ring just wasn't within his means.
I learned to make chopped liver pate and matzo ball soup, and this kick-ass haroset for Passover. My family began to incorporate more and more Jewish rituals into our Methodist worship. Girls begged me to set them up on dates with Scott's frat brothers. Or they'd meet him in the lobby of the dorm and come upstairs and tell me, "Girl, you are the luckiest woman. I just met your boyfriend downstairs and he's not only the cutest thing alive, he just worships you."
My question: you learned all that in five minutes?
But storm clouds were brewing over St. Louis. A typhoon was gathering force, and this time, it wasn't just puttering around.
Okay...gotta stop and rest my hands. It's almost over. I promise.
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More more more more more!!!
Posted 3 years ago by BCAMflorida227 #
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Okay, I'm driving thru to the end here.
Remember I mentioned waaaaay back that I went home that first summer with the Pinkertons on my tail? Well, unbeknownst to me, and I am absolutely not kidding, there really was a private investigator lurking in my hometown. And yes, he'd taken photos, lots of photos. You know, you can take pictures from many different angles and make them look like just about anything. Scott's parents had been hanging onto this work all this time, ready to whip it out should this love affair go one minute past my graduation.
Scott was already in graduate school out of town, and bouncing back and forth between deliriously happy and utterly miserable. He loved his studies--he was a clinical psychologist specializing in treatment of traumatized and neglected children, and was in an accelerated program to get his PhD in 3 years.
But I had a year of school to finish at Texas and could not join him. We were about four hours away from each other. The toll on our grades was not doing either of us any good. And his family not only re-kindled their anti-Lisa campaign, they pulled out the pictures.
The next part will seem utterly impossible...it will sound like it came out of a movie script. But I promise it's real.
In a small town it's easy to get people mixed up. I can see that. We swap cars just for fun. Go "riding around" for lack of anything better to do. Every home is rural, no matter how well-educated or funded the family that's living in it.
So this dunce of a PI brought Scott's mom and grandparents this jumble of photos...showing "me" doing all kinds of things the *thought* Scott would consider unacceptable. Hugging black men. Well, of course I did, I went to grade school with them! Kissing (EEEK!) a black man. Well, no, dummy, that wasn't me, that was my best friend driving my car with her legally wedded husband. Riding around in pickup trucks with "goatropers." Well, when you've gone to church with "goatropers" your whole life, the easiest way to get to Bonanza Steak House on Sunday ahead of the crowd is to hop in the back and hope you don't run your panty hose.
Keep in mind these people of my community are neither uneducated, isolated, or unworldly. For a tiny hamlet, Eylau reaches many fingers out to the world. Can't say why, it's just a very involved, active, open-minded little haven in a sea of East Texas prejudice.
But you have to see and hear it in 3-D to know that. In flat black and white, it can look pretty rank, just like anyplace else.
Well, this revelation to Scott precipitated a mighty sh-- storm between him and his family, but to my astonishment, it didn't put a chink in his dedication to our future. He still believed we were going to find a way.
But it was the straw that broke my back. I knew I didn't want to live this way. And I didn't want to be the reason Scott did either.
I was still very immature in my spiritual journey then. I knew I didn't have what it took to keep this up year after year after year. I was tired. Mom was tired. Scott was exhausted and wouldn't admit it. He was driving four hours to Austin and four hours back to school almost every weekend. He spent hours on the phone with those people who would not even say my name.
In retrospect, my decision was very much like taking a beloved furbaby to the vet's office, knowing it's the last good-bye. We send them across the bridge, knowing they'll be happier, and that you've done the right thing, but it still leaves, in words of songwriter Robert Earl Keene, "A hole in your sole where the wind blows through."
After four years of the most nearly unconditional love I've ever experienced, I cut it clean so the wound would heal best. We saw each other only once afterward. I never saw or talked to Scott again. Nor did I look for him.
I knew exactly what he would do...and he did...he married his best friend from graduate school, a beautiful blonde Jewish girl I'd already met. They kept the cat he'd adopted for me, so I'd have a kitty when I came to visit him. They had three children, widely spaced. He became the director of therapeutic programs at a home for abused and neglected kids.
And I was always okay, because at least he was in the world, doing exactly what I'd let him go to do. I had no confirmation. I just knew. He was at least *one* thing I didn't have to worry about. No way would he live with anything but joy day to day.
And then one day I woke up, and I knew he was gone. For the very first time, I typed his name into Google. I added the name of his hometown, and the word "obits."
And he was indeed gone.
Scott died of an aortal aneyurism (sp?) sitting at his desk drinking his first cup of coffee. He left three children, the youngest, his son, was only 2. His wife, both grandparents and his mom all survived him. He was 43.
I have no regrets at all. When the real thing comes along again, I'll know it, and I've never really gotten entangled in anything very rotten for very long, for the same reason. What a gift! So many people never do get a chance to taste the kind of mature, respectful, admiration-based love we had. Even fewer get a whole four years. I refuse to be bitter about what I didn't have. I rejoice for what I had.
So, can you see why I'm so hopeful of getting one more shot at it???
I love you all for listening. Hope you enjoyed the true story of my true love.
Ahem...now if someone else would like to tell one, I'd love to hear one. Gatakitty, I'm reading your blog.
Or I can start something else. Or both! this is kinda fun. Let me take a break for a few weeks and I'll tell you about going to the Middle East when I was 15 and seeing the acts of terrorism that still echo through to today. But only if I'm sure I'm not boring you. But I love to talk about that trip above all other topics.
Love you guys!!! Lisa, Misty and CJ
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What a wonderful account of true love. Few can claim it and you lived it for four years. You are very wise to cherish it as the gift it was and use it to know that it can happen again for you. Rock on, Lisa!!
Posted 3 years ago by Kitten Whisperer #
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Wow Lisa. I have no words to reply to what you just wrote. It was beautiful. I commend you for letting Scott go and realizing you couldn't handle that and neither could he. That took courage. I am sorry he passed. You did experience true love and that's something some of us never get.
You are a gifted writer. I can't wait to hear more of anything you would like to share!!
((LISA))Posted 3 years ago by cricketsmama #
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All I can say is "Thank you Lisa"
Posted 3 years ago by BCAMflorida227 #
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Thanks, guys. I *was* very lucky. Isn't it wild the world can turn on a coin toss?
I do wish I'd been a little stronger, maybe given it a better go, but that's about all you can do when you're that young. I just didn't see any chance of things changing. The prejudice of Scott's family was based on fear of the unknown, not familiarity with the known. And there's no way to overcome that.
I've made no attempt to contact his family and never will. Their sorrow must be unimaginably deep, the last thing they need is disruption. And that's okay. I doodled with the idea of sending his fraternity regalia to them for his son, but that would make it all about me, wouldn't it? I couldn't think of a single motivation for doing so that didn't involve making *me* feel better in some way. And so I just keep it in a tiny treasure box where it's always been. It's mine, anyway.
Love you guys!
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