ten years

Ashley and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary yesterday – 10 years! Boy does time fly. While 10 years sounds like a long time, Ashley and I have actually been together for over 16 years – that is literally half our lives.

We are the proverbial “high school sweethearts”; an irksome phrase if you ask me, even if it is the case. We had attended the same high school for three years prior to being placed in the same year eleven home class. I had no recollection of having seen him prior to that first day of the new school year, and for him, the same applied – no prior recollection of me; to this day we wonder how that could have been possible.

Something about him caught my eye – the mysterious
energy, I suppose. But I had other issues at the time, like
an unwillingness to let go of a lust-filled obsession for a
hot, but totally unworthy loser. As for Ashley, year eleven was all about having a good time; whooping it up with the drongo mates and hooning around town in the wake of a new found sense of freedom, which just so happened to have four wheels. In any case I was shy and mostly silent, and Ashley was largely…well, absent.

If I could muster the courage, I would sometimes engage in a little bit of awkward small talk with him during home class time. We were teased for “liking each other” (“ooh arr, giggle, smirk, tee hee, hardy ha). I think I turned red and said to my accuser something dignified, original and witty like “Do not! Jerk!” While Ashley played
the aloof card and told the class that he thought I was “a snob”; a remark that sent a dagger straight into my precious heart, leaving it to labour and heave amidst the agony of the gaping wound.

It wasn’t until our final year of high school, once it was long over with that tormenting presence that came to be the fore-mentioned loser, that I actually told a friend of my feelings for Ashley. I only divulged this furtive information to entice this friend to reveal the identity of a guy whom she had harboured secret feelings, since grade 8. And since the high school days were drawing
to a close, it was now apparent that she should relinquish her burdensome secret, or risk a life-time of wanting and imagining the what-if. So, my name for her name, that was the carrot I used to coerce her to surrender the name of her heart's desire, and send it soaring to my open ear like a dove from the hands of its captor.

Of course, the risk in our information trade was that our secrets would be made known…and at that age, well….it was really only a matter of time, and I guess that was the sub-conscious reason for the reveal …too paralysed and fragile to take action ourselves! So as expected, my friend told everyone else, including someone who happened to travel home on the same bus as Ashley – someone who, no doubt is reading this entry and laughing out loud…I am on to you!

Predictably, without my knowledge or consent, these two friends of mine eventually set Ashley and I up. I remember it clearly, at lunch one day, some poodle-type girls trotted over to my friends and I (you know the type - primped and fluffed; lots of make-up and hair). I knew them to hang out with Ashley’s group of friends. Grinning, they announced with exaggerated giggly enthusiasm “Ashley said YES !” Confused, I turned in the direction of my friends, who were fleeing the scene, with knitted eybrows, grim faces and on tip-toes.... as fast as they could. I can’t remember what I yelled out to them, but I wasn’t impressed nor was I happy.

After lunch, Ashley approached me at school assembly, and I too considered doing a runner, but didn’t, I would have to face the music eventually. We sat down, and with the droning waffle of some teacher in the background, I told him that my friends had played a joke on me, and I had nothing to do with their devious plan. We sat there for a little while. It was awkward; we did not really know what to do or say next. I was still tender and reeling from the disastrous experience with that other guy, and didn’t really want to go through that again any time soon. Ashley, who I have since discovered, has no idea how to take a hint; consequently he completely ignored the wall I put in front of him, and asked me out to a party instead. He made it sound casual, and suggested we go and see how things turned out. Hesitantly and rather miraculously, I agreed.

The party was a bit of a fizzer; basically a bunch of yobbos standing around staring into a bon-fire , drinking beer and having very little to say. We left early and went to the bowling alley, caught up with some friends of mine and chatted together for the remainder of the evening. As if nothing has changed since that moment, I yabbered on and on and on about serious things that were sincere to my heart, and I felt, for the first time ever, that someone was actually listening to what I had to say, without their eyes glazing over with boredom or confusion, and without the fear of being ridiculed. The rest....well, lets just say that the details are filled pages in this book that is our life together, while the rest remains unwritten.