Love and Loves Love and Loves I am not good at this. I try but I know I am not. So maybe you can help. I will ramble through this and hopefully, you will have a suggestion or two – or tell me to drop dead.
Starting at the beginning just makes this sort of a history and we shall not do that. So once when I was in college and I had two homes: one in Madison and one in Milwaukee, a high school buddy gave me a ride in his car from Madison to Milwaukee. In the backseat was this beautiful girl named Janne -- you do not need to know her real name. We made eyes at each other all the way home. Or at least I did. I am so naive that I do not know what she is thinking. When I got back to Madison, I asked Jim Hinsdorf, that was his name, if he thought that she would go out with me. He was surprised that I would even ask. But she was his friend and I have no idea what a woman is thinking. I asked her out. She became my girlfriend on the spot.
Janne was beautiful. I mean absolutely beautiful in all of the flower child definitions going around in the mid 60's. I fell so much in love with her that nothing mattered more than admiring her and wanting to plan a life together.
She had an eidetic memory. Eidetic? Remembers the picture of a thing without context. My memory works (worked) that way but not like hers. I mean, when I was in eighth grade history, I was a poor student. How did I get by? Just before a test I would page through the chapter in the book. During the test, I would recall the page and then read it. I could get good grades on the test and know no history at all. But this was short term. By the end of the day, I would not remember having done this; let alone what was in the book. But Janne! Oh Janne! Once in my literature class, the prof read "The Red Balloon" (E. E. Cummings?) from his book. Janne was sitting next to me doing her homework and without looking up recited the entire poem. I asked her about this. Was this one of her favorites? No. She had seen it in high school and just "read" it now. Eidetic. Love.
I grew up so inhibited that I was afraid that when I walked down the sidewalk I thought people could see that I did not belong. Have you ever felt the fear that someone or everyone would discover who you were and that you did not belong in this world? No more. Not any more. We walked, in public, holding hands. She would skip along the curb. She taught me that I could skip also. It was OK for the world to see me happy. It was OK for the world to see me love Janne. I was a real person. As good as anyone else. Not the second-class low-life that I had heard all my childhood.
Janne was a dancer -- sort of an exotic dancer but in those days mostly clothes still stayed on. She really was good to look at. I do not dance. When I try, people try hard not to laugh. I have had lessons. Square dancing I can do. Or did at one time .
I learned that she had known me before. We had gone to the same high school --- that is where she met Jim. High School. Wauwatosa. 1961. My Senior year. The year the school split from one high school into two and added the ninth graders. This was a serious improvement in Wauwatosa. It took the burden off the 2 middle schools and the high school in one step. What it did do was make half of the student population new to any high school new to the new school. This was a discipline disaster. In middle school, the kids roam the halls wherever they fit. In high school, we walk on the right side of the hallway. It is up to the upper classmen to make sure that the new students learn this. When it is just the new sophomores, they want to be part of the crowd and they learn fast and after a few days things work fine. But now!? Fifty percent of the students did not know how to walk in the hallways. It was tough teaching them. They would cut corners short. When walking around a right corner, on the right side, you might flatten a freshman coming at you. This is how Janne remembered me: I had walked over her in the hallway. I did not remember her. Ouch. I looked her up in the yearbook. She was a lot heavier then. It was four years later. She now lived in the dorm with a roommate named Karen from Racine. We shall get to her.
Janne was in the school of education. I should tell you about Dean Stiles but that is another story altogether. She and I went to a Madison Board of Education meeting. This was expected of Education students -- or at least the better ones.
I think I shall mention the Dean of Education at the University of Wisconsin, Dean Stiles. Dean Stiles had a weekly radio program where he expounded upon his ideas on what a university education means both to the student and the community. He announced that the University of Wisconsin was going to increase the number of credits required for a bachelor’s degree in the expertise area and offset this with a reduction of education credits. This was a great idea: teachers who knew what they were talking about and not just how to say it. This in a decade where information was increasing more rapidly than at any time in history. The North Central Accreditation Association threatened to remove accreditation of the University of Wisconsin. He told them that the University of Wisconsin did not need the NCAA. U of W graduates could hold their own with anyone. He did it. The NCAA did not. We got better teachers with more self-confidence. Hooray for Dean Stiles.
I loved Janne. I, like most of my friends, had a motorcycle: a 160 cc Honda. I worked on it a lot. I rode it a lot. Janne loved it too. There was an absolute, no motor vehicle rule on campus during class hours. I was the sole exception. That is another story too. One day while in class, I left the bike in a loading zone near my class and near her dorm. When I came out of the class, there she was with a crowd around her. She could not start the bike. A guy was exhausted trying to help her. I asked if I could try. He looked at me and said that he did not think I could if he could not. I suggested it was my bike. Janne nodded. We got on the bike and rode away. I showed her later the gasoline valve that she forgot to open.
She spent the night with me once. An interesting experience. We shall not go there. I got up about 5 am on Saturday morning and baked a big cake. I did that in those days. Angel food with whipped cream frosting with lemon and lime shavings for color. Karen called: Janne's parents had just arrived (about 7 am) from Wauwatosa. Emergency. I got Janne up and finished the cake and we delivered it to her parents at her dorm. Envision a couple riding that small bike with her holding the cake so it would not get damaged all the way from my house to the dorm.
This is what love is all about. Her parents loved me. More? We went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago one weekend. She had worked dancing and came home with another guy. When they broke it up at the dorm entrance, I stopped her, she signed out, and we took the trip. She could not sleep on the bus. It was a disaster but who cares when all you can see are stars? She told me she would love me forever.
Oh yes, there was a time she visited me in Milwaukee. I had such a bad cold that I could hardly see her face.
Then one day she came to my house in Madison and told me that it was over. I asked about love me forever. I remember that she still said she would love me forever but we were breaking up. We had had plans to marry in the fall. I cried. My roommates stayed out of sight. It must have been hard for her. It was impossible for me.
I failed out of school that semester. The final fail-out: never to return to the University of Wisconsin. Another story. I moved back into the house in Milwaukee: a family there that inherited me. Also another story. I took to drinking and smoking and was all but a basket case. Who cared? Janne was gone. I was out of school. I could not find a job. Patty let me use her room because I could not handle the traffic on the second floor. My sister, Jeanne, and her fiancé, Chuck, came to visit me; I suspect at the request of my parents. Jeanne could not handle the house. Chuck invited me to stay with him for the summer while looking for a job in Detroit. Came fall and he returned to MSU and I found a new roommate.
Janne? Chuck wanted to meet Janne. Knock her head off? No. He wanted to meet a girl with whom after being, no other girl was interesting. Was I still crying after Janne? No. This had happened before -- only not so seriously. No. Just no interest. I had other things to interest me. The smoking stopped. The drinking stopped. This is tough. I am an alcoholic. I have been clean for 20 years. Another story. I had to fix my world. I had a job as a computer programmer and I would succeed. Girls were not high on the list.
Oh. I occasionally went out. I even had a girl friend, Cathy. I could not take Cathy seriously for reasons other than Janne. A couple of years went by. I went out on rare occasions and met some interesting women. Women now. Girls are gone. I met a Karen in Chicago. We became friends. She married a Notre Dame football player who told me to never darken their door. I guess some men cannot handle their wives having friends of the opposite sex. I am not the jealous type. I do not think I can be made to be jealous.
I married one of the girls, Carole. You know some of that story. I knew I could learn to love Carole. We moved to Madison. Janne was working there to support her new husband. She was across town. I could have called. Carole was the jealous type. Calling Janne would damage my marriage. I was working excessive hours. Janne might laugh at me. I never called. I really wanted my marriage to work.
Later in my marriage I learned the concept of 'settling'. I had a woman friend, Connie, with whom I talked with for long hours. I had a co-worker, MaryAnn that I learned to love. Love MaryAnn? I had to know that I could love. I wanted to love Carole but there was a wall that we could not get past. Loving MaryAnn taught me that I was still able to love. It cost me my job and ultimately my marriage. But I learned that the wall between Carole and myself was real. I learned also that I had settled. Carole heard the names of most of my old girl friends. She never heard the name Janne. Carole is very good at reading people. She would have seen the love in my eyes when I said Janne's name. I would not do that to Carole.
In a few years it will be 40 years since I last saw Janne. I am sure that she is happily married with beautiful children. I hope that I was a pleasant memory. But this is not about Janne.
This is about me. Yes, Karen, from Racine, and I were picked up by the Shorewood Police for drinking in the park. Yes, Karen, from Chicago, and I started a floor party somewhere in south Chicago. Yes, Cathy, from Detroit, and I made out on a desk in the Admin building. Yes, Amy and I... And Judy from Hudson that my dad hated (he hated them all) And. And. And.
And before Janne there was Maryanne from Butler and Janice in grade school and Jane the student/secretary at UWM. And there was Carole (another Carole), Patty's sister. And Patty who was a loving sister in a family that was not mine. But if I include, Patty, then I should include Tina and Margie. And the list goes outside of the loves as love.
I know that looks count too much to me. I know that intelligence counts just as much. I married a woman who looked great but was not smart. I did not marry a woman who was smarter than me because she was smarter than me. Carole was not dumb but we had nothing in common nor anything to talk about. And this is hard for me because I will talk about anything.
So now what? I have tried dating services. I have put my ad on the web. Some women have answered it but my current life-style makes meeting such women difficult.
I don't know. There has to be someone out there who would like an almost free ride. Maybe it is not possible. I remember the saying: The older we get the more selective and the less desirable. But I am not old. I became 59 in April, 2003. I see many attractive women close to my age. Maybe because my life has been such a shambles for the last six months. Three years. I am pleasant, loyal, honest; not bad looking can carry my own in a conversation. No drinking, smoking, cussing. Comfortably groomed. Will help anyone to do anything.
If you have read this far, make sure you understand: Janne was history. Good history. And distant history. No one is compared to her -- just I have set my goals a little higher than I did in the past to make sure that settling is not part of a relationship.
And the beat goes on.