Entering my senior year of high school my experience with girls was that of a Carthusian monk but without whatever spiritual consolation they enjoy.   When I was in ninth grade my previously fair skinned face erupted with volcanoes.  One look in the mirror convinced me that only a girl with severe self-esteem problems would be willing to kiss lips that were bordered by reddened, lumpy welts crowding for space amidst a mountain range of yellow-topped peaks. I tried medicines, special soaps, ultra-violet treatments and cosmetics and prayed for a miracle.   When none of those worked, I, like "The Phantom of the Opera", accepted my condition and the loneliness that goes with being a pariah.

I had inherited a little talent in music as a consolation prize.   My Mother had started me on piano lessons as a child and forced me to continue through several years of moderate rebellion.   That led to my being offered a spot as a sousaphone player in our high school band.   I carried that ungainly coil of brass home, shouldered it into my upstairs bedroom and over the course of the summer mastered the basics of providing the “ums” to the “pahs” played by a high school band.   When school started that fall, I signed up for Band and was given a well-fitted uniform that looked very much like a Marine’s dress-blues. I was so swollen with pride that I had my picture taken, in uniform, in our local studio.  That was before acne.  The cherub-faced boy smiling from between smooth-cheeks in that photo is a poster boy for Midwestern American boyhood in the `40’s

Band was fun and required very little work so I stayed in it all through high school.  In my senior year my fellow band members elected me Band President which gave me the privilege of wearing the distinctive, one of a kind, blue-feathered plume of that office on my hat.   Earlier, the band director had picked me to be "Section Leader" of the bass section and it was generally recognized, in our little high school, that I was “Mr. Music.”   But those honors in no way made up for the fact that I had no girl friend.   My best friend had one.  Guys I despised had one.  The Jocks had all they wanted and guys I knew to be scoundrels had one.  I did not.

When I reported to band class in my senior year I discovered a lovely young girl sitting in the row in front of me.  She was a freshman and new to the band.  Sitting elegantly, with always-perfect posture. her dark brown hair flowed over the back of her chair while her slender arms held her baritone horn to her lips. Lois was a heart-stopping sight for me. Her dark brown, vivacious eyes, melded with warm sensuous-looking lips completed the picture of budding, feminine beauty.  Since her back was directly between the Director's podium and me; she was always in my eyes.  Soon she was always in my mind.

I have no idea how I found courage to ask her for a date, or what we did when she accepted.   But within a few weeks we were sharing conversations and private smiles during band rehearsals and I had enjoyed the inexpressible delight of feeling the softness of her lips pressing discreetly on mine.  Each day after school, I drove her home and parked in front of her house where we sat and had long, golden conversations.  At the end of our dates we sat in the dark for a while exchanging soft comments and innocent kisses.  And THAT was as far as I allowed my passion to take me.  I cherished her far too much to even think of removing her from the pedestal on which I had placed her.   After a month or so of having her all to myself, I began to hope I had served my penance and that heaven was within my reach.

Sometime before Christmas, she accepted my class ring.  Seeing that golden circle dangling from a chain around her neck, touching and lying on sacrosanct places that were still being developed by a generous God, and believing in the fidelity it symbolized, I rejoiced. We were now "going steady," she would date no one else.

Then, shortly after the New Year began; after school on a cold winter afternoon - while parked in front of her house, an ancient truth was thrust upon me.  "In matters of the heart, there are no guarantees."  She took my ring from her neck and handed it back to me.  It was over.   “We can be friends”, she said, using those guillotine words girls must learn in kindergarten.    As she spoke those words I heard gates, doors, and windows slamming shut.  No reprieve was possible.   The rest of my senior year was a sentence to be served.  My suffering was made exquisite by the fact that I still saw her sitting in front of me every day in the band.

Spring arrived, and with it a fund-raising fashion show starring our high school girls as models.  Lois was, of course, chosen as one of the models.  The night came.  Our school auditorium filled with doting parents, proud boy friends, jealous girls, and me.  I sat alone, isolated by choice in an upper seat of the balcony.   As the curtain opened and the music began. the loveliest of the lovely in our high school moved gracefully across the stage for their opening display.  There were a dozen or more girls, but I saw only one.  And as the haunting sounds of the old song, "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody," filled the auditorium; that song became forever afterwards in my mind - a beautiful young girl named Lois Foster.

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The Rest of the Story

Six years later I married a young, very lovely Italian girl from Chicago whom I love dearly.  We have celebrated the 55th anniversary of our marriage and I certainly have no regrets. The memory of a first love, however, digs a hole in one's heart that no amount of time can fill.  No regrets; but a very lovely and fond memory of a beautiful girl.

Lois married another young man from our high school. They had five kids and then divorced. She later married another man who abandoned her when she became seriously ill with a liver disease.  She died several years ago.