Dream Girl

We were introduced by a friend. I called the next day, we talked a while and agreed to meet. It wasn't really a date, just a walk in the late autumn evening chill, but that's all we needed. It was my last year in high school and I've never forgotten her. She was just seventeen (if you know what I mean - thank you, Lennon and McCartney), I was a year older, and she was the love of my life.

It only lasted a few months, but the memory of sitting as close as humanly possible in darkened theaters, losing track of the story line because we were too busy looking at each other, is as fresh as the mist falling on the hayfield as I write. I can see her face, upturned to meet mine, with snowflakes in her hair. It's funny how these things stay with you.

We ran into each other once after graduation -- it was by accident in a shopping mall. She was dating a sometime friend of mine and for all I know, they married and had eight kids. We stopped, said hello, and then she was gone; that's the last time I would see her.

But every now and then, long after I'm asleep, she appears. Never saying a word, she takes my hand and we walk in the silence. I never quite know what to make of these nocturnal visits. They come when least expected and leave me with questions. What she knows is secret -- her lips are sealed as only a dream girl's can be, but her face is always upturned and I'm glad.

(I Saw Her Standing There, by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Capital Records, 1963)