…
The girl,
Gayle Johnson, was one of a freshman cheerleaders at Washington High
School. A nice girl, always dressed for
that times; she was a year younger than I, I was seventeen or eighteen at the
time, a senior, and a hallway monitor during the lunch periods. It was the summer of ’65. She was lean, but
shapely, and feminine; smart looking; not real tall, shorter than she was
taller, with big eyes, and wavy soft blond hair; an eye catcher. Every day of
school, five days a week she’d come walking down that hallway with two or so of
her girlfriends. It took all of a few minutes.
She never said more than hello, along with giving me a big smile. She
appeared to be popular with everybody in school. I’d actually wait in
anticipation for her to come along, and if she didn’t: darn if I didn’t miss
seeing her.
She looked like a soft rabbit, and those
big eyes Betty Davis’ eyes, a little beauty, without a name. I hadn’t thought
positive about any girl in particular at Washington High, except I could have
thought positive about her, and I was dating a girl from Johnson High School on
the East Side of town, an Italian, nice looking gal.
It looked to me, the day that girl
started school, and passed by my post,
turning right to enter the lunchroom, we connected eye to eye, once and
forevermore, never to forget—; at least halfway down the hallway this eye
contact started if not sooner, as if we were white on rice.
She appeared to be shy, but was she,
perhaps I was? She was never by herself.
Her head was always clumped with other heads. Not looking towards the lunchroom
door at all, but at me, as if I was a window, and she was looking out of it, as
I was looking in. It was as if I would kind of drift, towards her, never moving
from the chair.
I never talked much back then, and
didn’t realize she knew more about me than I knew about her.
I gave someone my yearbook that year to
pass it around, because I knew in advance I’d be absent, and Gayle wrote in it
“I Love you” but who was Gayle? I asked myself, and a few other kids, it was
for the most part, someone who had no face for me, or recognition. And had I
known it was Gayle with the Betty Davis’ eyes, well, I would have said, she
wasn’t shy anymore, rather to the contrary. But guys are shyer than women, and
when a woman wants you, they go after you, and if a hundred men are standing by
willing to give life and limb, they’ll pass them up, take my word for it, time
has proven that fact time and again.
Anyhow, I think I read “I love you,” too
fast, not knowing the name, and she signed it properly, actually she signed it
as if she was on her way to being, Miss America, or Miss Wall Street! But it wasn’t that; I just didn’t know who
was who together, had I, well I think life for me would have been a little
different.
As I inferred, boys are different than girls,
they know what they want, and a few
friends said: she’s a sophomore, no she’s a freshman, yet I couldn’t put two
and two together, nor could they, we could have made a good hoot together—if I
was a seer looking back, and who knows what from there; I would have taken my
pushchair in that hallway and there might have been a romance in the
makings—who’s to say; but I didn’t bat an eye. It’s not that she wasn’t worth
the time to investigate further, the thing is I didn’t take it serious, and to
be frank I didn’t think she paid any real attention to me, and I was bad news
for a good girl, and I knew it.
So we had our hallway romance.
But in 1994, evidently she reached the
point where the boldness came to a head even stronger, and she called me up at
work, and mind you that’s 29-years later. And I still couldn’t put two and two
together. When she called me, I was not a married at the time, and she wanted
to meet, and I had a few bad experiences in meeting with old female friends, so
I declined. Hence, she said, “When you see me, you’ll know who I am!”
Had she said, “I’m the gal with the Betty
Davis’ eyes,” the decline would have been a different story, I would have met
her in a flash.
If she ever reads this, and I doubt she
will, but if… she had no equal in Washington High, not in my eyes; God bless
her soul.
Short Story No: 1000 (January 4, 5, 6, and 2014) / First Short Story for
2014 / For: Gayle Johnson
By Dennis L. Siluk, Dr. H.c. © 2014 “The Hallway
Monitor” Shortened, revised, September, 15, 2014
