Always special, never forgotten.  Even I had one.  The first time I saw her was like Michael Corleone meeting Apollonia – the thunderbolt.  Unfortunately, her parents were also like Apollonia’s and I didn’t quite have the Corleone empire and bodyguards on my side.  But I mean how cool would it have been to say that line about gaining a son versus losing a father?

She was a year younger, I took her to her senior prom.  Even wrote her a song – it was passable, but she liked it.  That summer was magical even though I had to sneak into her house to avoid her parents.  One day, her dad came home early and I had to escape by the backdoor.

Like many bittersweet stories, I lose her to California.  When you go up against California, you tend to lose out.  On our last night together, I give her a poem written by a gifted friend about summer nights and such.

A few phone calls here and there, a weird sequence of events, and we stop talking.  The following summer, I receive a long letter in her almost undecipherable writing.  I still have it to this day.

I’ve rarely spoken about her.  But when I told a friend who knows her sister, he was stunned and impressed.  She was a thunderbolt.