Girlfriend

Saturday, 6 November 1999. It was a date that I could not forget, and apparently still. Of course I would normally not have been allowed to forget it, but she was nice enough to probably have let me.

It was another Saturday night spent in front of the family Packard Bell computer. I was only fifteen at the time and had yet to get my driver’s license, so I had nowhere to go, nor did I have people to see. It was after dinner and it was time to hear the man’s voice again say “Welcome.”

I cannot remember where. I do not even remember how. It just happened. It was as if the actual meeting was not important. All that mattered was the goodbye.

We found each other in a chat room, probably, and ended up conversing through the Instant Messenger service privately for some reason. That kind of thing was normal. I did not care about the how or why—at least, not back then.

Her name was Adrienne, by the way. She was the sweetest girl I could have ever imagined. From the words that she used, I could tell that she was quite a nice person, with a unique way of thinking. At first glance, we may have seemed incompatible, and maybe we were. By the end of the night, however, none of that mattered.

The details of the actual conversation faded away from my memory long ago, but what I do remember was how we parted ways. It was nearing the end of the night, maybe some time after ten o’clock. It was time for her to go to bed, and the same went for me. Again, the next day was Sunday, of course, and there were obligations to be fulfilled. What I recall the most was not what was said, but how long it took to say. What I mean is that after thirty minutes, we were still chatting away, saying our goodbyes. Then it took another thirty minutes to actually sign off. So, from the time we decided to leave each other in peace to the time we actually left, an hour had passed. That was some goodbye.

In the end, after a few complimentary comments to each other (that may be an understatement), she then asked me, “So does this mean now that I’m your girl and you’re my man?” I cannot remember the exact wording, but the effect was the same.

Corny as it may seem, the only words that I could muster from my brain were, “Well, if that’s the way the cookie crumbles.” Then, in an instant, that was that. We were together.

Our feelings and emotions became tangled with each other, and it seemed to swallow us both. Before I knew it, I had jumped into something. That something: I do not know exactly what it was—a relationship, perhaps—but I jumped into it all the same.

“Goodbye,” said the man’s voice. I shut down the computer and went to bed, no longer a single man.