A reader just wrote to ask if I simply must continue with the doom-and-gloom pieces for some unexpressed psychological reason involving my boyhood, or might I be persuaded to post something, say, a bit uplifting? He was graciously complimentary about my usual output, my selection of topics, my focus, my writing style, and so forth. He just didn’t want to have to surf over here, as he does each morning, in anticipation of being brought down, as he put it. He’s a sunny sort who can find the silver lining around any dark cloud – I’m sure you know and despise a few people like that – and he wanted to register a vote in favor of more lighthearted pieces. You know, the kind that aren’t likely to get you eyeing the Barrett .50 and thinking about clock towers.
It confused me, at first. I mean, do people really come to Liberty’s Torch for that kind of drivel? Posting that sort of thing makes me wonder if I’m letting my Gentle Readers down. Well, at least one person does, or hopes to do. So I tried to think of a topic about which I could hold forth with warmth, humor, and Christian love, yet do so with the splendiferous effulgence that characterizes my usual crap.
For a while, I came up drier than the Mojave Desert. I suppose I was in the wrong frame of mind for happy stuff. So I decided to seek a distraction… and I found one:
When I was a steak cook at Ponderosa steakhouse, age 16, this beautiful waitress that went to another high school would always come back and sit next to me after her shift was over and talk.
— Adam Rossi (@rossiadam) July 25, 2026
I finally said “why are you still here? You are not getting paid. You should go home.” pic.twitter.com/2LEoel4rxQ
Gentle Reader, you must read the comments to that tweet. Especially if you’re a man. I lack the words to capture the poignancy of those tales. If you don’t have a personal story that belongs in that collection, you’re a rare and precious jewel.
But I do.
It was 1967. I was a senior in high school, and my eyes were on the stars. Almost literally! I was soon to depart to my chosen university and begin (I hoped) a career in physics. More on that some other time.
As the school’s Brainiac, I had had the usual young nerd’s experience of romance: that is, none. I’d noticed the girls around me, some of whom were quite fetching, but I’d never dared to approach any of them. As I was two years younger than all of them, it struck me as pointless.
I was a loner even then. I used to walk to school and back, even though it was a three-mile distance from my family’s apartment and I was fully entitled to bus transportation. Needless to say, I had to set out early. But I walked fast, and I always got there well before anyone else. I would sit in the cafeteria and read until the time came to report to homeroom, where attendance was taken. For a long time I did so alone.
But not always. There came a day in late winter when, with some fifteen or twenty minutes to go before I had to scurry off to homeroom, a very pretty teen girl sashayed down the hall. I noticed, of course. I tried hard to maintain “situational awareness” even back then, as the Class Nerd often becomes the Class Target. She glanced over at me, smiled, and hurried along. I gave it no further thought.
Until the next morning, when she didn’t hurry along. She came directly to my table, perched herself next to me, gave her name as Shelly, said she was a junior, and started to chat. It was high school girl stuff: her classes, her friends, who so-and-so was seeing, new pop music, what’s good on TV, and so on. Nothing hugely consequential.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so terrified, before or since.
I was the focus of a girl. That is, she was there because I was there. She was talking to me. And she was pretty! Beautiful, really. Her nose was a little larger than she might have liked, but I could find no flaw in her. I couldn’t imagine why I had her company and her attention. In that, perhaps you can see the embryo of the Curmudgeon Emeritus I would someday become.
As with most Class Nerds, I had no small talk. My head was full of equations. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. She gave me plenty of opportunities to respond, but I hadn’t the faintest idea how to do so. I just tried my best to smile. It must have been the most artificial-looking smile in the history of Mankind.
Well, at long last the bell rang, we wished one another a nice day, and parted to go to our respective homerooms. I gave a silent prayer of thanks for having been released from that conversation before I could beclown myself and tried to have a “normal” day thereafter.
But she came to chat me up the next day, too. And the next. And the next, which was a Friday. If your high school years are too far back to remember the significance of Fridays to high school kids, allow me to refresh your memory: They matter. A lot.
Friday was “game time.” Commitment time. It was when your hopes for the evening and weekend become either if-onlies or palpably real. If you have plans to socialize, Friday is when you discover who will have you, if anyone, and for what.
High schoolers make a lot of bad decisions on Fridays. Some prove to be mere embarrassments. Others are destructive, or cruel.
I had no evening or weekend socializing plans. No one else would have me, which made such plans moot. At least, that was how matters stood when I arrived at school Friday morning.
As I mentioned, Shelly showed up again. In fact, she was there a little before me. I was in a wobbly state of mind. Yet I knew that I had to be there. If I didn’t show, she might take offense, and I didn’t want that.
She started chatting with me again, the same pattern as before. You know how that goes: Math is really tough this year! Nancy has to go to summer school. Karen has started going out with Joel! Have you heard the new one from Paul Revere and the Raiders?
I did my best to provide appropriate responses, though I doubt I improved on our previous encounters. She rambled on for a few minutes in an engaging, perfectly pleasant fashion. Never a mean word about anyone or anything. But it didn’t take long for her to get to the Sunday punch.
She didn’t ask me out directly. She was subtle. She mentioned that her usual crowd was going to a concert that evening. Rock concert tickets were comparatively cheap back then. All the same, she didn’t want to go; she disliked rock-concert volume levels. I sympathized, of course. But her next two sentences are engraved on the inside surface of my skull:
“But I don’t want to just sit at home. What do you think you’ll be doing tonight?”
It blindsided me. I couldn’t believe she was asking me out. And I had no relevant, coherent idea how to respond. But she was looking at me, compelling me to make some kind of reply.
Eventually I replied that I had no plans other than to go another chapter forward in Halliday and Resnick (my AP physics text). You can imagine how that went over.
I think that blindsided her. She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Maybe she was hoping I’d come up with a suggestion spontaneously. Soon enough the bell rang, she wished me a good day, and ambled off.
That was the last time I sat in the cafeteria before homeroom. I never saw her again.
“She doesn't love you anymore. Maybe she did once, I don't know, but she doesn't now! These are used emotions. It's time to trade ‘em in! Memories are meant to fade, Lenny. They're designed that way for a reason.” – From Strange Days
The memory above hasn’t faded. I knew I’d blown an opportunity that had been brought to me on a silver platter. I was smart enough to realize that. And I still wonder, now and then, how things would have turned out had I untangled my teenage tongue and suggested something moderately fun to Shelly.
Maybe the reason memories are designed to fade is to spare us old folks the regrets and self-disgust that would arrive with them if they were fresh and vivid. I couldn’t say.
I know this isn’t a bright and cheery piece. Sorry. But once I remembered, I had to get it out. Forgive me.
