History is full of clichés. And I'm a sap.

I don’t know why the sappiest clichés of them all get me into a twitter, but I am the biggest sucker of them all. But in this day and age of texting and blogging, of online profiles and web surfing, have we lost all sense of romance? Is chivalry really dead?

Does that ole' black magic called love still exist today the way it did when Ella FitzGerald and Louis Prima sang about it? Someone had to write the songs about it, someone had to write the screenplays for the movies. Where did Rogers and Hammerstein find their inspiration if not for witnessing the real thing? Otherwise, how would they have written such wonderful and memorable songs?

But seriously….how does one do it? In these days of dating websites and virtual reality, how do you meet your white knight? I sit around watching golden age movie musicals (I am particularly partial to Rodgers and Hammerstein. I also should have been born 50 years earlier than I was) and wonder about this stuff. Some might say, “Well, there’s your problem. You don’t want to fall in love, you want to fall in love in a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.”

Well, maybe I do. And maybe the scenario is unrealistic, but I don’t think the feelings are that much different.

Now I’ve had my share of frolics in my past 10 years of dating. I thought it would be a fun project to chronicle them from the start. I have always been a sap as well as a giver, and one who is keen to give everything I have in exchange for someone to just let me do it. “Just let me love you”, is my motto.

So, here I am, just-a “waitin’ for my dearie”…

It all began at Martin Middle School in 1998. I was on the fresh side of 11 years old, and had never had a boy pay attention to me before, let alone actually talk to me. I went with some friends to the only place 11 year olds could possibly go outside of school and the supervision of parents to socialize: Jellybeans, the roller rink. All the kids did it. Going to Jellybeans on a Friday night was like going to the 6^th grade version of Cheers.

This one, fateful Friday in September, I went with a group of brand new friends that I had met at school. I befriended one Brett Marshall, who I thought nothing of at the time, mainly because he had asked out some other girl to go to the rink with him. Before I knew it, he was writing me notes and giving them to me between classes and sitting next to me at the lunch table. In fact, we had a little “double date” going on every day at 4^th period lunch, I would sit there next to Brett opposite Cindy and Roshi, another pair. I started eating peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches, since that was Brett’s meal of choice. It was all very civilized, but Brett seemed to have much more experience in this area than I did, so I just went with the flow.

The notes progressed into phone calls, the phone calls progressed into daily communication, and the words “I love you” and a whole bunch of mushy smushy language was used, and I went along thinking that this is just what people my age who were “going out” did.

Brett then asked me to the “Gobble Wobble Thanksgiving Dance”, and I was simply thrilled to actually have someone to walk in with and dance with, as opposed to standing against the wall like I had the first time around.

And then, Friday the 13^th came. Friday the 13^th, exactly seven days before the Thanksgiving dance. Lunch came and went, as usual, and then after lunch, six fateful words came my way.

“I just want to be friends”

“Alright”, I thought. “Well, aren’t we friends already? That seems reasonable”.

Not 2 minutes afterwards, 6 girls came clucking over spewing their apologies and asking if I was okay. I was completely unphased, unaware that my “boyfriend” had just dropped me on my tush. I approached him once more, greeted with a look of stone.

“Did you just break up with me?”

“Uh, yeah”.

“Oh. Okay. Are we still going to the dance together?”

“Uh, no.”

A surging feeling came over me. It felt like I had been crushed by a giant boulder, only instead of feeling it on the outside, I felt it from the inside out. That feeling of honest, pure rejection. I had been wined and dined and dropped, all the while having no idea what was really going on, or how I should behave. I sobbed throughout my classes the rest of the day.

The dance came and went, as did many others. I did get over Brett. Years later, Facebook told me that he was chubby, bearded, balding at 23 and practically engaged to some simple Raleigh girl. And you know what? That is just fine with me.

Many of my run-ins since then have ended, and the guy has ended up with some simple, boring girl. Not only have I learned that I am the farthest possible thing from “simple” and “boring”, but that I will never be that way. And I don’t want to ever be that.

Okay, so, amendment to the Brett story. Facebook now tells me that he is also in NYC working for NBC. I just shot him a message to see if he wanted to grab coffee. So….stay tuned.