Don’t you just hate people who attract your attention and everyone else’s around? Luann was one of those people. Just standing and doing nothing she still seemed like an invisible magnetic force that reached out and grabbed hold of both members of the opposite sexes and turned them toward Luann.
I had known Luann since we were neighbors almost two decades ago. My family had just moved in. My dad put together a teeter-totter he had made for me just a week before we moved to a new home. I don’t know how she spotted the teeter-totter, but she was there with the toe-end of her shoes at the edge of the teeter-totter board in an instant. She had just skipped over from next door. She wasn’t wearing tap shoes, but it sure seemed like it. She danced halfway up the teeter, did a little spin and sat on the totter easily and went quietly to the ground. I watched her in awe as her mother called her to breakfast. She smiled at me and my dad and was gone. The whole thing just took seconds, but the memory would last in my mind forever.
I remember my father asking, “Who was that?” He wasn’t asking anyone. I think that was just a natural reaction of seeing Luann . . . the smile, the hair, the eyes.
We became pals. We would run through the tall grass, climb trees, and fill up empty pickle jars with polliwogs and watch then all afternoon.
As we got older, we would share books from the town library. We would recite stories to others of the details that we could only dream about. As we got older, we moved up to the higher grades, but near the end of Junior High we parted ways. Luann’s father was sent halfway around the world. He was an army officer. He left town with his wife and his daughter Luann. I didn’t cry then, but I did a month later when I got a letter with a “Miss you so much!” note and a lipstick kiss on the seal. Life continued. Letters didn’t.
After graduating from high school, I applied to the University of Washington. I was still living at home, so I stayed with my parents, and drove to the “U.” I drove back and forth every day until I made friends and four of us lived together. One was a budding actor. After a couple weeks my buddy got me a free ticket so I could see him act. During the second act a gorgeous young woman entered from stage left. Her eyes passed over the seats and stopped at me. It was just a second, perhaps half a second, but more was involved than anything in the script. I don’t recall what this play was, but it got a standing ovation . . . and I think I started it and kept it going. Afterward my friend whispered in my ear with a fake smile and said . . . “You are so lucky.”
