Lightning (A Love Story)

No matter what Paul Simon says about love being like a rock, I have determined that love is actually much more like lightning. It has great force. It appears out of nowhere. It's surprising, and once a person is exposed to "the bolts of love", they are defenseless.

For me it happened on a blind date almost 21 years ago. I was in college and spending the weekend with my best friend when it happened. He got a call from one of his old girlfriends who had some personal problems and needed to see him. Joel was always the "camp counselor" for everyone, so her calling him for a "session" was certainly no surprise. He agreed to see her, but only if he could find a date for me so I wouldn't have to hang around the house while he went out. Joel's like that. Thoughtful.

So, he took out his black book and started calling potential blind dates for me, which made me very nervous. I had only been on two previous blind dates. One of them turned out ok, but the other was bit of a disaster. I went miniature golfing with a young lady who had no personality to speak of, but putted like Jack Nicklaus. Also, her eyes looked two different directions at once…and that was a little unsettling (After the date she asked me if she could see me again. No jokes please…). I was "toast" by the 9th hole. She just kept rolling them in over and over again. Personality wasn't all she was short on…she also wasn't too long on mercy. Finally after I received a sound thrashing on the links, the long ordeal was over and I headed home determined not to blind date (or play miniature golf) again.

Despite my concerns, Joel was already rolling at full speed, laying it on thick, telling this girl named Susie (who had just recently moved to Texas from Shreveport, Louisiana) what a great guy I was, that I was a published songwriter, that I was in from out of town, and so forth. (Out of town? I lived in Aldine at the time, which I guess was officially "out of town", but just barely, since it is a suburb of Houston. It's not like I had to fly in to Joel's house for the weekend, but the story was already told so I had to live with it and hope she didn't ask me how Aldine was that time of year. I'd have to say something inane like, "Oh, remarkably similar to Houston".) Susie finally agreed to go out with me, but only because Joel asked her to do it, and he advised me not to get my hopes up about any kind of romance. He told me Susie had lots of suitors. He was right.

When she opened the door and said "hello", I was done. Like lightning, it was unexpected and there was no time to prepare and no safe place to go. I couldn't have run for cover even if I had wanted to. It was love at first sight, and she was a beautiful sight. We went out to see the movie "Breaking Away", and I took her back to her place and serenaded her till 3 in the morning. I went home and couldn't sleep. I called her at 4 AM and asked her if I could go to church with her the next morning. I met her at the Methodist Church; we spent the day together and had a picnic in the park.

We started seeing each other on a regular basis shortly after that but trouble was brewing and I didn't even know it. I was lacking a bit in social skills at the time and I had a couple of bad habits that bothered her terribly: I didn't introduce her to people I knew, and I didn't greet her dad properly when I entered their home. She told me that she had heard that you can't change a person and that we should probably stop dating.

I changed. I started introducing her to EVERYONE (even people I didn't know), and I began to greet her dad with a firm handshake and a hearty hello. A small price to pay for love, I'd say. I'll never know if she was bluffing or not about breaking up, but the truth is I needed to brush up on my social graces and she knew which fork to use at a fancy dinner. We were a good combination.

This past summer Susie and I celebrated 20 years of marriage, and we went to Germany to celebrate. In a dark corner of a great Croatian restaurant I gave her a ring to show how much I love and appreciate her. Our teenage sons helped me pick out the ring and even kept it a secret so that she was truly surprised to get it. These have been the best years of my life…and no one could have predicted it. Like lightning, they have passed too quickly.

But unlike lightning, love can strike the same person in the same place over and over again. Every day she calls me on her break at exactly 10:00. I always wait impatiently for her call. It makes my day to hear her voice. My secretary calls to me "Dennis, you have a call at 2-6-1", and--- BOOM. I'm struck all over again.

by Dennis Welch