How You Like Me Now?

So what have I been up to? No good apparently. Now I've gone Bat Shit Crazy. The old girlfriend from twenty years ago that I wrote about earlier? You know, the one that had a boyfriend, lived in a different state and our time had come and gone. Well, it looks like our time has come again.

She broke up with her boyfriend a few weeks ago. He refused to be around her fifteen year old son, so he kinda dug his own grave. I made her swear that it had nothing to do with me. I don't know if I believe that completely, but I take solace in the fact that I encouraged her to give him another chance. I told her that she should talk to him and make sure he understood what she needed. He just shut down on her and told her that if she didn't like it, she knew what she could do.

So, after that, our talks turned more to regretted mistakes and second chances. She has apologized a dozen times for things that happened twenty years ago. Actually, nothing really happened. We were together and then she just sorta went away. She tells me that she was young and selfish and has always felt like she made a huge mistake.

Where did that leave us? Once I allowed it to happen, all of the old feelings began to surface and I told her I would give her a second chance if she wanted it. However, there was still a sticking point. She lives there and I live here. She can't move for several years and I'm not really interested in doing the long distance thing for any length of time. If I really wanted to give her a second chance, I had to agree to go to her.

We decided that we should see each other some before making any kind of commitment. Just to make sure we smelled right to each other. Her son will be away on spring break the weekend of the twentieth and we decided that she would come to Nashville and go to the hockey game with me then (I did make sure she didn't have a sick turtle first).

That was a couple of weeks ago and we spent the next several days on the phone talking about everything and nothing. We finally decided that the first time we see each other in twenty years shouldn't have the pressure of a full weekend behind it. Last weekend, we decided to meet each other half way at Mammoth Cave National Park.

I got there at the agreed time and was a little nervous, not about meeting her, but about the fact that there is NO cell service at the park. I had no way to tell her where I was or that I was waiting for her. I pull into the parking lot, easing around a car that had been pulled over by a park ranger and found a spot where I could watch for her to arrive. I'm sitting there, wondering what I'm gonna do if she doesn't show and listening to my iPod. I look in the rear view mirror at the ranger talking to the driver and realize, that's a charcoal grey sedan. Hey! It has a Harley Davidson plate on the front and there is a blond sitting in it! Did I drive past her and not even notice? I got out of my car and began walking back to where the other car and the ranger were. As I'm walking back to the car, the ranger pulls away and the door opens and there she is. She rushes over to me and I start to try to explain that I didn't realize that it was her. She isn't having any of it. She grabbed me, gave me huge hug and then kissed me. Twenty years just melted away. We chattered like monkeys, kissed some more and then walked hand in hand into the visitors center. We walked up to the counter to buy tickets for the tour, the lady behind the counter lifted her head when she saw us and immediately said "Here are two people looking for trouble." I haven't laughed so hard in months.

We toured the cave. It was pretty cool. I had no idea that the world's longest cave system (over four hundred miles of interconnected caves) was only an hour and a half away from me. The best part of the tour? At one point, we are in a giant cavern and the ranger leading the tour tells all of us (about a hundred people) that to really experience what it used to be like working in the cave (there is evidence that early man mined the caves for salts and minerals) we had to know what it was like without modern lights. So he turned them off. There, in the pitch black, with a hundred other people around us, she kissed me again. I was hooked.

So we are gonna make a go of it. She is spending most of her son's spring break with me. We have decided to go to the Jimmy Buffet concert together and then in May, I'm taking her to my favorite vacation spot in Florida. I've put in an application with a travel company hoping they can get me an assignment closer to where she lives. That way I won't have any long term commitment to a job or a residence if we don't pan out.

She tells me she loves me and I believe her. She promises that she won't hurt me again and I believe that too. I could go into what attracts me to her, but I will just say that from what I can tell, she is a polar opposite from the last person I dated. Example? I was trying to tell her that I had talked to a female friend about something and I began to go into great detail about what the emails we had traded said. She stopped me and said "why are you telling me this? That's your business, not mine, you don't have to explain anything to me." I was blown away. I'm so used to having to explain and justify every interaction that I have, I don't know any other way to act. It was a breath of fresh air.

So that's where I'm at right now. I need to find a nickname for her. Can't just keep calling her "her". I thought about RG for recycled girlfriend, but that sounds a bit insulting. In the interest of full disclosure, I told her about this blog. She thanked me for telling her, but she has no desire to read what I write here. "That's like your journal," she said. However, she might change her mind and I don't want to hurt her feelings with an insulting nickname. I will put some thought into it.