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<\/a><\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.6.0″ hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]Flash-forward more than five decades: We had reconnected by email and then in person, each of us having survived tragic personal losses. She had\u00a0retired after more than 30 years of teaching elementary school and I was still slogging away at whatever it is at which I slog away. I asked her to go steady again this past March 6, and to my everlasting delight, she once again consented. In the card I gave her, I said I liked asking her to go steady every 54 years or so. Laughs, tears and the kind of hugs I could\u00a0only\u00a0have dreamt\u00a0of.
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\nKim lives in Long Beach, and a few days after that visit to see me in Sacramento, the world and the state fell under house arrest. The commuter romance we\u2019d been cherishing became a cyber one.[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/goldmanstate.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Kim-and-Ed-at-Water-Boy.jpg” title_text=”Kim and Ed at Water Boy” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.6.0″ hover_enabled=”0″ border_width_all=”1px” box_shadow_style=”preset3″ sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text admin_label=”Caption” _builder_version=”4.6.0″ text_font_size=”14px” text_orientation=”center” custom_margin=”-16px||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
Kim and Ed at The Waterboy restaurant in Sacramento’s midtown. Ed drove.<\/em><\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.6.0″ hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]Tomorrow, she\u2019ll be 70, a milestone I hope to reach two months and three days thereafter. Loving someone barely older than I am means nothing at this age, of course. But in high school, it was daunting. I even lied to close friends (but not to Kim) that I\u2019d actually been born in March. My main concern was that she\u2019d be getting her driver\u2019s license before I\u2019d get mine. In today\u2019s culture, a lot of guys like it when they\u2019re driven everywhere by their girlfriends (if either of them even drives). But in our teen years, a girl driving a guy all but proclaimed that the girl was older. Precisely why we gave a damn one way or the other embarrasses me to this day. Maybe it was an extension of the childhood notion that the older boy is bigger and is therefore capable of beating up the smaller one, and is therefore to be\u00a0given\u00a0more respect. But I also knew that Kim had gone out on dates with older boys, who had their driver\u2019s licenses and sometimes even their own cars. And that made me feel awkward and ineffectual.
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\nIt was a brainless thing to fret about but that\u2019s how brainless looked in 1966 if you went to Lakewood Senior High School, an all-white school in an all-white blue-collar and white-collar town that lay in the shadow of the once powerhouse aircraft plant McDonnell-Douglas, which was the town\u2019s biggest employer. But, to adapt an annoying phrase, it was what it was. And we were what we were.[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_code admin_label=”Adsense Horizontal” _builder_version=”4.5.0″ width=”90%” width_tablet=”” width_phone=”” width_last_edited=”on|phone” max_width=”90%” module_alignment=”center” custom_margin=”|0px||0px|false|false” custom_margin_tablet=”” custom_margin_phone=”|0px||0px|false|false” custom_margin_last_edited=”on|desktop” global_module=”1433″ saved_tabs=”all”]