The wife comes upstairs with a box that my mother had given on one of our many visits. Nothing new there my mother is always giving us boxes of stuff from my old room. Usually they contain such important things as grade 9 English tests or my grade 12 text books. My mom never threw anything out. Ever.
After I graduated from University I went to work overseas so I basically dumped everything from my last residence into my room and disappeared for about 7 years. Slowly this stuff is coming back.
Anyway so my wife opens the box and shows me what is inside. It is 20 year old pictures of almost every girl I ever dated in High School and University. Some of them were formal shots. Some of them just snapshots that they had given me, a few were blown up. Funny thing is I didn't remember half of these dates before seeing the pictures. Sure I remember the girls I dated for a long time and the one I first slept with but these were the others, the ones I only went out with a few times or those who I went out with but who I never really made the big girlfriend/ boyfriend commitment with.
I had always figured that I had won the lottery when I married my wife. That she could have had her pick of guys and I was just lucky that I did not **** up our engagement before I got her down the aisle. My memories of high school dating were all the embarrassing moments I would rather forget sandwiched between awful recollections of rejection and dating despair.
But as I leafed though all these pictures I realized that I was not the loser I remembered myself to be. Many of these girls were kind of hot. Some I had even slept with. I looked thin and athletic, almost studly in a couple.
WTF I thought. Maybe I was a Don Juan. Was it my imagination or was my wife looking at me with a bit of awe in her eyes tonight. One of the girls looked so hot she could have been a model. She was even older than me. Too bad I can't remember her last name. I could google her.
Ahhh youth. It really is wasted on the young.