The summer after high school

In the interest of not evoking or provoking any of the baser sexual vices, I will stroll no further back down memory lane than the summer after I graduated from high school. It was a period of limbo, an odd stretch of time where I was unable to find anything better than a part time job, and thus had copious amounts of time on my hands, and endless ways to fill it. I had dated a girl through the majority of my senior year, but we could hardly keep the relationship together through prom, let alone into the summer or, worse yet, through the impending doom of long distance college relationships.

Sophie was foremost on the list of girls I pined for. To my young mind, she was the perfect woman being intelligent, kind, attractive, athletic, and mature. She was tall, well built and athletically toned; she played soccer and ran for track, though I do not doubt that she could have succeeded in any sport she applied herself to. She was also bright, a straight-A student with a true love for learning. Rounding this out was her considerate and thoughtful nature, a trait which set her apart from the rest of the perceived largely superficial antics of the majority of the girls in high school.

Riley was another girl who demanded your attention. Lean in a wiry and taut way (as opposed to thin and fragile), Riley was not the sort of girl who would give an inch on any subject, with anybody, and she was so liberal as to be qualifiable as revolutionary. Riley was gregarious and incredibly able to morph herself socially, and could move with shocking ease between hobnobbing with the preps in a J. Crew sweater and chain smoking on the corner with the dropouts in a shredded pair of jeans.

Eleanor lived in a house on top of a hill, and some of us joked that this was so her parents could be closer to God. Her family was quite well off, though she rarely came off as a snob. A devout Catholic, I doubt she ever missed mass. She even looked pure: her skin was the color of milk, and her slightly rounded face with fine features was framed by her straight blonde hair, all of which enhanced and contrasted her sapphire blue eyes. Her sculpted body, contributed with the rest, made her seem an angel to the rest of us mere mortals.

And these are just a few; there were also the teachers, and others, to consider.