Ben has a Lost Love now, too. It is summer, 2010, and our last day of vacation in the Florida Keys. We are camping on Sugarloaf Key and we are trying to squeeze every last second out of the day, before we have to pack the Scamp and head home.
Allen and I are heading out into the Bay in our kayaks, to see if it’s possible to paddle out to sea from our campground; Libby is reading or writing or texting or doing all three at the same time. Ben wants to go to the pool.
Although I am Paranoid Mom, Allen convinces me that there will be other people at the pool and I will not find him at the bottom of it after we finish kayaking.
He returns, having not drowned, as we are beginning to pack the camper. He is quiet, and he looks sad. This is not an uncommon occurrence, since Ben is like me, what you’d call “sensitive.” Having his Nintendo DS run out of power can cause this kind of behavior with Ben.
Today, we are unable to pry the reason for his angst from him. He just won’t tell us. This is serious.
Finally, we throw out a wild guess: “Ben, is this about a girl?”
Bingo. The gates open up, and the story spills out.
She’s from Arkansas. She’s on vacation with her parents. They have come to the Keys for Mini-Lobster season, a yearly 24 hour grab for Florida Lobster which precedes the actual Florida Lobster Season.
Ben met her at the pool. They swam, and they talked a lot. They both love video games. She knows a great app that Ben should put on my iPhone: “Bowmen Attack.” They are, obviously, perfectly suited for each other. Ben is falling for her, fast.
Her parents call her. She jumps out of the pool. She’ll be right back, she tells Ben.
But she never comes back.
Ben rides his bicycle over to the pool a couple more times, to see if she’s come back. He rides around the campground trying to catch a glimpse of her. But she’s gone, probably off in her parents’ boat to go diving for lobsters.
As we pull up to the office to check out, Ben jumps out of the truck, for one more look at the pool, just in case…
Will Ben think of her every time he plays “Bowmen Attack,” like Allen thinks of his BC co-ed when he hears “Please Come to Boston”? Probably. That’s how Lost Loves are.
Author’s Note:
Oddly, after talking about all of this, I realize that I don’t remember having a Lost Love. Ok, maybe one, now that I think about it. I met him during a 2:00 a.m. fire alarm, at Landis Hall at Florida State University in 1986. We talked, we laughed, it was wonderful… but then the Fire Department gave the all-clear, and we lost track of each other in the crush of students going back into the dorm to go back to sleep until someone pulled the fire alarm at 3:00 a.m. I moved out of the dorm right after that, sick of the college idiot freshman fire alarm pranks. And I never saw him again…
Any lost love stories out there? I’d love to hear them.
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