We hadn't spoken since we lost the war. You could argue that things began to wear away long before the last mortar fell. I would.
My first girlfriend in any capacity had been the neighbour girl next door at the tender age of five. We saw plenty of each other at school, came home together even if we didn't mean to, played outside at common times (the local kids referred to it as 'cess)(just kidding that's a terrible drug and children were not involved in that noise). Being babysat routinely by each other's mothers made for the final nail in the we're-clearly-more-than-just-friends coffin. Not that we had the slightest idea what a relationship was or resembled. But there was a lot of forcibly shared tunafish sandwiches, which I realize contributed heavily to my ongoing dislike of tunafish sandwiches.
I remember the sharing. Of most things. Of TV time, and having to sit through Jem & The Holograms and Carebears in order to get to anything resembling GI Joe or He-Man or things that transformed. But there was something quietly proprietary about sitting through all of that pink and glitter huck because... she wanted me to. And that felt nice I guess. She doesn't do this kinda thing with anybody else. And neither do I. And I don't really care about that part, and that feels kinda nice. We kissed sometimes. Okay often. Like two ducks might kiss. We laid down on top of each other once, which is pretty hot and heavy stuff for two people who had just figured out kissing. I was very surgical, and couldn't have been performed with more sterile precision than if we had been researching lying on top of somebody for science. It took finding out from Kevin that she had kissed him under the stairs at his babysitter's house for me to get my first taste of what you might call mild heartache. I was surprised, and jealous, and as betrayed as somebody could feel at five years of age. Which isn't much, but a sting's a sting. I knew enough to know that whatever it is that we were, we weren't anymore. Was it something I did or said? Yes, and probably both of those things. If I wasn't so busy still being totally confused about life and let myself get distracted by Lego, soccer, and lamborghinis, in that order, I may very well have taken the time to be sad. But there are bikes to learn how to ride and dinosaurs to read about like I was going on safari and Elvis to get into. It was a weird time. And by that I mean it was 1985.
We had sent a man back to the future. There was a new generation of starfleet officers manning the Enterprise. The Pointer Sister where singing about The Neutron Dance and Katrina was walking on Sunshine. I don't think we quite appreciate what was going on while we were growing and developing. There were no rules. I remember walking up to random children and aggresively blurting out "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!" just because, and that it was normal and okay. Everything I wanted to do required a helmet. Again, normal. Flaming robot unicorns could have fallen from the sky and the planet would have collectively given itself a well-I-never-thought-the-day-would-come-but-I-can't-help-but-feel-like-we-were-warned look followed by an emphatic shrug. And it might have - there was a hole discovered in the ozone layer. And as far as we knew it was a very plausible flaming unicorn hole. The world had just been subjected to James Cameron's first assault with The Terminator. I remember velcro being a big deal.
Looking at what had happened between me and Jenny was the psychological equivalent of watching the exhaust dissipate from behind a moving car. I knew there wouldn't be any more kissing for a while.
I still had to sit through Jem though.
