French Summer

Sandy French was the most beautiful girl I knew back in the summer of '65, perhaps the best looking thirteen-year-old to ever grace the planet. Everyone thought so, or at least all of the other thirteen-year-olds I came into contact with. That was the Country Club summer, the time I spent with my aunt and uncle somewhere in New Jersey. I got to read myself to sleep with their extensive Poe collection, and it was probably the last "quality" time I ever spent with my cousins from that branch, one of whom is now an acclaimed writer for a major metropolitan daily. But all of my cousins were too young to appreciate, and therefore oblivious to, the beauty that radiated from Miss French.

I told all my friends about her, and I believe I would have composed songs about her if only I had been composing songs at the time. (That would come later.) But it was just the three of us that summer, her, me, and my unspoken love. Like most summer flings it ended much too soon when one of us stopped showing up. And the true tragedy is that we never spoke. I was, alas, interminably shy. And skinny. And self-conscious. And, of course, there was the distance thing -- she was from Jersey and I was from Long Island. It'd never have worked.

But, you know, I still remember her smile.