(i LIVED for this magazine and was over the moon when my favorite hardy boy graced the cover)
one of the best things about lucy teaching me how to use spotify is poking around on there and rediscovering songs i haven’t thought about it in ages. a few weeks ago i stumbled upon shaun cassidy’s “da doo ron ron” and i was just beside myself. i was a HUGE shaun cassidy fan… i had his signature album, of course, that i played ad nauseam and i also had his poster on my wall that i kissed whenever i entered my room. he is ten years older than me and i was sure that when i became the appropriate age our paths would cross and i would sail off into the sunset with him. we DID have a brief correspondence at the height of my affections… i sent him this heartfelt letter and i got a postcard back with his autograph (stamped, not actual) so i felt like he knew i was out there waiting for our lives to begin.
(i couldn’t get enough of this record)
(i have always had a bit of spelling trouble)
(my fourth grade school picture when i was “nine going on ten”)
(this is shaun in 1978 when i sent him that letter)
i am not sure why i wrote shaun that i couldn’t “admit” to my crush on him… possibly because in the fourth grade i was intensely involved with “alphie” (who WAS my age.) we wrote loads of notes on that blue lined school paper that we folded up into tiny triangles (i still have a box of them as i am crazy sentimental) and passed surreptitiously to each other in mr. salzgeber’s class.
(alphie’s fourth grade school picture… even though this photo is a little blurry you can see he had a pretty strong collar…not as theatrical as shaun’s when he was probably around nine, but then again, alphie did not have academy award winning actress, shirley jones, as his mother)
(shaun with shirley and his two younger brothers… his shirt/belt combo is just amazing! ALL of them look pretty fabulous - i can’t get over his little brother’s romper!)
alphie was a very sweet boy but we were sadly wrenched apart at the end of fourth grade when his mother moved him and his siblings up to portland. alphie left his hamsters, herbert and louie, with me… for some reason they were not invited to oregon.
(alphie and me riding bikes the summer he moved. mine had a big purple banana seat so i creatively named it, “grape”)
i really connected with herbert and louie… i remember telling them through tears that they were the only ones who REALLY understood me, at which point they BOTH bit me on the SAME finger… in my emotional state i was probably squeezing them a bit too hard. shortly after that incident, herbert and louie “escaped” and we never saw them again.
like herbert and louie, i lost track of alphie in the ensuing years (mind you this is decades before facebook and iphones and texting) but when i was a graduate student in my twenties this very dapper man in a suit showed up at my new york city apartment. i was renting a room from an art dealer and i thought he was there to see a painting… it was ALPHIE! he was still darling but was also a very serious jehovah witness living in their giant compound in brooklyn. he had been all over the world on missionary excursions and was now working with the printing presses for all of the jehovah bibles and promotional materials. i’m not sure how he found me, but we ended up having dinner in little italy after he gave me a tour of the printing facilities. the whole watchtower campus was immaculate and i was fascinated by the pretty gold edging the printers created on the bibles but everyone we met called me, “sister” and that freaked me out a bit.
so alphie and i were NOT destined to be one of those couples that i love to read about on people.com who find each other decades later and fall madly back in love… as much as i like to travel and read i could not imagine embracing alphie’s religion and he could not imagine leaving it.
i just looked up my former paramour, shaun, and unfortunately, he is not an option either. according to wikipedia (i LOVE wikipedia!) he is currently on his THIRD (seemingly very happy) marriage and has EIGHT kids. i am very relieved to hear that he is doing well… of course his older brother, david, did not weather his teen heartthrob status with the same success and battled addiction and depression for most of his adult life… i am so grateful shaun avoided that fate.
there is only one former boyfriend that could possibly elevate me to people.com status (because of facebook i KNOW what the rest of them are up to and none of them fit the bill as they are either married or otherwise unavailable.) he was my pre school love and his name is “ramey.” my mother can’t remember his last name but if anyone knows a ramey who went to nursery in seattle who isn’t a loon or married, let me know.
