Superb Scene!

First One Line Story with each word starting with ‘S'

Sherry's sight seems so scintillating, Sean stares silently.

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[Raj Sahu]

Here's a lovely story to share with you..

He carried her picture through three tours in Vietnam, plus Desert Storm and Desert Shield.
PETER: I was at a skating rink one night when I was 16, in 1958, and I saw this young lady. I waited for you to take a break and get a Coke before I made my move. I grabbed you by the hand and said, “My name’s Thomas Peter Headen.” And you said, “My name’s Jacqueline LeFever.” I looked in those big green eyes, and it was a done deal. So we dated. Then, in 1959, your father got transferred to Japan. I decided, Well, I’ll go get her. I joined the Marine Corps, and I said, “I want to go to Japan.” The Marine Corps said, “You’ll go to Japan when we tell you you can go to Japan.” So I went to a base in California.
JACQUE: I dated a Marine while I was in Japan, and I ended up getting married — I guess just because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do. We came back to the States in 1962, but I didn’t know what happened to you.

PETER: Well, I finally got orders to Okinawa. And I said, Oh, boy. I’ll go see Jacque when I get to Japan! I was home on leave — you always get leave before you go overseas — and stopped by to say hi to your mother. And she said right away, “Jacque got married. But here, you can have this picture of her.” I made some excuse that I had an appointment or something — the walls were kind of crawling in on me — and I left. I went overseas for 14 months, and then I came back to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, not knowing you were right outside the gate of that base. I got discharged, and I went home to Maryland. One night the phone rang — it was you.

JACQUE: I came to visit my mom. And I was calling your mother to see where you were, and you answered the phone — I was shocked, needless to say.

PETER: You said, “I want to show you something.” We went to your mother’s house, and here was this little baby. Your daughter was about three months old, and she had those same big green eyes. You went back to North Carolina, and I re-enlisted. That was 1964, and I said, “Send me overseas.” I didn’t want to be in North Carolina where you’re sitting outside the gate. So I left on August 12 for Vietnam. I came back to the States after 26 months and was stationed at Camp Pendleton, California. One day I was sitting in the barracks, and I decided, I’m going to write her a letter and tell her how I feel, because we were going back to Vietnam.

JACQUE: You wrote, “I just have to get this off my chest — I love you. I’ve always loved you. I have to say it and get it over with, and I’m done.” In the meantime I’d had another child — a little boy. So there I was in an apartment with two little babies and just miserable, actually. I got married for all the wrong reasons. But I came from a divorced family, and I didn’t want my kids to have a broken home.

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PETER: When I came back from Vietnam, I spent 24 hours at home, and then I went to my mother at about 4 a.m. and said, “I’ve got to go to North Carolina.” And she kind of looked at me: “I think you better leave that one alone — she’s married. But I guess you got to do what you got to do.” I said, “Yeah, I got to do what I got to do.”

JACQUE: I sent you away.

PETER: That was September 25, 1968.

JACQUE: Thirty years after that, I left my husband. It wasn’t easy. My kids were grown, they had their college education, they had their families, but I was lonesome and miserable.

PETER: I was sitting there one night, and the phone rang — matter of fact, it was September 25, 1998.

JACQUE: That night, I had made up my mind: I am out of here. I’m so unhappy. And I sat there and I said, Nobody ever loved me but Peter. And that’s when I thought, I’m going to go find him. I asked the operator, “Do you have a T. P. Headen in Waldorf?” And she said, “No.” And I said, “Well, I’m really desperate to find this person. I know he’s in Charles County, Maryland, somewhere.” And she said, “I have a T. P. Headen in White Plains.” So I said, “Oh, my God, that’s it! That’s him!” I started crying, and I said, “I have been trying to find this person for 30 years. He’s the love of my life.” And she said, “You want me to dial the number for you?” I said, “Yeah, you can dial the number.” She said, “Can I stay on the line?” I said, “I don’t care what you do!”

PETER: And you said, “You know who this is?” I said, “Yeah, I know exactly who this is.” You said, “I bet you’re mad at me.” I said, “No. Matter of fact, I’m still in love with you.”

JACQUE: I felt like I was 15 all over again. We decided we would meet in Memphis, and I picked you up at the airport. You jumped in the car and gave me a big old kiss.

PETER: We got married in May, the 15th. I took you down to Key West and out on a three-masted schooner, and we married at sunset. There’s no address on our marriage certificate, just a longitude and a latitude. It’s worked out well. It’s just sad, the time we lost — you can’t get that back. We could have been together when we were 18, 19, you know? But I got you back. And you’re just as beautiful as you were when you were 15.

JACQUE: That’s because you make me feel beautiful.


Another one for you..

It was my first day on the job as a student teaching assistant and my fingers fumbled with the key to my new desk. A tall, blonde boy with flickering green eyes walked by. I seized the moment. “Can you help me? I can’t open my drawer.”

“Sure.” As Tom magically turned the key, I could almost hear a whisper, “He’s the one. He’s the real one. He’s the one you’ve been waiting for.”

Unlike any boy I’d ever met, he felt comfortable, just right. And, besides, he had the perfect touch to unlock my desk.

On our first big date, Chicago’s lyrics—“You are my love and my life. You are my inspiration”—were still echoing through the arena when, as if pulled by an external force, our lips locked. What stopped us was the sound of a handful of people clapping. While we were having our first kiss, tens of thousands of people had exited the USF Sundome and only the cleaning crew was left. They must have liked what they saw. Not many people can say their first kiss was applauded, at least not back in the days before reality television and social media. (These hilarious first kiss stories will make you happy you’re not a teen anymore.)

The kissing didn’t stop there. We smooched at red lights, on our jogs, at work, wherever. Everyone around us had seen more than enough, but we simply couldn’t keep our hands off each other. I’d never been so happy. I’d wished and prayed for this handsome, intelligent, witty boy, my whole life. Now he was finally here, the first boy who didn’t scare me. My first love. We married.

But like many young people in love, we were naïve to love’s tests.

We waited years for the perfect moment to have our first child: happy marriage, good jobs, financial security, roomy house, emotional stability; check, check, check, check, check. Everything was planned to avert disaster.

I wish I could say we lived happily ever after, The End. (Living happily ever after is one of the marriage myths you need to ignore.)

Our first daughter, Jillian, died of cancer at age three, after chemotherapy, stem cell transplants, and radiation. During the pain of it all, I threatened divorce more than once. At times I believed that the magical sense I had of love as destiny had betrayed me. Still, there were other times that I believed—I knew—that moments of Heaven were waiting between the clouds.

We discovered I was pregnant with our second daughter, Cadence, on the first anniversary of Jillian’s death. Our second daughter brought us back to life, but only after we faced the pain of loss, taking turns crying and ranting in each other’s arms.

“Marriage is like mountain climbing,” Tom says 32 years in, “sometimes I throw you a line, sometimes you throw me one.” Together, we’ve climbed and we’ve stumbled. Sometimes we forget, but when we remember, we help each other.

The magic of our first moments, love at first sight—it helps me remember.

One more...

My measurements were 19-19-19, and I had long, stringy dirty blond hair the year I turned eight and started searching for true love. Maybe I’d read too many fairy tales or watched too much television, but I expected Prince Charming to come and transport me into the life I was meant to live. A faint voice in my head said I’d find him, but it would take time.

A decade later, now a college student but still skinny with stringy hair, my first prospect arrived. We had met minutes before, in the university’s computer center. Even in the greenish glow of the fluorescent lights, he looked like he had been ripped from the pages of a romance novel, with blazing blue eyes, full lips, wavy brown hair and mustache, and bulging triceps.

Darkness fell while I worked on a project, and my car was parked across campus. My mother had warned me not to walk alone at night. No one volunteered when I asked my friends for a ride. That’s when Ted swooped in and offered to take me. I wasn’t one to accept rides from strangers, but the exact meaning of the word was blurred. I’d seen him before in the lecture hall. I evaluated my options—walk alone in the dark or accept a ride with Adonis? How could those eyes, those triceps be anything but good?

I got my answer to this question right away. Sensing my anxiety, he joked, “Gorgeous little girls shouldn’t accept rides from strangers.”

He’d be the first to call me gorgeous. He’d be the first to kiss me passionately.

A freshman in college, I followed the rules to keep safe. I knew not to drink to excess. I knew not to take illegal substances. I knew not to smoke. I knew sex was sacred.

Maybe my innocence made me a flashing target for oversexed older men. I remembered the anonymous love notes left on my windshield; the English professor who wrote on my test, “I like having you around. Come to my office any time;” the advisor who asked me to meet him at his motel room, so he could teach me “acrobatics.” Seriously?

A gentleman that day, Ted delivered me to my car as promised. He began sitting beside me in the lecture hall. He memorized my schedule and waited outside all my classes. We drank Pepsi and ate messy subs together.

He turned up in the unlikeliest of places and screamed, “I love you,” from his car window as he sped away. When he sang “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” I felt a peaceful, easy feeling all over.

I thought he might be the one I’d wished for since second grade. I didn’t yet know he was studying me like a scientist studies his specimen before slicing it open. I should have bolted when he told me he read women’s magazines to learn what women wanted.

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Ted had a girlfriend, a beautiful yoga instructor with substantial breasts and bouncy hair. To his credit, he didn’t keep this a secret, or ever say he’d leave her. “He has a girlfriend,” the voice in my head wouldn’t let me forget. He gave me a key to his apartment. He started to undress as I pretended to study. “You have a girlfriend,” I reminded him, just before he pinned me to the ground. “You have a girlfriend,” I repeated. He backed off, as if recovering from a temporary bout of amnesia. Assuring me that every man cheats, he said his father calls his mistress while his mother prepares dinner in the next room.

I tried not to let on that I was entranced by his attentiveness. Even though he had an award-winning physique, I knew a cheater was no prize. Still, I longed for the day he would choose just me.

We walked to my car after an evening of studying and he caught me off guard. Leaning in, he kissed my lips as I took my place in the driver’s seat. My body stiffened, my feet pressed against the floorboard. He grabbed my butt, while his tongue rolled in my mouth for minutes like an Olympic kisser. Smiling, he asked me to come back inside. “No,” I said, “it’s late.”

Driving home, I believed that my unspoken wish had come true. He was finally leaving his girlfriend for me.

Only it wasn’t true. When he tried to kiss me again in his apartment the next day, I reminded him of the other woman. He had nothing new to say.

After his expert kiss didn’t get him into my terrycloth shorts, we were at a standoff. So the manipulation ended. His melodic tones became sharp and staccato. He quit popping up outside my classes.

Though I was distraught, the inevitability of this ending outweighed magical thoughts of a vanishing yoga instructor. I remember the last day of our relationship in slow motion, as if watching a bad movie with a predictable plot. I was sitting outside the lecture hall when he appeared out of nowhere, just like the day we first met.

He asked for his key to give to his brother. We both knew brother was code for “next girl in line.” The grand illusion was over. He exited my world just as he had entered it.

I wondered if I’d ever find true love.

A couple of years later I met Tom, a boy who didn’t have a manipulative neuron in his brain. At age 23, he lived in the dorms and ate macaroni and cheese or ham sandwiches for lunch every day. He didn’t think to wait outside my classes for me, if he could even find them. He didn’t have a car. Instead of women’s magazines, he read Car and Driver and Popular Mechanics. Though he was tall, blonde, and handsome, the only thing ripped about him was his underwear.

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We met on the first day of my new job as a teaching assistant when I couldn’t unlock my desk. Like Ted, he swooped in to rescue me. The key magically turned when guided by Tom’s hand. His green eyes flickered when he said, “Just jiggle it.”

Yes, perhaps I’m a romantic with competency issues, and rescue fantasies. But the little voice in my head had no reservations this time: “He’s the one! He’s the real one! He’s the one you’ve been waiting for!”

Tom and I married. The fairy tale had come true.

Passionately in love, we were naïve to love’s tests.

When our daughter Jillian was born, Tom burped her and swaddled her with textbook precision and love. Anyone could tell they were father and daughter, her blonde hair, her round face, and even her left foot, which turned slightly inward.

Magical father-daughter trips to the aquarium, the zoo, and the mall halted at 23 months of age, when she was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a deadly solid tumor.

A rule follower all of my life, I held the naïve belief that really bad things couldn’t happen to me.

For one year, Jillian underwent the most aggressive treatments available, including chemotherapy, radiation, and two stem cell transplants. Her oncologist warned us the divorce rate was high among parents of children with cancer, even higher if the child dies.

Tom had to work days, so the night shifts were his. How he did both, I’ll never know. Every sleepless night, he cradled Jillian in her hospital bed.

As the oncologist predicted, the more I worried about Jillian, the more I lashed out at Tom. The angrier I got, the more withdrawn he became. I threatened divorce, but beneath the surface I knew we needed each other like never before.

A psychologist once told me that marriage works like an accordion, sometimes you’re close and sometimes distant; it’s okay as long as the distance doesn’t exceed the breaking point.

Jillian went into remission and we went to every theme park in Florida. At the Florida State Fair, we ate messy subs, which Tom had learned to enjoy. Jillian rode every ride without a height requirement.

On my 39th birthday, 3-year-old Jillian had a seizure; the cancer had spread to her brain. She had weeks, maybe months left to live.

On the last day of her life, Tom carried her around trying desperately to comfort her. He never believed she would die. But she did. Right there in her Winnie-the-Pooh bedroom, on her pink and purple hearts comforter, each of us holding one of her hands.

Beside the bed, we cried in each other’s arms.

I blamed myself. What had I done to give my child cancer? Maybe I’d unwittingly exposed myself to pesticides while pregnantI should have given her only organic foods. Lying beside me, Tom held my face in his hands and said, “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. Repeat after me, it’s not your fault.”

CONTENT CONTINUES BELOW AD
While I mumbled incoherently and shed tears without end, he signed us up for a marital workshop. I called Hedy Schliefer, the psychologist leading the workshop, hoping she’d tell me I was too fragile to take it. But instead Hedy said, “If not now, when?” After the training she said to us, “When a child dies, some parents choose to die along with their son or daughter, some choose to live. You have chosen life.”

Tom encouraged me to live again and to follow my heart. Despite the plunge in income, he encouraged my decisions to transition from studying computer science, to psychology, to writing.

Surely I’d have been one of those statistics the oncologist warned us about if I had married someone like Ted. Sometimes I wonder why I ever let him in my life and other times I feel blessed to have known him. Ted was my litmus test. He taught me what love is not. So when I found Tom, I knew he was the one I’d been searching for. Tom kept my dreams in mind, not just his. He wanted to grow as much as I did. (Don’t miss these surprising secrets of happily married couples.)

Our life together is not what I would have scripted, but Tom is the love I have always needed.

“Marriage is like mountain climbing,” he says, “sometimes I throw you a line, sometimes you throw me one.” Together, we’ve climbed and we’ve stumbled. Sometimes we forget, but when we remember, we help each other.

Our ascent out of grief’s abyss truly began on the one-year anniversary of Jillian’s death when I took another kind of test. It was positive.

Your Story too was amazing. I like it.

[PoeticBlindness]

Thank you!! So much to read.

[Raj Sahu]

Maudie and I have been married 
for 58 years, but it most certainly was not love at first sight.

We both grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and entered Murphy High School in 1953 as freshmen. Mobile had high school fraternities and sororities then 
and still does—social organizations, but unlike the ones in college. By the second semester of my sophomore year, I had joined a fraternity. In civics class I sat by two sorority girls. The three of us talked so much during class that the teacher split us up. She moved me next to a girl named Maudie. The only thing I knew about Maudie was that she was best friends with the daughter of the prominent pastor at the largest Baptist church in Mobile. As far as I was concerned, that was all I needed to know about her. And Maudie knew all she wanted to know about me. (These 36 questions can make you fall in love with anyone.)

In our junior year, we were in the same bookkeeping class. 
I liked the class but I had some trouble with the problems. I knew Maudie was smart, so I asked her to show me what I was doing wrong. Without a word, she let me know 
she had no desire to help me. So I asked another classmate.

Then in our senior year, I started working 
in a grocery store. Maudie came in weekly 
with her mother and seemed to be a different person. We talked as I bagged the groceries 
and I realized that I had changed, too.

One night as I took the groceries out for her, I asked if she wanted to hang out and go for a ride when I got off work, but 
she said she had to drive her mother home. I felt rejected but found out later that she was hoping 
I would offer to pick her up after work.

Several days later 
I drove past her as she walked home from school and offered her a ride. She accepted and I quickly asked her for a date to a revival at our church—I’d picked the revival on purpose, thinking she’d be more likely to accept. And she did. We continued to date steadily until that prominent Baptist preacher married us 
on April 3, 1959.

One more for you..

Thank goodness I can’t type well!

I had applied for a job at the university when I was a freshman, and one of the requirements was having good typing skills. I didn’t get hired, and I was pretty bummed out about it.

But the next day, I found out about a job opening at the local library. I applied and was hired the same day.

It was there that I met Richard. We worked together in the same department for several years, but never really got to know each other well. Our schedules were different so we didn’t talk much. It was not what you would call “love at first sight.” It took several years for us to actually get to know each other and realize that we had quite a bit in common.

Over several months in the fall of 1987, we became friends, and then on Valentine’s Day of 1988, we became a couple. This year on February 14, we will celebrate 30 years together! (These are the best Valentine’s Day gifts for every stage of your relationship.)

During our journey together we have experienced the birth of our two children, supported each other through tough times, and shared the joys that life has brought us. Richard is my best friend and still makes me laugh until my stomach hurts and I have tears rolling down my face.

I often tell him that I am so glad I can’t type, because if I did, I would never have met him. Little things can make a big difference.

This is one more..

I wanted to tell a story about my first love. But when I looked across the kitchen counter at my husband of 20 years, I realized I didn’t have any.

“Are you kidding?” he said. “What about your first boyfriend? The one who watched football games with your mom while you went off to read a book because you didn’t like football? Who brought your mom flowers whenever he brought you some? Who weeded her garden when she hurt her ankle? The one your mother liked so much, she was more upset than you were when the two of you broke up?”

Oh yeah! I had forgotten about that. After I broke up with Mike, my mother kept trying to convince me to go back to him. I finally told her she ought to just divorce Dad and marry Mike; who cares about the 34 year age gap? She was shocked at my words and said she wouldn’t speak to me for a week—but couldn’t help adding that she would never like any other boy I ever dated.

“And what about Bob, the boyfriend who didn’t like you?” my husband went on. “Who you kept dating until you finally decided he should go find someone he might actually like.”

“I can’t believe I went out with him for a whole year!” I laughed. (Actually liking each other is a sign of a healthy relationship.)

In addition to not liking me, Bob was the jealous type. He worked part-time in the men’s department of a J.C. Penney’s and once told me that when I came to the store to meet him, I should put a rack of clothes between me and every other guy who might look my way. He also didn’t like me telephoning my girlfriends unless they phoned me first. “What? Why should I do that?” I asked and his answer—“It’s a matter of pride!” —made no sense to me. He had opinions on everything from my makeup to the clothes I wore to the length of my hair. He also preferred blondes (I’m a brunette). When I had finally had enough, he was furious and quite certain I was breaking up with him to date someone else. “There’s nobody else,” I told him. “I’m just not the kind of person you really want. I’m not a pompous, long-haired blonde with no friends but you.”

Husband: “And what about that guy who lived next door to you when you were 15, who used to watch you sunbathe every summer—and you pretended not to notice!”

“I don’t know if you could call that a first love,” I said, still laughing. That was Matt. He and one of his friends used to sit on his porch and watch me strut around in the backyard in my little white bikini. I’d sit on a towel on the grass and put on suntan lotion and try to act like I didn’t even know they were there. We had all gone to grade school together and had ignored each other back then, but at 15, we weren’t ignoring each other anymore. I got a great tan that summer, and every guy in the neighborhood—young and old—couldn’t resist taking a look or two. Before the summer was over, I had my very first date with, of course, Matt. But I couldn’t really call him my first boyfriend, for soon after that I dated his friend John. My friend Maureen started dating Matt, and then we kept switching boyfriends back and forth so frequently, the neighbors couldn’t keep up with who was dating whom. Oh, those days were so much fun.

CONTENT CONTINUES BELOW AD
“And,”—my husband, again—“don’t forget your very first love—the pretend one you made up as a kid, along with ‘Nosy Girl,’ your pretend rival! You can write about all the stories you made up about how ugly and mean Nosy Girl was and how being sweet and beautiful made the guy always fall in love with you. Every single time!”

“Oh, I forgot I told you about that,” I said, wiping laugh tears from my eyes. Nosy Girl had been my favorite enemy when I was about eight years old. She looked kind of like me, but her nose was all scrunched up and so wrinkled it pulled her lips up. She also had evil colored eyes that went from purple to black when she lied, and she was always lying, just like she was always trying to steal Gus, my pretend boyfriend. She was the kind of girl who would steal money from his pocket from his pocket and put it in mine to get me in trouble, only to find herself in trouble when she realized that I—known for being beautiful, kind and exceedingly honest—figured out what she had done and replanted it in hers.

“You could even tell them about Telepersonals,” said my husband, referring to a very early precursor to Match.com. “About how you decided to date when you quit smoking because you thought it would make you mean and you wanted guys you could be mean to so you wouldn’t be mean to your boss.”

My laugh melted away into a smile because Telepersonals was the very way I met my husband almost 20 years ago.

Telepersonals recorded people’s voices so they could listen to each other’s ads. When I recorded mine, I tried making my voice sound very soft and sexy. First I introduced myself as “Catherine, like the Great—only greater.” Then I went on to describe myself as a single, 43-year-old brunette who looked Irish and was used to being called pretty, and then I added that I was “looking for a little romance.” What a mistake that was! What I discovered was that over three-quarters of the men who listened and responded to my ad were, to put it delicately, morally challenged, and had a vastly different interpretation of the word “romance” than I had. (If you’re over 40, don’t make these dating mistakes.)

When I’d had enough of these thoroughly unromantic conversations, I started listening to ads some of the other men had recorded. I left messages for some who sounded normal and met a few of them in crowded restaurants. No man of my dreams appeared, but I did make a little money on the deal. As soon as they found out I worked in children’s book publishing, no less than three guys hired me to edit their manuscripts! It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but the extra money was nice.

Despite remaining unfulfilled, I continued my pursuit of romance—or at least, distracting myself from smoking—through dating on Telepersonals. At last, success came in a cute ad from a guy with a Midwestern accent. “I guess you could say I look like a five foot eight leprechaun,” he said to describe himself, and that made me smile. We met at Pete’s Tavern in Gramercy Park, the oldest bar in New York City and the one that O. Henry made famous. We met for drinks and ended up staying for dinner, and then we went for a long walk. I don’t remember what we talked about, only that we talked for hours. Before we finally parted, Charlie took a picture of me with the camera he’d been carrying all evening. The next morning, he emailed it to me at my office while I was on the phone with my sister. “The guy I went out with last night just emailed the picture he took of me,” I told her. “Isn’t that sweet?”

CONTENT CONTINUES BELOW AD
“Was this a first date?” she asked suspiciously.

“Yes,” I said. “I like him.”

“I don’t want to hear anymore about him until after the third date,” she said.

“I think he’ll still be around, I really do,” I said, but all Mary said was, “We’ll see.”

Three months later, Charlie and I went shopping for an engagement ring and not until after he put it on my finger did he ask me to marry him. Don’t miss these 49 quotes that perfectly capture what it’s like to fall in love.

When my mother found out we were engaged, we were at my brother’s house, and she looked from me to Charlie and back to me with a puzzled frown, then said, “But this is not Mike.”

“Mother! Really!” I cried, completely embarrassed. But Charlie was unruffled. He had already heard all about Mike, the boy who would bring my mother flowers, and he just laughed good-naturedly, proving to me yet again that I was making the right choice.

And here we were in our kitchen almost two decades later, talking about my first love.

That’s when it hit me. I couldn’t remember all my first loves at first because I was too distracted by my last love, my husband of 20 years, who I met when I was trying to quit smoking, who remembers all my stories and always makes me laugh.

[PoeticBlindness]

Thank you for more stories.