2.174 old girlfriend day

Sunday 05/30/2021

OK, today was the day I had agreed with Ann Armour to meet with her at a restaurant near her house.

Who?

Ann and I were close in the years of (about) 1965-66. This picture is from then.

The almost unbelievable arithmetic says that was 55 goddam years ago. I last spoke to her in about (without a diary, “about” is the best I can do) 1967. Although she says she invited me to lunch a year later. I don’t remember that. In fact it seemed like, “Really? I don’t remember that” was something we each said a lot today.

Ann contacted me by email in late 2019. We had a tentative exchange of email. I was initially upset and a bit dubious about her motives. That period of my life was an emotional turmoil and I wasn’t pleased to be made to remember it, even after 55 (goddam) years. But I settled down and we agreed to meet at a restaurant near her house in Kentfield (Marin county) around the middle of March 2020.

We all know what happened to that plan. Anyway, now that we are both vaccinated, we again agreed to meet. We had a very pleasant 2-hour brunch at a really nice restaurant, and brought each other up to date on what major events had passed in our lives. It was all very normal and comfortable, no strong emotions roused. Turns out we are both healthy considering our ages (she’s a few years older than me) and comfortably situated.

So that’s pretty much that. She’s a nice person, we had good conversation, we’ll probably meet up again some time.

Dennis, who would have been about 12? 13? at the time, is certain that I and Ann took him along with us to a show at “Coffee & Confusion”, a folk club in North Beach. If so that would have been really irresponsible of me. But I was an immature 20-something asshole, so irresponsibility would have been par for the course.

When I mentioned Dennis to her she didn’t remember meeting him, but when I mentioned Joyce, his mother, it reminded her of a strange event. She recalls that once, she showed me a new pair of shoes she had on, and pointed out that the maker’s name, Joyce, was imprinted on the soles, which made me burst out laughing saying “You’re walking on Joyce!”. Probably I was on the outs with Joyce. Did I mention being an immature 20-something asshole?

Drove home, took a nap, had dinner. That was the day.