My High School Sweetheart: Looking Back 21 Years

Twenty-one years after we went our separate ways to college, I was reunited with my high school sweetheart. Our lives have gone in such disparate directions, yet both of us are fulfilled and happy, looking forward to more accomplishments and good times. But if it hadn't been for a boy named Kevin and a girl named Heather, each of whom had their own self-centered agenda, I never would have met Bob.

It was 1979, and I was a senior in high school, Vice President of the Creative Writing Club and soon-to-be published author (my first book, The San Francisco Rock Experience, was published that summer). I also was a member of the Thespians and dating Kevin, a football player and fellow Thespian. I had it all: good grades, a handsome boyfriend...who dumped me the middle of Senior Year for a girl named Heather. That left me with no boyfriend and, even more importantly, no date for the Senior Prom. Did that mean I had attended every prom in previous years but was destined to miss my own? Everyone else was pretty much paired up.

Heather, like Bob, arrived at the school the beginning of our senior year. This is a difficult position to fill; Heather joined our group through a mutual friend. She was a walking teen-aged wet dream; bikini figure, little-girl-voice, not terribly intellectual or intelligent, pretty face and manner. Kevin and most of the other senior boys were falling over themselves to get at her. There was something else about Heather that attracted all the guys; something I discovered later, shortly before graduation. Heather started having sex with Kevin after a couple of dates; I was still a virgin and wouldn't be ready to take a lover for another two years. Like most adolescent males, Kevin was more than ready.

Bob was shy, dark and handsome, and I swept him up and into the group. We wound up having a wonderful senior year together, and a memorable prom and all-night beach party. Although we parted, I never forgot him or the day we went to a pool party at my friend Pam's house.

Senior Prom with Bob

Credit: unknown

Copyright: Debora Hill