Mixed tape memories

I was getting ready for bed the other night and I found some of my old mixed tapes from when I was in high school. They were all songs that were my favorites, in no particular order, and either taken from the radio or a CD. Some of the songs I must not have known the real names of the songs because You've Got a Friend became See you Again. I also found a tape of my song and by my song, I mean that literally. I had someone write a song for me when I was 17.

The story of the song began when I was 15. Back in the day when AOL was your only option for getting online, I was browsing AOL profiles looking for someone to talk to and I found one for a guy who sounded really interesting. So I sent him an IM and we started talking. Through talking we became very close, up until a few years ago I still had the printouts from some of our conversations. We were very sweet on each other. The conversations were kind of cute and almost made me want to be a teenager again...almost.

After two years, we finally decided to meet in person. Before our meeting he said he had a surprise for me. Now he had mentioned in our conversations that he had been writing music on the computer and I assumed that the surprise was a CD sample. When we met, he was exactly as I expected him to be. My mom drove me to the mall and after seeing he wasn't a creepy old man, we roamed the mall together for a couple hours. As we hugged goodbye, he gave me the CD. I opened in the car and read what has to be the sweetest thing I've ever read. The basic summation of the note was that I was the first person he'd ever written a song for and it was the most beautiful one he'd written to date because I was so beautiful to him. I still have the CD with that note in it.

Now, being all of 17 years old I thought this was just kind of incredible and thinking about it now, it still kind of is. We hung out a couple more times in person after this meeting as well. I really wanted to kiss him but since we weren't even sure what we were to each other. Sure we were friends but we flirted regularly and wanted to take it to another level and actually date. The only problem was he lived about an hour away and when you are a teenager, this seems impossible. So, I broke his heart and told him I didn't think I could actually date him. We didn't speak for years after this. I didn't have it in me to remove him from my IM list and occasionally I'd check his "away message" to see that he was still doing all right. It took about 8 years, but when he joined myspace (what is it with us and internet meetings?) I felt brave enough to friend him. We reconnected and we're friends again. Not on the same level we once were of course, but I have seen him a few times and we message each other online sometimes.  Turns out, he never took me off his IM list either and he'd been checking up on me all these years as well. I still look back fondly on our relationship all those years ago and he'll always be the one that got away I think. I never did kiss him and I'm still the only girl he's only written a song for.