Everyone makes an impression, some slide in and out of your life like a freshly waxed board over the surf of Infinity's crystal ocean.
Others, no matter how long they're in your life, are impossible to forget. They imprint themselves so wholly on your soul that no matter how much you try and convince yourself that they're just one person in three galaxies, the memory of them overwhelms you until you have to wax poetic thinking of them.
Many people envied my life. I was born and raised on Infinity Atoll, the universe's biggest tourist trap. My mother owned a small surf shop just off one of the busiest beaches that side of the planet, and for as long as I could remember, it was just me and her.
As I got older, Mum expected me to work in the shop, she never felt the need to hire any other employees. I didn't mind, I liked it, I loved to surf and be around people who felt the way I do.
The people who came into the shop were all different, but with the common ground of being passionate about surfing, or having a longing to learn. There were the professionals, the men and women who sometimes think themselves better than the rookies. Contrary, there were the newbies, still learning about this graceful sport, wide-eyed and enthusiastic. In between were the majority, like myself, for whom surfing was a part of their life, like blinking, or breathing, but it didn't control their life like the professionals, or wasn't a far off dream like for the newbies.
Of the three, I liked the newbies the best. Their enthusiasm was so uplifting, so encouraging, it made me want to hug them as soon as they stepped in the door. I didn't, of course, wouldn't want to scare them away.
They usually aren't lifetime impression people, though. Most people aren't, if they were, I think my brain would overload thinking of them all the time.
But one I remember with such vividity that now, half a century later, I remember his short visit to the shop as though it was only yesterday.
I was young, only eighteen years old, when he came in. He was a newbie, it was very clear who the newbies were. He came in with a blonde woman, she wasn't a surfer at all. He looked around a little bit, and came to the counter where my feet rested. I looked up from my magazine and into the eyes of the young man I nicknamed Surferman. He was about my age, I guessed, but his eyes were so much older, he'd seen so much more than I had in my cushioned childhood.
I stood up from my chair and sat on the counter. 'Can I help you?' I asked him.
He stood for a moment, and nodded. He needed to rent a board. I slid off the counter and fetched a board for him. He thanked me, the blonde woman paid, and they left.
You may want to know what was so memorable about Surferman. I think it was his eyes, what I saw in them was so different then the other newbies. Their eyes twinkled with excitement, his were sad, lonely, even though he smiled and seemed so fond of the woman who paid for his board rental.
I spent so many nights laying awake, wondering who he was and what happened to him. I wondered if he was happy, who the blonde woman was, and if he ever got anywhere with his surfing.
I left Infinity within a couple of years, going to school off planet. I knew that leaving Infinity would be hard, but I left, only returning twice to visit my mother before she died. After she passed on, I no longer needed to hold on to what my life was there.
I no longer needed to hold on to the memory of Surferman, either, but I couldn't let him go. I couldn't try and contact him, I didn't even know his real name, and it wasn't likely that he remembered who I was, either.
That, my dear grandchildren, is the story of my first love.
~~~
"That's so romantic!"
"I can't wait til I meet my first love!"
"Was he cute, Grandma?"
The children's happy voices soothed her aching soul, once again pained with the memory of the man she couldn't know and longed to have. Her schoolgirl crush never left her, even after she married and had children, and her children had children. The man she called Surferman.