The Blow Off Letter

The Blow Off Letter

This happened many years ago before the age of cellphones, pagers, and even online dating. I believe I was about 21 years old at this time. The answering machines, if you had one, worked off of a tiny cassette tape. I knew this girl, Deanna, in high school. She was much too pretty and exotic to be interested in me, let alone even know that I even existed. She was tall, of Spanish descent and had long flowing black hair, a beautiful smile, and the sexiest voice you can imagine. Oh her voice, it was just the right amount of raspy that you might hear from a blues singer. I would see her walking in the hallways and sometimes in my classes, and it always made me weak in the knees.

Graduation came and went, a few more years passed, and I ran into her again while she was working at a local department store. We stopped for a moment as we realized that we knew each other. I was extra surprised that Deanna actually remembered me. Somehow, I mustered up the courage to ask her to lunch and even more surprised when she said yes.  We traded phone numbers and a few days later we got together.

Being the nerd that I was, it a great success as we traded stories and actually ended up having a great time.

After a few more dates, I finally kissed her. This was indeed a banner day as it was my first real kiss.

One of our dates was a trip to the Phoenix Zoo. It was a beautiful spring day in the middle of the week, so there weren’t as many people there. We were walking around, holding hands, and having a great time. Around the corner of this particular walkway, there was an ungodly noise like none I had never heard before. Curious as to what it was, we both hurried around the corner to where the turtles display was. Lo and behold, there were two turtles having sex and the noise was coming from the fella on top. We started laughing and went along our way, hoping to give them a little privacy.

A few months later at the end of the summer, she quit talking to me and would not return my phone calls. Now I was perplexed as I don’t recall a fight or argument that might have led up to this.

Back then, all we had was an answering machine, a visit in person, or a letter in the mail. There was no internet at this time.

After a week or two of trying to contact her, I said, “to hell with this” and quit trying. I didn’t forget her right away as she was still on my mind. It would take a while to forget someone like her. While I was thinking about how to put some closure on this wonderful chapter in his life, I had a brilliant idea.

This was how the official blow off letter came to be. It started out very formal and legal sounding (to the best of my ability) as I spelled out the reasons for and my feelings about it. It filled up a page, I wished her well and hand delivered the letter.  Of course, no one was home, so I just stuck it in her mailbox. The letter went something like this:

Dear Deanna, I sure would like to understand the reason you are no longer speaking to me. There is not a fight nor a cross word that I can recall we had. Your behavior is completely unexpected, and you have ignored my messages and notes for the past three weeks. It is sad that you won’t step up and tell me what is wrong.

With that in mind, this final letter is to let inform you that you have been officially blown off. I will no longer call, write, or try to contact you in any fashion.

I hope that you are okay and there is some sort of logical explanation for you acting this way. However, if you should come across a lake on your travels, please feel free to jump in.

 After that, I still tried hard to forget about her. Because we lived in nearby neighborhoods, it was possible but not probable that I might run into her again.  Then one day, the probable happened. 

In the checkout line in front of me, there she stood. I could not believe my luck. Now, what to do about it? Not wanting to make a scene or anything else that might create drama, there were a few choices available. I could just slink back into another part of the store and wait it out, or I could do this; I quietly lined up behind her as I was truly ready to check out myself.

 She didn’t see me line up behind her. The cashier was nearly all the way through her basket of groceries when she did happen to glance behind her and see me. Her eyes flew open wide with surprise as I quietly smiled and waved at her.  Her next move surprised everyone in line.

She dropped her things immediately and bolted right out of the store leaving all of her groceries behind. The clerk looked at me for some sort of explanation. I just smiled, shrugged my shoulders and said that she had recently dumped me.

 The last thing I saw of her was her old Gremlin trying hard to squeal the tires out of the parking lot.

My last thought was that she had actually gotten and read the blow off letter. Mission accomplished.

Many years later after the introduction of FaceBook, she friended me out of the blue. While I was shocked at this, I waited a couple of days before friending her back to catch up. Even my wife was curious to see where this was going. We caught up briefly online and it turned out that she was living on the other side of town. Because I really wanted to know the rest of the story, I invited her to have a drink with me, twice.  She refused both times and about two weeks later, I unfriended her for good.