Inktober 3: #Path
In which even Willie Nelson is unable to save a teenage romance
When my sister Melanie was in high school, she broke up with her boyfriend (we’ll call him Harold). Harold was a fine young man, but I think maybe he didn’t know too much about how to be a good boyfriend, and Melanie was ready to head down a different #path. So she sent Harold packing. Harold didn’t understand why, nor did he seem to understand that Melanie meant it. There were phone calls. The phone calls got shorter and shorter as Melanie got less and less patient (this was before caller ID, when a lot more unwanted phone calls got answered).
Anyway, one day Melanie answered the phone, and with no preliminaries Harold said, “Dont hang up! Just listen!” And before Melanie knew what to do she heard the click of a cassette player, then the unmistakable voice of Willie Nelson:
Maybe I didn't love you
Quite as often as I could have
Maybe I didn't treat you
Quite as good as I should have
If I made you feel second best
Girl, I'm sorry I was blind
… You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind.
Sometimes when you don’t know what else to say, you let Willie Nelson say it for you..
In many an idle moment I have imagined Harold holding the phone receiver to the tape player, calculating how long to let Willie Nelson do the talking, and when to hit ‘Pause’ and make his own case one last time. When he put his phone to his ear, did get Melanie, or did he get a dial tone? I don’t even know. But I do know that, even with Wille Nelson’s help, Harold didn’t win Melanie back. The grand gesture rarely works, except in the romantic comedies.
Ineffective as it was, Harold’s gesture still has its place in the family lore. Just the other day, a full forty years after Harold’s (and Willie’s) phone call, my daughter Betsy texted from the restaurant where she works: “They’re playing ‘Always on My Mind’ by Willie Nelson. Makes me wanna call Aunt Melanie and apologize for being a bad boyfriend.”