In high school, I dated a woman named Maureen (who reads this weblog from time to time and is sure to email me if I get part of this story wrong… Hi Mo!)

Anyway, we apparantly had a miscommunication when I left for College. I thought we agreed that long distance relationships sucked and that we were pretty much over. So, off I went to Dartmouth.

A few weeks in, I met Katie (who, as far as I know, does not read this weblog. OK, a brief interlude: if you are an ex of mine and you are reading this, drop me a line. I’m actually curious which of you read this!) and we began seeing each other.

I joined Marching band (see next entry for more on that) and Katie soon joined up too. Together we were part of the elite Kazoo corps. During games, the band plays, among other things, the Hawaii 5-0 theme. Those of us who played instruments small enough to get away with this got up on the benches and “surfed” and “rowed kayaks” (if you’ve ever seen the opening credits for the show, you know what I mean, if not, Book ’em Danno!) So, we did this.

One of the early games of the season was televised. Normally nobody but alumni and drunken students care at all about what an Ivy League football team does. In most cases it’s just not that interesting. But we were playing University of Pennsylvania who, I gather, is (or at least was, back in 1986) somewhat intersting. So, the Sports Channel (this is in the days before ESPN) carried that particular game. And we hammed it up nice and good for the camera. I guess Katie and I made quite the pair. The camera seemed to be on us a lot.

Maybe too much.

The night after that game Maureen called me on the pay phone in the hallway near my dorm room.

“Who’s the girl?”

“Um… what?”

“I saw you on TV with your arm around her dancing on the bleachers. Who is she?”

It got awkward after that and, unfortunately, I don’t actually remember the rest of the conversation.

But there you have it: my high school sweetheart found out that I was seeing someone else by catching us on cable TV.