Five Stick Friday

(This is a recapture of a previous Facebook Post that I want to make sure not to lose…)

Damn, my Spotify ad-hoc list won’t leave my emotions alone today! It just popped up “Mainstreet” by Bob Seger. I’m not attached to the song or the lyrics but more of a moment in time.

In high school, we had the same silly “Senior Favorites” thing that all high schools do. And being named one of those, at our Winter Sweetheart Dance, we were instructed to have a “Senior Favorites” dance to kick off the Formal. Ms. Nysewander even made us practice “waltzing” prior to the night.

Problem one. The rock band hired to play the Formal didn’t play any “waltzes”. So they settled on the closest thing they could find to a waltz…which isn’t close at all… Bob Seger’s “Mainstreet”.

My dance partner was a brilliant young woman named Julie Stefanek. While this whole forced and contrived thing could have been awkward, Julie and I laughed our way through the rehearsal and then at the notion that we were going to “waltz” to Bob Seger.

Julie went on to be voted “Most Likely To Succeed” in our class, so I felt lucky to get that dance as I only copped the “Best Musician” notoriety. I believe that the night of our end of year Senior Party ( pictured with her besties as “Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines”) was the last time I saw her. She was a trained athlete, a world class swimmer that we all thought would end up in the Olympics.

So imagine the shock, the horror, the numbness, the grief when the report came to us years later ( late 80’s…88 or 89 I believe) that Julie had disappeared while on an ocean swim. She was never found.

I’ve thought often about the pure promise that was robbed of the world when we lost Julie.

And this morning, I’m fondly remembering her again. Listening to a song that we danced the “waltz” to … that isn’t even remotely designed to waltz to.

Rest easy, Julie…you are missed.