This happened to a friend of mine many years ago, so I’ll change the names to protect the not-so-innocent.

Muriel had fallen passionately in love with her college classmate Norbert, and they spent many long, happy hours discussing their future together and all the joy they’d find, and yes, those five kids they’d spawn.

Muriel was so sure of Norbert — he was the standard Knight in Shining Armor, her Superman, her hero, her He-Can-Do-No-Wrong guy. She occasionally pondered on whether he maybe had a flaw or two but didn’t spend much time thinking about that, because to her besotted eyes, Norbert was perfect. Kind, thoughtful, other-centered and of course movie star handsome. She proudly wore his fraternity pin and looked forward to the promised diamond ring in the near future. The young couple had many college classes together, and it was difficult to focus on their professor’s teachings when they were both in the same classroom, but they pretended to concentrate diligently while secretly passing notes and shooting meaningful glances at each other. Yes, their grades inched down but not enough to have their parents suggest they quit college, find jobs and get those tuitions back to them immediately. One day the joyful couple were driving through their large college campus, and yes, they had a car. Well, Norbert did. As they rolled slowly along, Muriel spied a wallet on the side of the road and suggested to Norbert they stop and get it and to see if they could locate the owner. To her shock and surprise, Norbert said no, he wanted to get to their destination and besides, he said, if the owner was stupid enough to lose it, he would just have to live with his stupidness. It was not, he said, their problem. Muriel was shocked. This was a side of her beloved she had never seen. She cajoled and pleaded and begged him to go back for the wallet, but he was determined. “If someone was that brainless to lose it, then it’s their problem, not ours. Stop whining about it,” and he continued driving. Muriel’s eyes glazed over a bit. Where was her darling hero boyfriend? Who was this nasty young man sitting next to her with a rather ugly expression on his formerly perfect face?

“Please, Norbert,” she begged him. “That might be an important wallet and the owner must be frantic.” “Forget it,” her beloved growled at her. “If some dumb (expletive) can’t take care of his personal possessions, then why should we? No. Stop the bleeding-heart act, Missy, and don’t ask me again. It is not happening.” They got back to their dorms and Muriel, still focusing on that wallet and trying not to think about her darling’s unexpected lapse of perfection, asked one of her roommates if she could borrow her car for a few minutes and it was granted. She drove back to the place she’d seen the wallet and to her happy surprise it was still there. Muriel was able to pull up next to it, open the door, scoop it up and drive back to her dorm. Once there, she opened it, saw it was holding a large amount of cash, saw the name of the owner, vaguely knew who it was, stuffed the wallet into her pocket and walked to the wallet owner’s dorm. Muriel knocked on the correct door and heard a muffled, “Come in. It’s open” and she went inside the room. There on the bed was a young freshman, new to the college, curled tightly on her bed, collapsed in heaving sobs. Muriel sat next to her, asked, “What’s wrong? How can I help you?” and the young girl looked up at Muriel through her swollen eyes, sobbed and hiccupped out that she’d lost her wallet and all her money for books and food, and she was scared to tell her parents because money for her family was scarce.

Two of her siblings were also in college, so money was tight for the family. She knew she had to tell them but just had not been able to quite yet. And, the young girl sobbed out, even if she got a job on campus, she’d never be able to make up for what had been lost in time to get the books and other things. Muriel reached into her pocket and held up the wallet, smiled and asked, “is this it?” Well, you can imagine what happened. If the freshman had been weeping hard before, this simple act created uncontrolled torrents.

She could hardly breathe from gratitude or from her clogged nose and gushing eyeballs. And hugging? Well, it was epic and really kind of painful for Muriel. Muriel untangled herself from the now weeping from joy young girl, said good-bye, Sand began walking toward Norbert’s dorm, unpinning his fraternity pin from her sweater as she moved along. She went to his room, knocked and walked in. He was asleep and snoring blissfully. Muriel took the fraternity pin, stabbed it gently into his upper arm, a little above the elbow, turned and walked out of the room as Norbert bellowed several choice obscenities while pulling the little jeweled pin with the Greek letters from his arm, and she never spoke to him again.

LC Van Savage is a local writer. Contact her at LCVS@comcast.net, or visit LCVanSavage.com.