No I am not going to reminisce about Kajagoogoo despite the title of this post. Rather, I’m going to bring back another Arabi Park Middle School memory.

Actually this one came less than two months after my final day at Arabi Park, June 2, 1989. I had totally forgotten about until Andree Dauterive (Addison), Stacie’s younger sister, brought it up.

On a couple of hot days that July, I rode my bike from 224 Jaguar to St. Robert Bellarmine church and Carolyn Park, about a mile away. Of course, the big house at 905 Badger Drive was also looming. The Datuerive residence.

I peeked into the carport to see if the Datuerive family van was parked. If it was, it meant the matriarch of the Dauterive klan, Kathy, was home, along with her children, Stacie, Andree and Rene, the baby of the family who was four years younger than Andree and named after his father, the proud proprietor of Datuerive Heating and Plumbing. If the van wasn’t there, there may have been nobody home, or maybe the kids were home by themselves.

I kept riding around and riding around, too scared to ring the doorbell like a normal person. I didn’t see anybody looking out the window most times I passed, but there were a couple of times Andree caught me red-handed and had to duck.

Finally, I rang the doorbell on Wednesday, July 19. Andree answered and told me Stacie was in the shower. The second time, eight days later, Andree answered again, only to close the door on me. It wasn’t a slam, but I now understand why she was apprehensive. She was 11 years old and sees some guy riding his bike acting like he’s stalking her big sister. That was not my intention at all, but I could see Andree’s point of view, and Stacie’s if she was hiding. Andree was a very good little sister, and it’s no wonder she and Stacie have both grown up to be very successful both as career women and as mothers.

Stacie and I actually exchanged letters during the summer of 1989. How about that? Old fashioned letter writing! I wonder how Stacie and Jeff explained to their kids that there was no e-mail and no Internet when they were growing up. Some of my friends from Buffalo Wild Wings who are significantly younger than me ask the same thing. Elizabeth Psenski loves those stories.

I finally found the courage to call Stacie in September one afternoon after I got home from Brother Martin. We talked a couple more times in the following weeks, but then lost contact for a long time, until that meeting at the St. Bernard chapter of the LSU Alumni Association in 1993.

This has been a day from hell. Screaming match over the phone with one of my bosses. Screaming match with dad. Crying a lot. Wanting to end my life. Sitting alone at Buffalo Wild Wings thinking about how to end it. Trying to cheer up for Lisa and others. It can’t get worse tomorrow, can it? Oh yes it can. I am not looking forward to going to a stupid high school volleyball match in nowhere America. I just hope to get left alone.