Knowing the summer romance is over

The summer before I was going to leave New England for my junior year of college in Arizona, I dated a girl I met at my summer job. Her name was Shelly or Shelley.

We were not madly in love, but we hit it off. And there was some attraction there.

Anyway, after I was out West, I wrote her a letter. One thing I played up was that I had been spending time in the Grand Canyon. That, I reasoned, had to seem exotic to a girl in Vermont.

She wrote back and, in passing, noted that she supposed if you have seen one canyon you have seen them all.

I can’t remember if I bothered to correct her.