So in 2003, the Special Forces guy sent the original box and believe me, it just about did me in. I found him online after about 25 years or so. And boy was I surprised.

See, we broke up in large part because he was taking this career path. He felt compelled to be a Special Forces soldier. I didn’t think I could handle that. But he felt this was his destiny and obviously he was right. Because he survived… he thrived actually for 16 years in it, which is an incredibly long time for this kind of thing.

So anyway, I found him and it was a great shock to both of us. And he’s a storyteller, too. So he started telling me stories. Stories about his experiences, but he also told me a story about me, where I did not know one existed. He actually has stacks of stories to tell about me and one of them was about the music.

We talked over the course of some months and he let me know in his way, which is slow and slippery that there were some songs that had to do with me. I didn’t push him on this because there were literally a thousand other things to talk about but it kept coming up. “I have these songs…” and “There are some songs of yours…”

Eventually he mentioned this enough times, I asked. ‘What songs?” And he explained.

He said for the last 25 years he’d thought of me. Never could get me out of his mind. And he’s been all over the world of course. Everywhere.

And he said he would be in some stupid corner of the world… in some third world country and he would hear a song on a jukebox, or sometimes the songs would just come to his head.

“And I would think of you,” he said. “And that was it. I had to go buy the thing.”

“What?”

“I had to buy the song, I said. I had to have a copy of it. I had to own it. And I couldn’t always get them right away. There’s rarely a music store, the places I would be. But I would always buy the songs the first chance I could. Every one of them. I got them all, eventually.Sometimes I would have to wait 6 months because I was on a mission. But I got every single one of them. When I got home, I’d go to the music store…”

“Huh?”

“And I told myself over the years I should stop doing this. You’ve got to stop doing this. Why are you doing this? Why do you keep buying these Because they’re sappy. They’re ridiculous. Almost every single one of them… they are the sappiest songs you can imagine.”

“What? They’re sappy?” I roared, laughing. “You have sappy songs about me?”

“Yes, they’re sappy. They’re completely embarrassing. This whole thing is embarrassing. And I’m no kid anymore, you know. I am a soldier and a pretty gnarly one at that. So you can just imagine me going into these stores to buy these sappy songs for Elsa in my uniform. Michael Jackson and shit.”

“Whaaat?”

“Yep. Michael Jackson. It’s that bad and worse. But I has to do it. I had to go get your songs. I was compelled. And here I haven’t seen or talked to you in 20 years…”

“Is this a joke?”

“No! No it’s not a joke. I have the songs. All of them. Every single one. And…”

“What?”

“I’m going to send them to you, I guess. Do you want to hear them?”

“Um… well, yeah. They’re sappy?” I asked with a nervous grin on my end of the phone. “You collected… for 25 years? Like what songs?”

“I don’t know,” he sounded embarrassed. “They’re songs. Songs, you know. Songs that make me remember you. Look. Don’t ask me why, Els. I just did it.”

I didn’t answer.

“So I guess I’ll send you these songs now, okay? And you can listen to them. And then you’ll know where I was at and how I feel about you, okay? About us.”

“Um… okay.”

skip to part four…