Trends : LOVE STORIES: : THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY : ‘Crying Time’

From true love to stabbed-in-the-back love, from quick love to love that just won’t die, View writers have chronicled looks at love in the ‘80s for Valentine’s Day eve. Some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent, and the guilty, but all are true ... even if love sometimes isn’t.

At 16, Sally could not imagine a more perfect love than her first serious boyfriend, Jeff, a worldly senior an entire year older than she. Jeff had an unlikely and wonderful combination of qualities: a wild reputation and a huge, expensive wardrobe. He also had a 1967 Chevy that he had custom-painted a sort of light lime-green that Sally thought exactly matched the color of his disarming eyes.

But then an uncomfortable distance developed between them and Sally knew, in the way that women always know, that it was over.

Great crying jags were properly carried out alone in her room. But in the midst of one of them, a thunderbolt of profound teen-age wisdom struck Sally:

Guys are going to come and go in this life, but your best girlfriend will always love you!

Instantly thoughts of Joanne filled her with relief and warm recollections of how, living a block apart, they grew up together, rode skateboards and had water-balloon fights together, drank their first beers and threw up together, and for a brief period, practiced French kissing so that they would be ready when some boy launched the real thing at them.

Sally burst out the front door and the unrelenting San Francisco fog hit her tear-soaked cheeks. But Sally didn’t mind, because with every step toward Joanne’s house, Sally’s load seemed lighter. Sally really hadn’t seen much of Joanne since she’d become so preoccupied with this dumb boyfriend. What a tonic it would be to go into Joanne’s lavender and pink room again, close the door and talk endlessly of what a jerk Jeff is.

Just over a small hill, Joanne’s familiar L-shaped house came into view, with the giant picture window where they had sat at the piano and played duets, the towering blue spruce in front of the window, and in back of the tree, the cracked cement driveway and a 1967 Chevy that was just exactly the color of Jeff’s eyes.