Mt. Everest in Flip-Flops

By any standard, it was an impossible crush I had on her. She was Mt. Everest, a knockout nurse seven years older, in 1972 the difference between Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Almost nowhere else could I have caught her, except for the one place we were, a Catholic summer camp, where isolation, proximity and time could suspend normal convention just enough for it to happen. “Jake, she’s out of your league,” a friend says. She’s Mt. Everest, and you’re wearing flip-flops.”