All My Pen Pals are Gone

On formative, finite correspondences

Image: Carol Yepes / Getty Images

Ann Marie was the first. I found her, if my memory is correct, in the parking lot of the Seven Springs Mountain Resort on a 4th of July weekend when I was seven or maybe eight years old. I was there with my family for an annual “Polka Fireworks” extravaganza, when hundreds of polka music lovers gathered to dance and drink and meet up with people we didn’t…