I (then 15yo) was at a registration line for an event I was going to attend. There was this girl and there were two lines—I was on the right line, she was on the left. We were about the same distance in number of people ahead of us in queue from the desk. At first look, she was beautiful; not conventionally, hollywood-esque immaculate or anything like that, but I could definitely see someone being in love with her and treating her right for the rest of her life. But at that point, it wasn't me.

One person at a time, we came closer and closer to the registration desk. It was a pretty humid day and at that event room hallway it was getting noticeably warm so any thought of this girl to my left was very quickly discarded my by irritated, distracted brain. Until it inevitably became our turn to sign up.

She got to the table a few seconds before I did and was already writing her name before the person ahead of me finished. As I bent down to grab the pen with my right hand, I extended my left hand to grip the loose sign up sheet to keep it in place while I wrote. And as I was tracking my right hand with my eyes, I caught a glimpse at this girl writing down her name, who, at this point, was beginning to write down her last name. And it was absolutely mesmerizing.

That moment slowed down to an absolute crawl. All sound slowly faded away, a soft vignette suddenly surrounded this girl's right hand and what she was writing. She wrote the most beautiful, elegant, graceful, refined, decorous cursive capital D I have ever seen in my (then short) life.

In a slow snap of a finger, the man I saw being in love with her and treating her right for the rest of her life... it was me. I was convinced that this girl was going to be the woman I was going to marry, court forever, build a happy family with, grow gray hair together with. All because of a cursive capital D.

I never got to start writing my name until she finished writing the rest of her details on the sign up sheet. I hurriedly finished my signing up hoping that there was a chance for us to perhaps engage in small talk but as returned the pen to its holder I glanced up to see the sea of people rushing out of the event room swallowing up any free floor space that was available. She was nowhere to be seen.

My 15 year-old self had never been so heartbroken at that point. I had a few crushes and young loves by that age but this pain was different. The feeling that I would never see another cursive capital D as perfect as hers became a burden that I would have to carry into adulthood.

That was 14 years ago, and until now, her D is still the most beautiful I've ever seen (sorry this was very low-hanging fruit; rest of the story is still true).