When you get to be a certain age -- and I'm not certain exactly what that age is -- you start to have an experience that you didn't have when you were younger.

People you know -- or knew -- die.

I'm not talking about older people. Unless you're really lucky, you don't get too far into your life before your grandparents pass away, or older aunts and uncles. And of course there comes a point when you lose one or both of your parents. But as sad as that is, all that is part of the natural order of things.

No, what I mean here is that you reach a point where your contemporaries die. Or worst of all, when friends or family members who are significantly younger pass away, either through illness or accident.

I reached the age of 30 with three of my grandparents still alive, but the very next year, I lost a cousin who was just in his mid teens. My little cousin Stephen had been born with a degenerative illness that made it unlikely he would live past adolescence, so it wasn't a complete shock, but I still don't think there was anything I ever experienced in my life that felt more <em>wrong</em> than to help bury someone 15 years younger than I was.

Of course, that was a long time ago, and since then I have seen my remaining grandparents die, and three years ago, my dad passed away. But as much as I miss them, all of them lived at least into their eighties. They had good lives and they are loved and remembered by those who live on.

As I have gotten closer to people I went to high school with, I have heard sad stories of people who died before their time. One of the two other classmates I appeared on the television show "It's Academic" with in 1967 died more than 20 years ago, but I never knew him well.

Just the other day, though, I heard a name I hadn't heard for a lot of years. A girl who had graduated two years behind me had died a month before her 60th birthday. I was told she had died in her sleep, so I assume it had happened after a long illness. The name wouldn't have meant much to me, except for one of those little quirks. She was the first girl I had ever gone on a date with.

I was just shy of my 16th birthday, she was a year younger. We went to a movie, and the name of the movie is lost in the mists of time.

The date itself was kind of a disaster. I didn't have my license yet, so I needed my father to chauffeur us. I don't think she was expecting that.

[caption id="attachment_887" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Last girl, top right"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Baton-corps.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-887" title="Baton corps" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Baton-corps-300x164.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="164" /></a>[/caption]

She was a majorette, and one thing that was true at our school at that time was that the majorettes -- the Baton Corps -- were the real beauties, not the cheerleaders.

Seriously, I would guess that at least six or seven of the 10 prettiest girls in our senior class were majorettes, and I can tell from a few Facebook pages that some of them have aged very well indeed.

The girl I went out with, I don't think I had even thought of her more at least 30 years. The first date, such as it was, really isn't that much of a milestone. It was more than a year later before I had a date where I actually drove, which was when my fits and starts social life really started.

As you might tell from the caption on the photo, I have kind of gone back and forth a little over whether to mention her name at all. But I think it's probably the right thing to do.

So rest in peace, Diane Bacas Hoffman.

I hope you had a very happy life, and I'm sure you had many better dates than our one evening at the movies.