Dale doesn't like the end of Titanic.

It's not that she throws the necklace into the water, or even that she dies. It's that after she dies, she walks down the staircase to meet Jack. He feels for her husband: "What if she were his one true love? Where does he fit into that picture?"

I tried to explain it. A poet once said a woman's heart is a deep and unfathomable place, and I'll go along with that. Though I am happily married, I admit to wondering sometimes about past boyfriends. Not enough to pick up a phone book or even email, but once in a while, as I'm writing a check, "Oh, this is so-and-so's birthday; I wonder what he's doing now" kind of thing.

One I think of as the silver medalist--we might have had something really terrific but the timing was atrocious. When we started dating, he was buddies with my sister's then-boyfriend, and an entire relationship of double-dates with them loomed large and threatening. Some years later, he called out of the blue. Sadly for him, I had started dating a lawyer who treated me like a queen. [I later married said lawyer.] When I suggested that we could still be friends, he gracefully declined. "I'd only be waiting for you two to break up, and we all deserve better than that." Very wise, that. I hope you have found at least three quarters of the happiness I have, Eric S., wherever you are.

I admit to Googling on occasion, just out of curiosity. The one I think I actually found was a speaker at some symposium on computers, I think. I couldn't get through the title of the symposium or his talk without a strong cup of coffee. Eek. I consider THAT a bullet dodged.

But I think all women have our memories of near-misses and almost was-es; I think that's what Cameron was touching on. I'm just grateful that I didn't settle for "good enough."