Who's sorry now? Well, take a guess.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

ARLINGTON, Va. - I saw her two tables away at a Women in Military Service for America luncheon. Could it be her? Naw. She couldn't look that good after all these years, could she? I mean, I don't look that good after all these years - and 42 have passed since I fell in love with her.

Besides, what would she be doing here? What does she have to do with the military? But, then, what was I doing here? What do I have to do with the military?

`And now,' the emcee said, `I'd like to recognize a woman who's been so supportive to women in the military: Connie Stevens!'

My heart fluttered like baseball cards in the spokes of my old Schwinn. As she stood to the applause of hundreds, I remembered that magical moment in 1962 when I came home from Emery's IGA Foodliner in Corvallis, clutching the first 45 record I'd ever bought. I was 8 years old. And in love for the first time.

The song on that MGM record - nobody remembers flip side songs - was `Vacation.'

`Put away the books, we're out of school/The weather's warm but we'll play it cool/We're on vacation, havin' lots of fun/V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N in the summer sun.' The song is seared into me like a read-only file permanently fixed on the hard drive of my heart.

As the clapping faded, I looked at her. She glanced at me, almost as if she knew me. Sure, I was a married man but there was no turning back: When this luncheon was over, I wanted my photo taken with my arm around Connie Stevens.

This puppy-dog love is not my nature. Famous people are no different from you and I: just rich, more beautiful, more powerful and more often to be stopped in public by some doting jerk who says something stupid that begins `When I was a kid ... .'

None of which would dissuade me from meeting my 1962 heartthrob. I etched a plan in my mind: Let the Southern women in their flashing red, white and blue flag-pins get their cheesy photos, then swoop in with more dignified `Oregon aplomb.'

After 10 minutes, she shook the giggly gadflies and strode purposefully toward the exit, with just enough of a sideways glance to suggest she knew I was coming. And would welcome me as if she, too, had been waiting for this moment.

I handed my camera to a stranger with orders to shoot on sight. Showtime! `I can't believe it's you!' I blurted out. `How 'bout a photo?' I put my arm around Connie and smiled big. She put her arm around me and smiled, too.

`When I was a kid, your song, `Vacation,' was the first 45 I ever bought!' I gushed.

There was a slight pause, the kind of worrisome pause you get when you first see the little beach ball on your Macintosh spinning and realize your computer is locked up.

`You must mean `Sixteen Reasons,' ' she said, forcing a smile between slightly clinched teeth. Her touch on me weakened. `I didn't do `Vacation.' '

Oh ... my ... gosh. I had mistaken Connie Stevens for another '60s singer, Connie FRANCIS, my true heartthrob! The beach ball kept spinning.

`Uh, yeah, right, of course, `Sixteen Reasons,' ' I stammered unconvincingly.

My smile twitched on and off like a wire-shorted lamp. Hers dimmed considerably. The woman with my camera couldn't get it to work. Dead battery.

In a moment, Connie was gone, out the door. And out of my life. Forever. I bent over and buried my head in my hands.

I knew she knew. That's what hurt. She knew it was another woman for whom my heart had fluttered. And yet she had the dignity not to say a thing.

Poet John Donne pondered `for whom the bell tolls.' But what did he know? He never made a jackass out of himself like me.

I say: You can't un-ring a bell. You can only hope, in this case, that Connie Francis doesn't hear about my two-timing ways - and, when we someday meet at last, she welcomes me home in the summer sun. And, this time, the camera works.