WHOSE VOICE SHALL IT BE: IT'S UP TO YOU

I've taken the liberty of writing an alternative first chapter, written this time from young Miss Becky's perspective, as if she's telling the story as it happens.  The previous one was written from old Mrs. Becky's perspective, as she is recalling it some 35 years later.  Won't you please be so kind as to give it a gander, then leave a comment to let me know which voice is more compelling?  I'd be ever so grateful!

IT'S ABOUT DANG TIME

 Dearest Friends,

Hang onto your hats, guys and gals!  I've got some earthshaking news.  I'm engaged!  Can you believe it?  

Five or six months ago, when John and I parted at the airport, he actually had tears in his eyes, and swore he'd come back to me, but I wasn't so sure.  After all, we'd been dating for three years, and the word marriage had never crossed his lips.  Heck, he never even asked me to go steady!  Of course, I'm pretty sure that was mostly due to our age difference.  The poor guy was so horrified when I admitted my age on our first date.  As if it wasn't bad enough to be a senior dating a freshman, she had to be a seventeen-year-old freshman?  Or, maybe it wasn't my age so much as that prim little voice I used, after he suggested going to his place, to tell him "Nice girls don't go to boy's apartments!"  Geez, I was such a doofus!  Is it any wonder it was at least another month before he asked me out again?

Even then, he made it perfectly clear that, though we might be spending every single Saturday together, and working together in the dorm cafeteria each day, and eating most of our meals together, we were not "going together!"  He said on Fridays I was free to go do whatever, or see whomever, I wanted, because if ever there was a person in dire need of more "experience" before choosing to settle down, it was me!

I suppose I could have talked him out of going, had I been willing to beg and whine, but I was determined not to be the "clingy" type.  I knew he'd had at least two previous relationships with girls like that, and believe me, they did not end well!  He told me once that he doesn't want a wife who lives through her husband and kids.  He wants someone with her own career and passions, who's bold and independent.  After meeting his mother, Theda, I can see why he feels that way.  That woman is a pistol!  So, I do my best not to voice my insecurities -- to be the tough girl he admires, who's putting herself through school with no help from anyone.  I let him go.

It must have been the letters that turned the tide.  Come to find out, I am a darn good letter-writer, and John's none too shabby himself.  What we could never say in person just comes pouring out of our pens, and I feel closer to him now than I did when he left.  Hoowee!  The things that boy puts in a letter!  Why, it'd make your toes curl if I told you, so I won't!  I guess I've become pretty brazen myself, dropping hints about what a great little wifey I'd be, and "not just in the kitchen" (I'm blushing!).

Still, you could've knocked me over with a feather when I finally got an actual phone-call from the guy, and heard him saying "So what d'ya think, Beck?  Should we get married?"  I was so shocked, I must've stood there for a minute with my mouth agape, before I finally got it together and said "Well, it's about dang time!"