When I was 13 I was in love with Clark Gable, as were thousands of other girls all over the country. I wrote him a love letter (which I never mailed) and dreamed of the day when he would ring my bell and say, ''You are the girl I have been looking for all my life.'' I had heard rumors that he was fond of Carole Lombard, but I put them out of my mind.

When I was 14, I put away childish things and invented a boyfriend my own age. His name was Stuart Lazare, and I even gave him a nickname: Razzy. He took me to places like the Rainbow Room, where we danced the night away and he vowed eternal devotion. I told my friends about him, and they listened, open-mouthed.

By the time I was 15 I had real boyfriends. They would phone on Wednesday evenings to ask to take me out on Saturday evenings, to a movie followed by a black-and-white ice cream soda, or to a dance in someone's basement, where we did the Lindy or the fox trot, or to an ice skating rink or a swimming pool, depending on the season, or, on a special occasion, a ferry ride to Staten Island and back. At the end of the evening they would return me to my waiting parents. If it was a second date, they would kiss me quickly and damply somewhere in the vicinity of my lips and then exit rapidly, blushing.

When I was 16 I met the man who would become my husband. (I say man because he was a college junior!) After about six months of dating, he asked me to ''go steady,'' and I agreed. A year later he gave me his fraternity pin, and shortly thereafter, a diamond engagement ring, made from one of his mother's earrings. We had our own song, our own bench in the park, our own secret language. Upon his graduation from college we were married and rented a two room apartment in Brooklyn.

My memories of that period are real, until the time when he was drafted and went off to win World War II for me and our new daughter. Then my nights were filled with fantasies of his return, and the mansion we would purchase, and the two more children we would have. Some of those dreams came true.

As I look back, the memories of the fantasies I invented have become as vivid as the actual events. Sometimes I forget which really happened and which I made up. But there is one difference in memories, real or imagined: those we share with others have a special sweetness.