Kissin' You Off

When I was in high school, I was shy and not particularly "lucky" in love. I had never kissed a boy. I know! Some girls were all over it in middle school. Not me, I didn't even get my first kiss until my 16th birthday party.

There are two stories here, with two entirely different goals by melding them into one post, besides the fact they took place over the same event.

1. Boys are dumb in high school, and they make things up to match the "reality" of what they envision their lives to be.

2. Boys are cruel in high school, not realizing the implications of their actions, nor how easily they'll become as targets of catty-fun blogs like this in the future of the girls they cross.

So here we go. We'll call these two gentleman Meathead Dumb and Meathead Mean.

Both Meatheads, along with some of their friends and a few other high school hot shots, were invited to my 16th birthday party. Sad as it was, I had it at my place with my parents chaperoning. I realize now what a mistake that was, but honestly the rents were pretty cool with the whole thing. They even splurged for the margarita mix - sans tequila unfortunately.

That didn't stop Meathead Dumb, though. Most teenagers, even with the most juvenile and naive of brains, realize that margaritas mix must have tequila added to reach any sort of alcoholic content. MD decided, in his infinite high school wisdom, to chug the entire bottle of the mix - again, sans alcohol. Yet, he must not have known this, as he yelled at the top of his lungs to the entire party, "I'M WASTEDDDDDD!"

Umm, no MD. You're not. There's no alcohol in that. I wish I could tell you otherwise because I'd have been launched to high school stardom right then, but there's not and I never did.

So, moment to laugh at the idiocy that we women had to choose from in high school. You know you had at least one of these dimwits. Don't lie.

Meanwhile, Meathead Mean decided we should all play truth or dare. This was high school - so yes, of course I thought this was a brilliant idea. Up until I chose truth. MM asked me how far I had gone with a guy. To my own credit, I was honest. To my discredit, I was dumb enough to ask if hugging or holding hands was farther. (I was so naive in high school, I really was. I won't even pretend I was remotely cool.)

Later, MM took me aside on my trampoline out back under the stars... I'll let you awww at the effect that had on my cute little birthday-lovin self. MM said, "So... you've really never even kissed a guy?" I blushed and I think I left it at that. Like I wanted to admit that again! So MM decided to give me a birthday present, and he kissed me. My first kiss!

Yet, there's a reason MM is called mean. Monday at school, MM denied having even attended my party, let alone kissing me. My friends apparently had a pretty big mouth about what had happened that night. But the thing that made me really angry was the denial. I'd be less offended if he just said he got drunk and made out with someone he shouldn't have.

(Note: I've made myself sound somehow unfortunate looking - I'm not. I'm not super hot, but I'm reasonably attractive - I avoided the ugly stick and the awkward stick. However, I was incredibly unpopular in high school. And it doesn't matter how attractive or unattractive you were at my school since we had access to plastic surgery - you didn't get anywhere if you didn't put out or weren't one of the cliquie "cool" kids.)

After all of this, during our senior year when I had finally come into my own and figured out what I wanted, and didn't want - when I was dating someone steadily (albeit String Bean, who will continue to be the butt of the majority of my posts and jokes ) - MM asks me to come to his graduation party. This is after he and a few of his friends had bad mouthed me throughout high school.

I promptly told him, "why would I want to go to a party of yours? Mine never happened, right?"

Hell yeah I brought it back from two years prior. That's what you DO in high school. I had figured out what a fair-weathered friend was, and who to trust and not to trust. Living up to who was "popular" and who wasn't, was not my thing.

Who denies getting some in high school? Seriously? Call it vindictive or call it vengeance - either way, Meathead had it coming!

High School Never Ends

I don't know about you, but when high school ended, I was relieved. No more pencils, no more books, etc. kind of relieved. I had college to look forward to! String Bean, on the other hand, wasn't going to college. He had actually graduated the year before me and hadn't managed to find a way to get into a decent community college, let alone a four year institution and a far cry from the ivy league.

Here's the brutal truth about those who don't go to college. For a large portion of them (but by no means all, there are many brilliant non-college grads who do very well for themselves), high school was IT. The highlight of their lives! It was all downhill from there, right? But for those of us who either went to school or at least matured in some manner (although many who even went to college never saw the light of maturity...), we never wanted to revisit our high school years.

So when String Bean said a friend of his was throwing a house party the summer after my freshman year of college, I was perfectly content with going. I'd just come home from college, where house parties meant kegs, having fun, letting loose, and generally having a fantastic time because the cops weren't coming by. I wasn't 21 yet, but who cares? We were blocks from campus and had plenty of friends to make sure everyone could walk at the end of the night, or at least one person could be the one we leaned on. (Very little "law enforcement" in the Big Easy...)

Much to my surprise, String Bean drives us to this hole in the wall house in the middle of lower suburbia on the outskirts of my home town. This isn't a college level party... its not even in an area where college kids live... let alone where cops won't dare travel. Worse - it was some high schooler's house.

She was 14. Not completely unfortunate looking, but certainly not the queen bee of anything, and definitely barely out of diapers. Have you ever noticed how those younger than us think that the more the show the hotter they look? Let's remember that this mindset is only expected from strippers or for costume parties. If your midriff is showing and you're jailbait - you darn well better put some clothing on. This concept apparently escaped these young high school bimbos.

We arrive, I disdainfully examine the "party." Guess what we're here for. We're the alcohol buyers. The high schoolers fish through their pockets for the twenties they stole from their parents' wallets. Needless to say, I wasn't pleased. But I used their money to get some fine liquors I wanted, so I felt at least some sense of revenge.

When we returned, the drinking began. That part was expected. What wasn't on my list of things to do was run from the cops. But that is exactly what happened.

Let's be clear - I had high school parties in high school. But we weren't retarded enough to let the drunk guys go out back and have wrestling contests while blasting music at 1am. And never, EVER did I have to deal with diving over a fence to escape cops who actually care about noise and underage drinking violations.

Since when is it ok to take your girlfriend to a party thrown by 14 year old skanks? Thank goodness that ends after college. Or at least I really really hope I don't run into any losers who think that's ok at forty.

Seriously. Why were we there?

I do not miss high school.

Why I didn't lose my virginity on prom night

There was an article in USA Today this morning about high school proms. Apparently, kids these days get proms with dinners, breakfasts, parades, cruises, comedy shows, etc. It makes me sick. My prom was nothing worth noting. It was at a mid-range hotel in Baltimore, we had no refreshments (not even cokes), and our only party favors were photo albums that cost about 50 cents a pop and a handful of hard candy.

The only thing truly memorable about my senior prom was my horrible date, Ex 2 (Fruit Fly). About a month or so before the event, we butted heads about his tux. He wanted to get something like the Dumb and Dumber get-up. I told him I didn't want to explain to my children 30 years from then that my date was, in fact, not actually retarded. After I had told him exactly what to get, I felt like maybe I was being a little bitchy, so I agreed to let him and the other guys control one aspect of the evening: the limo.

I figured there is no way someone can screw-up ordering a limo. I mean, it involves picking up the phone and giving an address. Boy was I wrong.

Fruit Fly was excited about his task, and wasted no time getting all the other guys in our group involved on it. I didn't really bother to ask questions about it because, I figured a limo is a limo. I was a little concerned when I realized it was getting close to prom and he had not actually made any phone calls. But , I figured I shouldn't nag about it. Even with two and half weeks to spare, I was sure he could find something decent. Finally, he told me that he had booked a limo and that he was really excited about it. I was really excited too, I thought for once he had managed to handle a menial task without disappointing me. It was a little late, but I figured a limo is a limo. It couldn't be too bad.

Then I saw it. I can't even begin to describe the shock and disgust I felt as the "hot-rod limo" came rolling around the corner to pick everyone up. "Hot-rod limo" is a huge overstatement. Had this name actually been an accurate description, I would have found it hilarious. This limo was a busted-ass dirty POS from the early 80s. It was gray with flames painted on the side and the driver was scruffy and drunk looking. His tux was totally wrinkled and he likely had not showered in a month. The interior of the car was dirty and ripped and none of the buttons in it worked. It was stinky inside and I thought I was going to get an STD just from sitting on the seat.

Fruit Fly had even gone up to the rental office and apparently looked at the car two weeks earlier. I couldn't imagine why he thought that this wasn't a POS. He even made a comment at one point that the car was pretty crappy. Well, duh! If you had just managed to do your fricking part and actually look at the stupid car while you were up at the office, this would not have been an issue.

The other girls in the group all glared at me wondering why in the hell I left this up to my boyfriend. I was thoroughly ashamed, but decided to make the most of the situation.

"Well, at least we'll be able to pick-out our limo in the parking lot. Right, guys? Right?"

Still, they were pissed at me.

We hopped in and about 5 minutes down the road, the driver stopped to go to the gas station. Weird. He stood outside and smoked 3 cigarettes and filled the car with gas. His smoke break made us 10 minutes late for our dinner reservations.

At the restaurant, we gave him the time to pick us up, and took his cell phone number so we could call if that changed. When we called him at the pre-arranged time, he said he'd be right there. A whole 15 minutes later, he finally came to pick us up. Loser.

When we arrived at the prom, he didn't feel like waiting in the line of cars to drop us off at the front door (probably a good thing anyway, I didn't exactly want to be seen in this POS) so he drove us around to the garage and we went in the back stairwell. Nice.

And as if the limo weren't enough, Fruit Fly was a turd all night, making me incredibly grouchy for having to deal with him. I don't think I talked to him from the time we had our pictures taken until it was time to leave.

In high school, people always made such a big fuss over prom. They would carry on about how they would remember it for the rest of their lives, so it had to be perfect. I couldn't even tell you what our prom song was, or who took whom as a date or who was on the prom court. The only thing that comes to mind when I think of my senior prom is how much Fruit Fly sucks at life.

I guess I should thank him for making an otherwise forgettable night memorable.

But then I got high...

The summer before my senior year of high school I dated this guy who was totally not my type but I was 17 and wasn't looking for Mr. Right. The sort of guy who eventually failed out of Catonsville Community College. The sort of guy who probably is either dead or retarded by now. This is the sort of guy who would wake and bake every morning and would cry if he missed a 4:20. I mean, I'm all for a little recreational pot use on the weekends or whatever (okay, fine, not really but I can pretend), but this guy took it to the extreme. He had done more drugs than I could name, and I was like the valedictorian of DARE in fifth grade (no shit).

But he was a little older and had a fake ID so I could have alcohol whenever I wanted to. I was drunk off my ass 75 percent of that summer. To make things ever better, his parents went away all summer so he had the house to himself and we threw incredible parties all the frickin' time.

This guy, BS (fitting, huh?), was my first "boyfriend" after the high school sweetheart (the Mormon) and I broke up and I think the fact that he was the antithesis of Mormonness probably drew me to him (okay, fine, that and the beer).

At first the drug thing was rebellious and that was dangerous and that was a turn on. But when you're trying to talk on the phone and you hear the distinct gargling of bong water (we've all heard it), it's a little distracting. Our conversations would go like this:

Me: "So I think we should go get sushi at that new place by Riverside for lunch--what's that noise?"
Him: [coughs] "Umm, nothing."
Me: "Seriously, you're getting high at 11:23 on a Wednesday morning?"
Him: "It's wake and bake, and I helped."

This got real old real fast.

So anyways, I knew this relationship had no long-term potential (I couldn't bring him to Homecoming or anything--I'd probably get suspended!), but I figured I'd be the one to dump him. So imagine my surprise when, labor day weekend, he comes over to take me to lunch and a movie (I had to work that night) and says we need to have a serious talk after the movie (um, because that's not a red flag). I make him tell me what we're going to talk about right then and there. So he dumps me and I cry a little (because I don't know, I wanted to be the one doing the dumping) and I'm about to go in my house when he says "do you still want to go to the movies"? Meaning, "Do you still want to fool around in the movie theater?".

Yeah, let's do that jackass. Go smoke some more pot there.

Look Ma! No hands!

My high school boyfriend was, among other things, a neurotic--to the point that he reminded me of my grandmother, who up until that point I thought was the most neurotic, anal person on the planet.

The ex had this bizarre quark: he refused to touch food with his hands. This includes fast food, french fries and other normal finger foods. I distinctly remember that during long road trips I would have to feed him his McDonald's french fries. It wasn't that he was afraid of germs or anything like that. He was just terrified of having grease or food residue on his fingers.

Weird, no?

God help me.

My first boyfriend was a Mormon.

God, where should I even begin with this one? I should have ran away when I first met him, but unfortunately I stuck around for two years and I'm sure if I were to show up at Nottie's or someplace tonight I would be asked "Are you still dating the Mormon?"

Umm, no. We broke up seven years ago, but that's what happens when you date someone for so long in high school.

He's married now (no big surprise there), so I can talk about him now because it's not like his (mormon) wife is going to divorce him or anything.

For religious reasons I could not see or talk to him on Sundays. Keeping the sabbath holy or something. I also could not see him on holidays, including Christmas, Easter, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, Independence Day, Bastille Day, Boxing Day...pretty much if the banks were closed I couldn't see him. He would go to church all day on these days, or at least that's what he told me.

For a while there was also a rule that for every date we went on, he had to take a Mormon girl on a date. I guess so that he could find a wife before he graduated from high school.

(This shit would not stand now, but I was naive.)

We couldn't watch R-rated movies. He was over at my house one time and my parents were watching Dracula (the Bram Stoker version) and he asked me to ask my parents to turn it off because he couldn't watch it.

He was also cheap as hell. I think we went out maybe like four times in the two years that we dated. The rest of the time we'd watch movies at my house. Then we would make out. Then he would tell me I was going to hell because God didn't want him making out with non-mormon heathens. In fact, I was really the devil because I was trying to make him "unpure" so that he couldn't enter the temple.

In April of his senior year I found out he still hadn't applied to any colleges. I filled out the damn HCC application for him and mailed it in. I guess he spent too much time praying to actually apply to college.

He had this t-shirt from the Physics Olympics that he wore like everyday. With a flannel shirt, five years after the grunge look was in style. When I first met him he didn't bathe on a regular basis. He actually wrote in my yearbook "You have taught me the importance of hygiene when no one else could." Nice. Isn't cleanliness next to godliness?

He wrote (and sometimes spoke) in his rendition of old english. There was a lot of "ye" and "doth" in his vernacular. Yeah, that was a good time. (That thing in the yearbook probably actually says "Ye hath taught me...")

He wouldn't cuss. At first this was funny, but after awhile "Gosh darn it!" got pretty damn annoying.

He wouldn't drink caffeine and he told me my little sister needed to go into drug treatment because of her caffeine addiction (because she would drink ONE CAN of Dr. Pepper after school everyday).

The gas gauge in his car was broken. Instead of having it fixed (or at least watching the trip odometer), he would just drive his car until it ran out of gas and then have me call my mother to come pick us up.

Once, he promised to take me to the circus but then his family came into town and they were going to go to the beach instead. Rather than calling me and explaining and dealing with a little bit of whining from me, he had his mother call and tell me that until we were married, his family came first.

Junior year, he got "called" on his mission. He would be gone for two years and we wouldn't be allowed to talk to each other. He chose to break this news to me at halftime during a Friday-night basketball game. I was a cheerleader. It was one of the few times he actually game to one of my games. I think I ran out of the gym crying. It was real fun trying to be peppy after that. And then his cheap ass didn't even take me to dinner after the game.

He left on his mission the day before we left for Disney World for Nationals. Needless to say, I didn't have a good time in Florida that year.

A few weeks later he went apeshit and got kicked off his mission. He came back to Slumbia but didn't bother telling me. I guess he thought he could keep it a secret. One of the girls who danced with me went to his church. She was the one who told me he was back. I started hyperventilating in the middle of the dance studio. I got to go home early. You can guess where I stopped on my way home. That's when I broke it off for good, two years too late.