It Must Have Been the Mistletoe

Back in college, when I actually had free time, I used to make greeting cards for birthdays, thank-you notes and any other occasion which merited a card. I don't mean "make" in the sense of printing off my computer, or even using a sheet of computer paper and drawing on it. My cards were all quite tasteful, and carefully crafted.

One year, I had a particularly cute idea of making Christmas cards that would have a sprig of mistletoe tied to the front with a little red ribbon. On the inside would be red lipstick kiss. I think I may have thought up something corny like "Merry Kissmas" to write on the inside under the big red kiss. Well, it was actually most likely something more creative than that, but that was the general idea of the message.

So, I went to the store, bought heavy cardstock, mistletoe, ribbon and adhesive gold strips for a border. These were going to be the cutest cards, ever! I was so excited about it, I started putting them together as soon as I got home. In the midst of all the cutting, gluing and kissing, Shrek's fat ass wandered over to my dorm.

At first he didn't get it. "Why would you kiss a card that is going to a friend?" I explained to him the tradition regarding mistletoe. He told me that my cards were slutty, and that if he received one from a girl, he would assume she was hitting on him. I believe I have addressed this before, but Shrek always thought everyone was hitting on him.

Apparently he missed the memo on how to actually flirt with someone. I mean, seriously. A girl asked to borrow his notes, and he assumed she was really asking to suck his dick. Two girls asked him for the time, and he thought they were asking for a threesome. A guy held the door open for him and apparently that means that he wanted to be pounded in the ass by Shrek.

We got in a fight about the damn cards, and he threw the biggest temper tantrum imaginable about it. I ended up throwing them in the back of a drawer somewhere. Maybe one day I will make them again.

This time, I will send one to him with the message "Kiss my ass, dickhead!"

He was a skater boy

I like to think of dating as making successive approximations toward my ideal partner. With each guy I date, I am able to find new qualities which I will seek or avoid in future partners. Each time I date a new person, I am closer to having found the right one. I have a better idea each time around of what characteristics I want, and of those, which are the most important. Ergo, my last boyfriend was closer to what I want than the one before him, who was closer than the one before him, and so on down the chain. Following this logic, boyfriend zero would be the one who is least like the person I would like to end up with.

It was spring of 1996, the year when the grunge era was coming to a close and the skater trend was in full swing. This was before the time when skaters had blue hair and were outcasts in high school. Before Avril Lavigne-ish girls wearing tank tops with ties. Before skaters became a elitist clique of the least elite people imaginable. No, this was the time when it was actually cool to wear over-sized elephant-esque clothing from Pacific Sunwear (yes, this was even before it became Pac-Sun).

I, however, was not cool. I did not wear baggy clothes from PS, or have hemp jewelry, a skateboard or a wallet on a chain. I was 12 years old, and had a mother who did not let me dress like a derelict. I wore clothes that were not especially trendy, and fit me well. This didn't bother me much though because, I was in all GT classes, and none of the other nerds in my classes were particularly cool either.

Well, you can imagine my surprise when the cool new skater kid who was the object of desire of every girl in the school started passing notes to me in home economics (this is totally like 2nd base or something). Boyfriend Zero was too cool for school. He was in remedial classes, yet thought he was smarter than everyone around him (which I guess may have been the case with the crowd he hung with), he had an entire wardrobe from PS, and he used new slang words which I to this day, can not figure out. His friends would skateboard to Taco Bell and buy a small soda, then get like 20 refills (what rebels), and he was allowed to watch MTV. He was unlike the nerds that I had been around before. He put his own coolness above having any sort of real goals. He didn't participate in sports or other after school activities like I did. His after school activities consisted of skateboarding, Taco Bell, and hanging out. He was totally righteous, dude!

Things progressed in the typical middle school fashion, and pretty soon, we were dating. This meant that we went to the mall with four other friends (who were dating each other too), held hands a few times, passed notes to each other, bragged about dating each other to everyone in school, and he gave me daffodils which he picked out of his neighbor's yard on the way to the bus stop (I still am not sure if I find this to be endearing enough to over-look the fact that he destroyed someone's meticulously groomed garden). We were the most enviable middle school couple of the time.

Of course, these things don't last forever, and we had our falling out a few weeks later when I did not want to kiss him. I wasn't one of those middle school sluts who ran around kissing people. I had morals, dammit! Things ended. So, I went back to my schoolwork, ballet and equestrian lessons. He moved on to the class whore, because, she was willing to make out with him (I heard that she ended up getting pregnant in high school) also, she had a brother who was two years older and a skater. Who wouldn't want an in with such an awesome dude? Unfortunately, my older sister was about as cool as I was, so I guess I never had that advantage. We didn't really have any mutual friends, as our collective group of friends broke up over our break-up (it was middle school). I saw him around school a little bit, but we didn't talk much. He moved away the next year and went to a different middle school. After that, I lost track of him entirely.

That is, until the miracle of the internet let me take one last look at him. I stumbled across (ok, I searched his name on Stalkerati and found) his MySpace page. First of all, who my age has a MySpace page? Totally righteous dudes, duh! The information on there was surprising to read because, well, it is not surprising at all. It was as if he had written it 10 years ago (perhaps his new school did not offer English classes). His picture showed him in all his skater glory. He is still in his Pac Sun clothes, hemp necklace, and Vans. He has no real hobbies worth mentioning, other than skateboarding and hanging out with his friends. He still has no drive to do the things which are important to people like me (like getting a job).

I guess the point of all this is that I wouldn't kiss Boyfriend Zero ten years ago, and I sure as hell wouldn't kiss him now.

You do not warrant long goodbyes.

New day = new complaints to share

Boris- Seemed to have this misconception that I only listen to modern rock music (to this day, I still don't know why) and one day thought he would "expand" my musical tastes. He put in some tape of this god-awful foreign music that sounded like the European equivilant of Michael Bolton. Then, he asked me if I liked it. Not wanting to be impolite (yeah, I used to be polite), I told him "yeah, it's good" to which he responded "See? It doesn't have to be rock music to be good." He seemed to think he was teaching me a life lesson. As I recall, a week prior to this incident, he had taken my CD of Handel's Messiah out of his player because he thought it was obnoxious. On another occasion, he had done the same to my Jimmy Buffett CD, and a random mix CD with a variety of musical genres. Um, ok, who has limited tastes in music?

Fruit Fly- Always has these "brilliant" ideas for some sort of modern art project. This would have been ok, except it awlays involved some sort of preparation which was completely unacceptable. For example, he spent a few months stealing silverware from restaurants every single time we went out to eat. He just couldn't resist slipping a few utensils into his pocket. It was horribly embarassing. I've never stolen anything in my life, and it was very uncomfortable for me to have to sit there while he did. Buddy- kleptomania is not an art project.

Shrek- I only own one halter top, which I bought for New Years' Eve last year. It is not in anyway revealing, or trashy, rather, it is cute and fun. I bought it at the mall with my mother (for those of you who do not know me well, I have a very conservative southern mother who would never let me dress like a skank). Well, lardass came to visit me for the holidays, and didn't want to take me out for New Years. Jerk. So, we went out to dinner with my parents, and I wore the shirt with a cardigan and a skirt (which was knee-length). He told me it was "slutty" and it was embarassing for him to be seen with me. Ass. I should also mention here that his female friends (all of whom he swears are not sluts and will defend to the death) wear nothing but the skankiest of tank tops and skirts (which come up to thier C U Next Tuesdays. No sweaters over the tank tops either). Furthermore, his female friends do not have, ahem, the most virtuous of reputations. Since that, I have wondered if this shirt is, in fact, skanky. I have asked several people, all of whom laugh at me, and tell me I'm being ridiculous for thinking that. Well, buddy, you may think one of my shirts is skanky, but I know all of your clothes are dirty.

...and it looks like I have once again reached my daily limit.