The Depeche Mode

 At the end of the school year a friend of mine had bought three tickets to Depeche Mode at an outdoor amphitheater, the same one that I watched Steve Miller Band at as it happened. He had a falling out with the girlfriend he was going to take and he didn't want to go because Depeche Mode reminded him of her and he gave me the tickets for free. I asked a couple of my senior friends to go with me and we headed up there on the night of their senior party. I cannot remember who opened but no one stood up and it was pretty banal euro-pop. When arrived we had picked a spot and pulled up next to a little group of goth-lite girls. They were of the sort that had incorporated all of the elements of the style that make a girl look dangerous and sexy without any of the over the top stuff that only serves to spoil something nice. I had my eye on a girl who was wearing that hooker inspired short skirt and long stocking look with buckle up boots. She was obviously really into the concert scene and was having some nice unaffected and uninhibited fun with her friends. As the opener left and we were waiting for the main show I tried to get my shy senior friends to join me in little flirting and picking up but the chickened out and declined the offer. I went all lobo solo and struck up a little chat about the hotties bad-a boots. Girls, as a rule, like two things, compliments and compliments – in that order. All but the strongest minded of girls as helpless as baby kittens when they are flattered about their choice in clothes. She was no exception and by the time Depeche Mode was doing their thing she was over on our blanket dancing with me. My senior friends were looking at me with a mixture of awe and disbelief and wanted one for themselves but were too shy to ask her friends to come over. They migrated over just a little by the time the show was wrapping up but my friends were still to shy to dance with them. I like Depeche Mode okay, I don't seek their music out but I don't start looking for the exits when it comes on either but having a cute girl dancing in front of me with her hands in a backwards loop over my neck where I could smell her nice perfume definitely improved the situation. At the end of the encore I was cuddled up close in a standing spoon dance and went in for a little ear kiss. She laid back into me and turned her head around for a regular lip kiss and I was okay with that. Very okay. The walk out lights came up and my friends were in a hurry to head back to town to get to their senior all-night party and I was hoping to see what else my new friend had in mind. I was trying to talk to her and see where she lived or get her number or something and somehow in the exchange she mentioned that she lived just off campus at the U. She looked about my age so I was surprised to learn she was a college girl. She asked where I went to school and I admitted I was in high school. She laughed a little and blushed a little and then gave me a little chaste kiss on the cheek and told me I was quite the little lover boy and maybe we could meet up someday when I was older. We went our separate ways and when we were driving home my friends marveled at my pickup skills while I just cursed my bad luck and my missed opportunity to lie a little and see what an older girlfriend was all about. My friends go tot their party and I went home alone.

I Invent Nothing

 Growing up I always wanted to be one of those kids who goes to college when they are 12 and then go on to be physicists and discover the inner workings of the universe before the age of twenty. I did not achieve those lofty goals. I did get some books on physics which I didn't understand and I would lie to people who didn't know much about that kind of thing to make myself seem smarter than I was. One thing I did which was particularly lame was imagine the order of the universe like a completely ad hoc cosmologist and then draw pictures and math equations along with cryptic notes to create the illusion of deeply mystical and esoteric dabbling into the scientific occult. They were just props and had no relevance to reality or hidden workings of the world. I want to be clear that this was not when I was a ten year old with dreams bigger than my opportunities for learning. This was when I was 16 and definitely should have known better. I decided that based on some pictures I saw in the Scientific American in an article I didn't read that the universe was shaped like a torus and there was a huge glob of dark matter at its center which bent all light back in on itself. I also imagined that the dark matter created the motive force for all light in the universe. I drew a picture of a torus in LaserCad and looked up the generating equations and put them in there for good measure. I included a few cryptic notes and some hand drawn call outs to make it look official and like it was the product of tortured and misunderstood genius.

This is the shape of the universe for those of you who will not check.

 I could have very easily checked any of my premises but preferred to nurse my ego in my wholly fantasy world. The more embarrassing thing about it was that I would show people, mainly girls, these pages in my notebook and then give them a much too convoluted explanation and almost always they would be impressed with how smart I was and I liked that more then actually getting smarter. I remember one not where I wrote something close to this, “I have made an important discovery called the basic increase. . .”

Before I finish writing what I wrote back then I need to tell you that my ego is still so tied up in being smart that even writing about my past pretentious mistakes is a struggle. I have been thinking of ways to make it not seem so desperately lame but there is no way – onward.

Back to what I wrote – After I named my invention in a hand drawn note I wrote out this equation y=x² and then drew a graph of that equation and made some random notes about how important this discovery was in the understanding of the universe.

Even if you are not familiar with basic algebra or grade school cosmology it should not be hard to see I had invented nothing. That equation was named a square function probably a couple of thousand years before I was born. Good work genius.  

Speech Practice

 We had a debate tournament coming up a few weeks after my dinner-not-date with my friend and when I was writing my speech she asked if I wanted to come over and have dinner with her family and practice on them after we ate. I am so arrogant that I thought I would be giving them a little treat to hear my after dinner speech. I took her up on the offer and it was pleasant evening. Until I got to give my speech. Her mom and dad sat on the couch to listen to me hold forth in my hubris laden self-important teenage wisdom. They were super polite and made their faces to look like they were really interested. I was riding high based on a misreading of the effect of my performance on them. When I was done they asked if I wanted some feed back I said yes and they ran down a mental list of errors, omissions, and grammatical errors that I had made and told me that they also did not agree with my premiss. I recall specifically that there was a line at the end where I mentioned several dictators, a list I had supplied off the top of my head. I listed Lenin, Pol Pot, Pinochet and Karl Marx. If you spotted my error then shut up your face, I know where I went wrong now. I remember them correcting me and feeling humiliated because I had always fancied my self the smartest person I knew and it was becoming demonstrably evident that I was not even forth smartest in this group of five. That took me down a peg or two and I did make several of the changes that they suggested but I think it made me prefer preforming for people who were just confused by my convoluted ramblings and not an audience that by all appearances was quite a bit smarter than me and cleverly tactful so as to throw me off the trail.     

Who Wants To Date Me?

 When I was between steady girls one Friday I was feeling like some female companionship and didn't know who to ask out for my best odds of success so I asked them all instead. I went into debate class and asked who wanted to go out with me that night. There was some uncomfortableness and some not lookingness and then a girl a year older than me that had been a pretty good friend took me up on the offer. This was the girl that had gotten us disqualified from state and nationals by being an underage judge and I didn't hold that against her but I was not super excited about her taking me up on the offer because I am a shallow turd of a human being and I didn't think she was that cute. She was smart, successful, funny and really cool to hang out with but still I thought I should have narrowed the field before threw out the blanket invite. I told her it would be awesome to go hang out and I asked her what she wanted to do. She told me that she wanted to cook me dinner. That sounded pretty okay so I arranged to come over to her house later that night. When I got there I realized that we were two alone in the house and I started to worry that she was thinking this was a romantic date. If she did she was playing it exceptionally cool. She told me we needed to go to the grocery store and get a few things. We rode up and as I was finishing my thought, talking to her in her car before we got out and headed inside I was startled by a tap on the window. It was a kid who was kind of my friend in a loose we-are-from-the-same-town and we have friends in common kind of way. He said hi and asked what we were up to and then made some hubba-hubba kind of joke implying that we were an item and that he thought that was funny. He asked if I was startled because I was too into talking to my date. To my enduring shame I tried to make abundantly clear that we were just friends getting some stuff for dinner. I should have told him to mind his own business and stood up for my friend and the please of her company whether he approved or not. I don't know if she was offended or disappointed but I almost instantly felt bad for trying to distance myself from the situation to try and keep some dude from making mild insinuations of romance. I tried to make up for it by being overly nice and friendly for the rest of the time we were together. We bought the food and went back to cook some pasta and bread for dinner and she was a absolutely perfect host who either was very interested in everything I had to say or else was well trained in that most gracious form of tact that mandates convincingly feigned interest. We ate and sat and talked until it was tie for me to go home and I gave her a hug and thanked her for what had been a really great time. It was so good that I hated myself all the more for being to much of a coward to do the right thing when I was teased about being out with a friend who I really did like quite a lot. Man, I am pathetic.

Esoteric Disqualification Self Pity

 Towards the end of the school year debate starts to go into regional, and then state competition. I was really excited about going to compete at state because I had done so well all year long in debate ever since I figured out how to do it. I had won first or second at most of the tournaments so I thought I had more than a fighters chance to go on and make some noise at the next level. There was one little problem though, my coach made a mistake and the three of us on the team that would do well going forward all had to pay the price. At regional competition which would qualify us for state and national tournaments the three of us that had gone were all doing quite well. I had not lost a debate going into the round of the last eight. My friend grant was in the dramatic and humorous interpretation finals and the third kid was in two finals as well we were at the break they have between regular competition and the finals all feeling good and ready to conquer when our coach, visibly shaken, and the judge he had brought to represent our school came over to the corner of the hallway we were waiting in and told us they had some bad news. Every school was required to supply a judge, who had to be a high school graduate, in order to compete. We were short a judge with very little time to go so my debate coach enlisted a senior, mature beyond her years, to fill in. That was fine until one of the other debate coaches discovered that we had brought an illegal judge and she demanded that our team be disqualified and not allowed to compete in the finals. My coach had spent almost an hour arguing that we should not be punished because he made a mistake but they wouldn't let us go on and compete. We were then disqualified from that tournament and therefore the state and national tournaments as well. I was crushed and felt like crying and hating anyone I could blame. My coach and the defective judge looked so distraught that I couldn't bring myself to muster some rage and I just resigned myself to that fate. Another kid started crying so he took over that job and we all sat around wallowing in self pity and hating that other debate coach for being such a stickler for the rules. Our too young judge was a good friend of mine and she gave me a hug and apologized and I couldn't hate her or my coach they had made the effort to help us out and made a mistake they thought would be no big deal. And it shouldn't have been.  

I Try a Play and I Am Rubbish

 The drama department and the debate department were actually the exact same thing headed up by the one guy in school passionate about both. In speech competitions they were entwined usually alternating between debate events and individual drama and speech events. I have a natural propensity to overestimate my skills at everything and disliking the things I am actually good at. I saw all of the drama kids winning awards and I thought if those dorks could win I could really mop up. I tried a few drama events and the poor dimwitted judges mistook my brilliant acting and humorous interpretations for mere pedestrian drivel hampered by overacting. Philistines! I thought that my bad showing in competition must have been a one off so I tried out for a school play. The drama and debate teacher did like me and appreciated that I won consistently at debate bringing him some measure of glory but even he couldn't see his was into letting me have an actual part in the play I tried for. He put me into a part that he had rewritten from a speech intended for a single male actor into a part for three consolation prize parts for me and some other bad actors. I appeared as a ghost to deliver the sentence from a balcony on the small stage in the drama classroom in unison with a stinky kid and someone whom I cannot recall. It was painfully bad. The line was us saying that we represented the -Name I Do Not Remembers – of the world and then we offered the lead actress a gift from beyond. The gift was, in point of fact, a Nerf football that was covered in glitter by the props department. I had never read the script or gone to rehearsal and so I am not sure what play I was in. I do remember that I was so ashamed at how lame the part was and how badly I did even that job that I didn't come back to do the two subsequent performances and no one cared or even mentioned it. I didn't act again until college when I was required to for debate.    

Pushing Queers Into Lockers

 In general I like to avoid conflict and not get into fights. This is for two reasons, both of witch are because I am a sissy. I did get into several fights and near fights because of my stupid smart mouth and my penchant for taking a joke just over the line. One fine morning I did almost pick a fight with a jock at our school who was being a real punk to a easy target nerdy kid. I was talking with a couple of friends in the hall before school when a star player from the football team walked by with some of his friends and out of the blue ran up and two arm pushed a kid as hard as he could into a locker. The kid was a super shy and nice kid who was in a few of my drafting classes and was unfortunately the focus of abuse for too many of the more violent boys. There was a rumor or two around school that some guys had pretended to be his friend so that they could videotape him being beat up and abused after they gained his trust. I don't know how much of that was true, and I never saw the tape but the story was repeated often enough to at least seem plausible. On this morning I had seen enough of this jackass and his jackass friends with their stupid braying laughs. I got really pissed when they were telling this poor dude that the reason they had attacked him was that they were, 'pushing queers into lockers'. I was across the hall and wanting to hurt one of those A-holes so I crossed the hall, gaining speed and gave the ring leader a two hand shove into the locker. I didn't typically want to start fights but I had made an exception. The jock was startled as he slammed into the locker and as I have mentioned before the jock and popular kid have so rarely if ever been picked on they have no context in which to frame their response and they are dramatically and hilariously out of their element. He called me by my last name and asked me what the 'F' was my problem. He looked like he was about to cry which was a good sign as far as the fight went. I told him I didn't have a problem I just thought we were pushing queers into lockers. He defended his actions by saying he was just messing around with the other kid and that he didn't mind. The abused kid actually confirmed that he didn't mind, which was sadder to me than the whole thing combined. I told him that I minded and that he was a dick for walking around thinking he was tough and cool. I mentioned he thought he was so bad-a because he was a star player on a team that had won only one game all season. He made the obligatory chest out threats but he heart was not in it and when the bell rang he walked off with a parting threat for me to never do that sort of thing again. I didn't but then again I never saw him run people into lockers again.  

That Says Idiot Mom

 Back in the olden days there was only one grocery store that was full service and it was a town away from where we lived. The grocery store in Santaquin was, and still is, pretty scary. It is dimly lit and poorly laid out. It made you feel like any food purchase there was like taking a low-rent dance of death not unlike the salary-man's Fugu indulgence. One night my mother and I went for a little more extensive shopping but not so extensive as to justify a trip twice as far to the big box warehouse grocery store. My mom was a little tired and not as sharp as she usually was. After we had purchased our milk, bread and cheese and were walking out to the parking lot my mom read something written in the dust on the back of a car. It was oddly spaced and scrawled in an uneven hand. My mom tried to sound it out – 'Eye-do-it' – 'Eye-Die-Ot'. I jumped in to save her from drowning in a pronunciation miasma and told her, “It says idiot mom.” She laughed at the irony of that fact and it has become an inside joke between us and shorthand for when someone is over thinking something trivial.  

You Probably Know Him As Edward

 Sometime in my junior year my mom discovered the most magical clothing shopping experience. Typically I would only judge clothes shopping based on speed and cheapness. I had no personal style and ever since I started paying for my own clothes I was not picky about what covered my body. I wore mainly hand-me-down, gifts, clothes stolen from my brother or mom and thrift store fare. That was until my mom found the Eddie Buaer surplus sale. Every year they would round up all the unsold and unsaleable clothes and truck them to a convention center in Salt Lake City and sell them at low low prices. It was put on no frills with minimal sorting and pricing was sometimes done by class instead of by item. The clothes were not exactly in style, I mean they were remaindered after all and being sold on pallets and in huge crates. There was a lot more corduroy then was in fashion at that exact moment, or ever, truth be told. There were lots of vests and jackets that were pretty cool and only a couple of bucks a piece they started looking really good. My mom got a temp job doing something for the sale that gave her even deeper discounts on the ten peasant collar corduroy shirts that I purchased. I bought boots, a camel hair jacket that was technically too large for me, a lot of slacks and jeans and a vest or two. The next day at school I was all of the sudden viciously over dressed. I was wearing some new boots, some nice slacks, a contraption belt, a cream wool shirt and a vest. Not exactly a subtle transformation. Several people asked if I had some sort of official business to get o that day like a job interview or a funeral or something. I told them I did not but that they were looking at about 18 dollars worth of the finest discount luxury clothes and that they could get in on it too if they wanted to run up to Salt Lake with me when a new shipment landed. Several of my friends did and many of them scored some top quality slightly out of style clothes. We were all dressed in eclectic mixes of clothes for the next couple of years like mental patients or proto-hipsters years before it was cool to look like you were dressed by someone with the fashion sense of a home schooled idiot. I still own several of the shirts, the boots and a vest. Best twenty dollars I ever spent.  

NPS

 I don't know who found the NPS store and told my mom about it but that person was like the Prometheus of dated food. NPS stood for Nice Place to Shop and it was like heaven to us when we were little. The store started in a small warehouse in the big city that was 50 miles north and the first time I remember going there was when I was ten or so and my mom bought a couple of huge cases of expired yogurt and some fruit flavored toothpaste which all but required consuming more than the size of a pea. Funds were pretty tight around our house so yogurt and frivolous dental products were a rare treat. It felt like heaven. Every couple of months we would make the hour long drive up to go shopping at NPS and the burrito scratch-and-dent store around the corner and eat like gluttonous kings of past-due mono-cuisine until the huge box or bag or what ever was on offer when we happened to pop in was gone. This was a curious thing to my mother who had bought the food intending for us to eat it and then she would set up a unstated window of time in which she thought it would be reasonably consumed. This time limit was not based on empirical evidence and was definitely not anything she could articulate, but if the food was devoured ahead of her imaginary schedule she would accuse us of 'snarfing it up' and 'not even tasting it' or that we had 'just mowed through it'. This would put her in a little bit of a snit and she would not want to go back to NPS for a couple of months.

The store was a catch-as-catch-can gumbo of foods just a little too odd to be snapped up by the casual shopper. Many of the sizes were too big or too small. Some of the flavors were one we had never heard of. It was the first place I bought something with mango flavor before that fruit had a toe hold in Utah. It was a huge cylinder of Tang and I thought, 'how bad could it be for a dollar?' Answer: pretty freaking bad. It tasted like someone had spilled Pine-Sol into a regular Tang and then tried to figure out a way to sell the stuff anyway. The upshot was that it was only a dollar and that in our house we never let something as trivial as horrible taste stop us from snarfing down anything that even presented the illusion of candy. When I got to be old enough to drive I introduced my friends to the magical place only to have many of them snootily pick over the bags and boxes and look like someone had wiped a little poop under their noses. There was however, that rare connoisseur that would embrace the madness and dive into the cheap and bizarre world of NPS. The store moved into a much bigger building and started changing in subtle way that made it a little less of an adventure and I have not been there for ten years.  

A Woman's Honor

 I was constantly insulting and insinuating and joking so the accusation that I had said something about someone would most of the time, by sheer chance, be true. That is why it came as such a shock to me that I was a wanted man by the mullet-ed hell raiser that we had not mocked on the bus. Some friend of a friend warned me that he was looking for me and wanted to beat me up for saying that his girlfriend was a slut. Not true. I had, in the course of my schooling, implied that many girls where sluts but she was quiet and nice and not even on my radar as far as targets were concerned. I preferred to make fun of jocks, and jet-set cool kids because they were so unused to being made fun of that they had that pure honest confused look of a kid being made fun of for the first time. I was not really concerned about what this little rage monkey had in mind as far as punishment was concerned because I was about six inches taller than him and I assumed much stronger. What I had not counted on was the element of surprise and found myself in a back hallway ambush of a woman's honor defense. I was walking and talking with a couple of girls, running a little game, when I was struck quiet unexpectedly and quite roughly in the back of the head. I winced and asked the hall in general, “What the 'F”? My attacker had taken a few steps back and was spluttering mad as I turned to see who had his me. Little sir mullet-head was telling me I had better keep my mouth shut about his girl friend and never call her a slut again. I was still a little dazed and I told him I had never said anything about his girlfriend but that he was going to die if he ever touched me again. He told me he was not afraid of me and that if he ever heard that I had been talking about her again he would beat me down. I reiterated that I had never said anything but that if he wanted to dance we could begin pugilistic pas-de-duex right then and there. He decided to just gather his obviously embarrassed girlfriend up and walk away telling me it was my last warning. I went back to what I was doing and never ran in with the Napoleonic douche-bag ever again. I just hope that he parlayed he sucker punch ambush display of territorial pissing into some nice dry humping or some serious making out. Girls love a man who will smack someone unawares in the back of the head for their honor.  

We're On the Bus, Whacha Gonna Do?

 Some days I would ride on the bus with my friend Cole if we didn't have a vehicle and we would usually goof off a little and it was no big deal until one day we enraged a little tough man. We were inexplicably singing a Beastie Boy's deep track from the best hip hop album of all time, “Paul's Boutique”. It was a section of a song called B-Boy Bouillabaisse where the boys rap that each of the other boys are in the house so what where they going to do? Go A.W.O.L.. Give her a listen her on the you tubes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=uKuYFexR_pg#t=641s

We were singing this song but instead of the Beastie Boys names we were singing the names of kids as they got on the bus. Once again let me stress that I have absolutely no recollection of why in the sweet blue hells we were doing this. It was all a pretty mindless and harmless diversion until we accidentally sang the name of a little tough man that was a year older than us. He had not been on the bus to hear that we had sung the names of about a dozen other kids and he was just the next person on the bus. He assumed that we had singled him out for ridicule and while he took his seat calmly at first he must have been festering up some rage. He was extra sensitive to mockery because his family was one of those that gets fore-ordained by most of the kids in the town to be the butt of jokes and the victims of vandalism. It was not anything they had done or anything about them personally it was just the way it was and everyone would always take a poke at them because they were the designated scapegoats. So he was extra sensitive and defensive. He had been sitting for a bit and we had lost interest in our name singing game and were just having a nice chat when like a short fluff mullet-ed ball of hate grabbed us both by the hair and if I remember right tried to slam our faces into the backs of the chairs or into each other. We honestly had no idea what his problem was because we had meant nothing by the song nad he was one of several people who we indicated would cause us to go AWOL because they got on the bus. He asked us what our problem was and threatened us and we told him to clam down and leave us alone. He Left us with a warning and it was not long before I crossed his path again.  

Because I Am A Jerk

 A few weeks after the the elections, the hat trick, the Pearl Jam tickets and the girlfriend changing teams I was sitting around the conference table shooting the bull with the rest of the media class in our time to kill portion of the period. I was doing some kind of funny impromptu skit and getting some laughs when the guy who lost all of the aforementioned stuff and should have known better at this point, called me a queer and said I was not funny. Everyone is a critic. I stayed in character and started asking myself rhetorical questions such as:

“Question, how would I feel if I lost an election to an unfunny queer?”

I answered myself, “I don't know, I never have.”

“Question, how would I feel if I got tricked out of my hat by an unfunny queer and then had to cry and beg to get ti back?”

“Question, what if I lost my Pearl Jam tickets and my girlfriend to an unfunny queer?”

I answered rhetorically, “I would shut shut up.”

No one was laughing and the room had turned a ghastly shade of uncomfortable as everyone waited to see what my critics next move was going to be.

The last line of defense in the smartasses escape plan

 He tried for the enraged run across the room without a plan method of retribution but there was that pesky conference table that I was able to cat-and-mouse around while his poor purple face spat out threats and insults and I just laughed harder and harder. He went left and right and tried to devise a plan to ferret me out from my side of the table for the beating he so clearly wanted to administer. He finally jumped up on the table to try and get to me so I just ran out of the door into the library and went and sat by some underclass women who were studying and laughed at him beaching me back for a head punch party. I shook my head 'no' and then held a book up to shield the innocents from what I was about to do and flipped him off. The class ended and I headed out into the hall. By the next class break he was just giving me the stink eye and not trying to escalate the situation anymore. I don't think we ever talked again after that for any reason.  

Ruby Red Squirt at a Discount

 Another equally hilarious joke was to sit across the hall way from a soda machine that had the inexplicable option of selecting a Ruby Red Squirt. Not many people willingly choose that flavor so we would strike the selection button a a downwards and sideways direction that would make it stick and auto select that beverage as soon as a pair of quarters dropped. That was pretty funny to watch people put in their money and before they could make their selection a unwelcome Ruby Red Squirt would drop and ruin their beverage buying experience. 

Costs the same as the one you wanted with none of the  "you wanted".

What would add to the joke was that sometimes we would put in a nickle to prime the machine. What would happen then was a person would put in their fifty cents and then get their unbidden refreshment and start to complain only to notice that a nickles worth of change just clattered into the return tray. Almost always they would turn to some one either a companion or a passer by and say this stupid machine just automatically gave me a Ruby Red Squirt but it only cost me forty five cents. The ten percent discount was all it took to turn their perceived bad luck into a noteworthy windfall. A couple of time someone would have a dramatically aggressive reaction and slap or shake the machine which always made us laugh and draw attention. One time a kid who was wound a little too tightly asked if we had set him up clearly ready to hand out some head smacks if we had. My friend Cole threw him off the trail by saying he was just laughing because that damn machine just did the exact same thing to him. That made us brothers in soda fiat oppression and made sure we didn't get any unnecessary pummeling. I don't know when or why we stopped doing this prank but I guess it was whenever they discontinued Ruby Red Squirt and no other compulsory soda made anyone quite so mad.   

Coin Glue Attack

 My friends and I used to be pretty bored in school but we would, some days, improve the prospects for entertainment with some fairly harmless pranks. One of my favorites, which I learned from my little brother, was to glue coins to the ground. My brother had glued some coins to our dresser and that was a constant annoyance as I tried to pick them up for years until my industrious thief sister pried them off along with some of the top of the dresser. I would take a standard US quarter, nickle or dime and super-glued it down to the ground across the hall from a nice bench then wait for class to get out. A couple of dozen-teen hundred kids would walk by the glued coin. Several would stop to pick it up, and fail and look around for who had seen them and then try and make a cool saving move like shuffle and nonchalant look. We found this incredible entertainment and would sit and watch until we were late for the next class. We pulled this trick a couple of times and everything went well until this big stoner psychopath tried to pick up the nickle couldn't and looked around to see who was laughing. We were. He lost his mind and closed the distance on us faster then you would expect an adolescent smoker to be able to. He asked us if we thought we were F-wording funny. We didn't claim to be in the face of his overly aggressive onslaught. I was fully ready to puss out and make some sort of excuse about where I needed to go and be but I had a high testosterone friend who decided he was not sorry for mocking the aggressive looking dude. He told him so and that worked in my favor by directing the attention away from me. They engaged in a high school ritual called push-threatening and they pushed and threatened until a teacher, the lunatic chemistry teacher, came and broke them up. I never saw the offended stoner again but I thought the possibility of a beat down was to much in the balance against some cheap laughs.    

Pearl Jam and A Kiss Request

 The night of the concert I picked her up and we drove up to the big city where I had to pretend to be the expert so that I could look cool. It was stressful trying to act off handed about driving down the maze of one way streets and trying to find parking but when I pulled it off she said she was impressed by my skill. I hoped she would be. She was looking really good and She smelled amazing and as we locked up and started walking to the arena she held my hand and arm as she walked with her head on my shoulder. Not a bad sign at all. I cannot remember who opened for Pearl Jam but we were in the seats almost strait in front of the stage so we had a great view if not the dancing freedom a floor seat would afford. Eddie Vedder was in fine form and they were playing all of their good songs pretty much like they were on the album with no stupid musical shenanigans or stupid songs no one has ever heard of. They played for a good long time then went off for a bit to give the crowd a chance to stomp their feet and chant and they returned for an encore. They played “Black” and my date took my hands and stepped in front of me and nuzzled in for a standing-spoon-dance-hug. 

They played one more and then ended with the best B-side in the history of rock - “Yellow Ledbetter”. I couldn't ask for more and I was deeply and truly happy in the way you can only be when there is literally nothing in the world that would make a moment better. They went off and the lights came up and I had that concert deafness that when you are 16 seems like a pretty cool thing. My date was smiling and laughing and giving out some celebratory whoops. We walked back to the car and talked about how awesome that concert was. We agreed to agree that it was the greatest thing since the whole world combined. It was. As we drove home we didn't talk much but she was scooted all the way over on the Ford's front bench seat leaning her head on me and even though it was abundantly obvious that this girl was really interested in me I was spending the whole ride home trying to figure out how to kiss her. What I came up with was shamefully lame. A few exits from her house I told her that I was having a problem with one of my contacts drying out and needed to pull over to re-wet it and put it back in. This was true but not the real reason. I spent a few minutes on the side of the frontage road just off the freeway with the light on in the cab putting my eyes back together while she waited. I mustered the courage and closed the mirror visor turned to her and then told her I would really like to kiss her. She shrugged a little okay sure and leaned in for a kiss. She was really good at it too. She also knew a trick about kissing ears which thing I had never heard tale of but I was intrigued and encouraged her to do that some more for the sake of documenting it properly. I just realized that she could have learned that trick from her creep ex-boyfriend and in that context it now doesn't seem that cool. After about ten minute she gently pushed me away and said she did really need to get home before her parents got worried. I agreed with my words and the rest of me went along for the sake of unity. I dropped her off and she kissed me at the door and I grinned and celebrated back to the car. I turned the heater up all the way and rolled down the windows an sang along loudly to every song I could find on the radio and took twenty minutes driving the five minutes home. Nights don't come much better than that one.  

Free Tickets and A Girl in the Bargain

 I don't know why it happened that our fates were so closely aligned the spring of that year but The kid who was running against me for third vice president, and lost his hat to me, was dating a girl that was on the debate team that seemed like she kind of had a thing for me. We would sit by each other on the bus rides to and from events and we had always been good friends. I thought she was a really smart, cute and funny girl with just that one tiny defect of having a boy friend and especially that kid. Well, their little deal started to unravel at some point but not before the most ridiculous turn of events regarding some tickets to Pearl Jam. Towards the end of their time dating the guy had wanted to take her to the concert but to buy tickets over the phone he needed her credit card. He bought the tickets on her card and gave her the cash. The tickets came but the concert, which was to be held outdoors, was rained out and rescheduled. Between the first and second concerts they had a big fight and broke up leaving her single and because they sent the rescheduled tickets to the card holder she had those too. That is where I came in. The day they broke up we were leaving to a weekend tournament in a city four hours away and we would be spending the night in motels. I, being a good friend, decided to cheer her up with a little flirting, hand holding and a cuddle or two for good measure. She was pretty sad about her break up but I did what I could to help her through. It was a great weekend and on the way back on the bus we sat by each other and she invited me to go to the new Pearl Jam concert with her. With his ticket? At his expense? With his hot ex-girlfriend? To go see one of the all time great bands? Yes, I think I would like to take you up on that offer it sounds rather nice. If I wanted too I could not have planed a more perfectly executed coup. This poor guy just lost the election, then his hat (he got that back), then his girlfriend, then his tickets to Pearl Jam. I was like the accidental Mr. Ripley.    

A Hat Trick

 Things were a little frosty the next couple of weeks around the old media classroom with the victor and vanquished having to share equipment to produce the morning show. After the ten minute show every morning we would just sit around and chit-chat for an hour until it was time for class to end. One day a few weeks after the election when my rival was rejoining the table having given his poopy pants enough time to air out and be civil again I was showing some of the guys a slight of hand trick I had been practicing. I was a fairly basic quarter drop and conceal move that I showed them a couple of times while they tried to guess where it went to. I had repeated the trick the same way about four times to keep it fair when my antagonist wanted in on the game. He was very confident that he could get my trick and was borderline arrogant about how easy it was going to be. I made him a deal I would show him the trick twice and if on the second go he could see what I had done I would give him ten bucks but if he failed I would get his stupid felt fedora. He told me it was going to be the easiest ten bucks he ever earned and I put the ten dollars on the table next to the hat . The other eight or so kids in the class gathered on his side of the table and I did the trick the exact same way I had the previous times and he saw where the coin went and was ready to pounce. Here is a quote from my two semester course on grifting that is perfect for a situation like this one, “When the mark thinks he has a sure thing that is when you switch the game and take his stupid green felt hat.”

Exactly like this stupid hat here. If you think it would look good on you you are wrong. 

 That is what I did on the money run instead of dropping the quarter the same way I had been I never even put it into play and instead stashed it in the hood of the jacket I was wearing. He was so sure of catching me in my illusion that he never even noticed I didn't start with a quarter in my hand. I fake the switch and pretended to mess up and then ask for a redo but he insisted that a deal was a deal and he knew that the quarter was in my left pocket where he saw me put it. It was, of course, not there or anywhere in that neighborhood for that matter. I snatched up his hat and my ten dollars and he said it was not mine until I showed him where the quarter went. While that was not strictly the terms of our agreement and it was bad form on his part to demand to see the solution to a trick I humored him and pulled it out of my hood. He was furious because he was certain that I had never had my hand anywhere near my hood and that I must have tricked him. I told him that I most certainly tricked him that was the point of the game. He complained that it was unfair and that I had to give back his hat but all of the other guys in the class agreed I won unfair and unsquare and the hat was mine. I told him that I had always wanted to burn that stupid hat and now that it was mine I was going to. He sulked off and pouted. He approached me after class and told me that the hat had beena gift from his grandfather and that it was very important to him and he should not have bet it. I was going to say something sassy and keep it but I saw he was pretty torn up about it and I am at heart not a jerk so I gave it back when no one could see that I was doing something nice.   

Getting Elected

 The election was held on a Friday and I spent the day getting out the vote and then encouraging people to commit fraud for the vote. I was very nervous because it was obviously a popularity contest and what if I lost? Couldn't face it. They didn't tell any of us who won because they wanted to publicly humiliate us at an elections results dance where everyone could see you when you lost. I went to the dance with my friends and my brother and his friends and we had our regular goofy time at the dance doing funny role playing dances like the lawn mower, the washer woman, the snake killers, and others equally funny dances. In between awesomely stupid dances with the guys I was slow dancing with all of the cute girls which was going well except for this one time when I asked a girl to dance to 'One' by U2 it starts out all slow-songy and then ambushes you with a totally unreasonably paced part which is also much loader. It makes you either abort the slow-circle-hug dance or increase the pace to a ridiculous rate that makes you look a little stupid.

 I was dancing with the one Asian girl at our school when the beat changed and I tried to legitimately take the tempo up realized my mistake and then tried to play it off like I was just joking the whole time and she laughed so I was off the hook. The entire night my stomach was tight and I felt like I was floating outside of my body except for the mouth part which was really dry. At the end of the dance they read the results and started with secretary which was won by the lesser of two evils. Then it was third vice-president with no build up my name was read and a couple of people weakly woo-wooed and some of my friends gave me a high five or two. The rest of the names were read and it was all of the guys I wanted so I was happy for that. I looked around to find the kid I had beat to give him a conciliatory 'attaboy' but he was over getting a face to face hug from his best friend that looked like it might turn romantic at any moment so I just headed out to my car in what was a mighty anticlimax for all of the stress it caused me. I have always hated loosing more than I liked winning.     

2%ers

 I may need to put my conflict with the vice principal into context. I did not hate the guy he was just a guy who was trying too hard to be one of the guys, a skill you either have or do not, and when his every man’s approach didn't work he would flip over into a draconian authoritarian. This would happen a couple of times a day. His favorite metaphor for what types of kids that ruined it for everyone was lifted from a comment made by the American Motorcyclist Association that only 1% of bikers were outlaws. He adapted that for the kids at our high school and doubled it to be the 2%. He would refer to the 2%ers every chance he got, in speeches and over the PA or anytime he had a captive audience. Knowing that he thought we were twice as saturated with real criminals than the American biker gang culture made me happy. Many of the kids at the school began referring to themselves as 2%ers and a friend of mine loved to use it as justification and explanation for his bad behavior.

An example based on actual events:

The Vice Principal: “Who stole the responsibility banner from the hall?”

My friend: “I bet it was one of those 2%ers!”

Another example:

The Vice Principal: “Why did you steal the responsibility banner from the hall?”

My friend: “I can't help it, I am a 2%er what do you expect?”

I loved that he assumed that all high school kids were a little dim and we all just needed to be tricked into good behavior with a little shame and a little “buy in”. Every time we came into conflict over matters large or small I liked to tweak him a little about his simplistic views about child psychology and the problem child. I bet he really loved me for doing that and helping him discover the flaws in his thinking.   

Skitter

 The next phase of our election campaign was to produce a skit for an assembly which would showcase our talents. Once again we were required to write a script, some banal, vanilla, insipid, and inoffensive tripe, and have it vetted before our performance. I turned in a skit had it edited and sent back for a re-write and then resubmitted and approved. We did use that version as a very general outline of what my friends and I actually did. Some of the unscripted jokes were purely physical and therefore legitimately unscripted. To come onto the stage for my skit intro I walked out in a way that clearly mocked the drill team – back strait, chest out, marching while slapping my thighs. It got the ball rolling on what many people was hoping was going to be a more irreverent skit than the others had been. They were not disappointed. I told them I was the candidate who warned them against going to porn and a friend of mine walked onto stage handing out candy from a bucket in a manner very similar to that of our vice principle during class breaks. He even wore a suit and his hair style would even seem to evoke the man himself. We didn't name him as such. When he came by he realized that he needed to sneeze and pulled out a pillowcase sized handkerchief with “Vote For Nate” written on it. I joked off script that he was doing an awesome job tricking the students into liking him by handing out candy and that our brainwashing plan was working to perfection. We did some other campy things and jokes but the meat of it was already passed with that little sequence of jokes. As I was exiting stage right there was my good friend the vice principle who seemed to have something on his mind. I gave walking right passed him a shot pretending I didn't know he was there for me. He grabbed me by the forearm and walked with me down the hall to his office with a firm grip and a sense of purpose in his quick pace. He sat me in his office obviously all a fluster while he tried to get a coherent reprimand together as we both waited for the real principle to join us. The real principle was a pretty mellow dude who seemed to like me personally much more than my captor. The principle said that he was concerned that we went off script and mocked a school official because I was running for a position of great influence and they didn't want to have to constantly deal with stuff like this. I agreed but I pointed out that I had never mentioned the vice principle by name and that I was joking in general about using subliminal messages and candy to buy loyalty and to get votes. I said the joke was not meant to target anyone in particular but rather to be a funny explicit statement of what would normally be a covert tactic. I could see that the vice principal, quite correctly, was skeptical of my explanation and he asked that I be disqualified from the election. The principal said he thought I had meant no ham by the jokes and that I would be allowed to continue. That was quite generous of him but ultimately a poor choice as this by no means was going to be our last conversation on the topic of content control.   

Going to Porn

 Besides making posters and generally speech making and assembly skits the candidates for third vice president had to produce a mornings worth of announcements as kind of an audition for the job. I had been on quite a few times so I had some great ideas for selling my brand but I had some technical difficulties in that the reigning third vice and his protege were unwilling to work the knobs and my friends in the media class had spent all of there time exploring the different colors of the unsupervised wastrel rainbow. They had started out as a little dim to begin with but a few months of doing exactly nothing for the class period but sitting in the studio on playing cards had for some unfathomable reason failed to educate them properly. We were not high and dry because we knew how to turn on the camera and initiate the telecast. What we would not have was green screen special effects and title animation. I was reduced to using just the pure white hot power of my charisma and charm and try and overcome the tragic lack of a animated star field in the background. It was almost time for prom at my school and some hilarious vandals had changed a few of the letters in the signs to make an immature joke. Contrary to popular belief it was not me, I wished it had been - but it was not. They switched the “O” and the “R” and ripped a leg off of the “'M” so that the innocent invitation to prom now seemed to invite the school to porn instead. I decided to use this as my lead and I started the telecast by telling everyone good morning and then informing the school that the signs that read porn were, in fact, advertisements for prom. I said it was okay if they had already bought tickets expecting something else all they needed to do was buy a second ticket and get a date. It was not on my prepared and vetted speech but I could tell from the laughter coming from the library outside of the studio that it was a hit and that got me rolling. I laid down the rest of the schools morning business with the offhanded confidence of someone who had been here before and had nothing to prove. The prom not porn public service joke was not universally appreciated. Many teacher said told me it was the first time they had ever laughed at a morning announcement joke while others were deeply offended for some reason. The vice principle whom I had a very antagonistic relationship with was one of those who were not impressed. He called me into his office and the kid I was running against was in their already when I arrived. They had both worked themselves into a bit of a tizzy by the time I sat down and they were mad because I had not stuck to the approved notes and that I had made a joke about porn. The vice principle got it into his little piggy mind that I had altered the signs for the sake of the joke. Feeling that this little meeting was below my dignity I started subtly mocking them both. I cleared up that I had not altered the signs and I suggested that I went off script to clarify what the signs meant because I thought there were kids who would be genuinely confused. I used my tricky debate words to twist what they were saying and to keep myself just out of the range of the hammer of banishment and disqualification while pretending I was agreeing with them. They knew what I was doing but couldn't figure out a way to hold my feet to the fire and so let me off with a warning, which I disregarded two days later when I went off script for my assembly skit.  

Running for Office

 I had been on the morning closed circuit television announcements in a technical and usurping capacity for most of my junior year and I liked the attention. There was a kid who was in the media class as well that wanted to be in charge, a position that was granted to the person elected to be the student body vice president, the third vice president to be exact. He didn't like me much and had told me that if he was elected he would make sure I never got to be on the announcements again. Well, then my path was clear. I decided to run for office but I did have that one little problem that I very rarely went to school on time or for a full day and that would make me ineligible for school activities and to hold public office. I had to hustle to make up all of the missed days with some detention and some deals and the day we needed to register for the race I was eligible by the thinnest of margins. When I had signed up for the race I went into the media classroom and studio sat down and asked my rival what he thought about the campaign. He was optimistic because he was the only one in the race. I asked him if he was still planning on kicking me out when he ran and he said I could still be in the media class but I wouldn't be able to be on the show. He said he had plans for how he was going to run things and he didn't think I was right for the new style. I told him I thought I heard someone else was running for office and what would he do if they won instead of him. He said he didn't think that was true but that the current third vice president and tech guru with the green screen and real time tittle machine had endorsed him so he thought he would probably still win. I didn't tell him that I was the one running against him for office but his attitude made me not just want to win but to beat him personally. That was not really my personality at all but for this one time I was going to make an exception.     

More Debate

 After the first attempt at debate where I went in blind and confused I figured out what to do and when we got our next topic I wrote my own case. Cases would be more like it because you have to write an affirmative and negative case for each topic. With my newly minted brief in hand I went into my second debate with much more confidence. I knew all of the procedures and the slang so there would be no more having to ask the judges what exactly was supposed to say when I was asked something. During a debate competition there are also what are called speech events which include impromptu, extemporaneous and prepared speech competitions that run alternately with debate rounds so we were encouraged to try our hand at some of those at well. My natural hubris whispered in my ear that I would me amazing at any and all speech events. My hubris thought that was pretty funny after I crashed and burned. As it happens I was much better at debate, getting second place at my second tournament and in this one they only had the top one person get first place unlike the novice tournament where everyone won something. After the tournament they hand back all of your judges notes that they wrote during you presentations. I quickly discarded the positive reviews because those people were obviously already pretty smart and didn't need my scrutiny. The negative notes were almost always were in reference to me thinking I was funnier than I was and thinking I was smarter than I was. I got my feel-bads deeply hurt. I thought I was rolling there with some pretty funny jokes and the whole time I was crashing into the pits of comedy hell being consumed by my own lame antics that were evidently flammable for the sake of this now very convoluted sentence and metaphor. I went through all of the stages of grief, denial ( they wouldn't know funny if it jumped out of a drawer and bit them), anger ( I hope they get bit by vicious snakes somewhere in their home), bargaining ( how much for that sack of vipers you have there, my good man?), depression ( oh, great, they are non-venomous snakes, okay, figures, with my luck.) and acceptance ( I guess I will just have to hope they can feel how much I hate them.). I didn't take their advice and tone down my style so for the next ten tournaments I never did better than third in any speech event while I consistently got first or second in debate.  

I Don't Take The ASVAB

 A few weeks after the Steve Miller band show ended better than I expected all of the juniors at our school were supposed to take the ASVAB test. The ASVAB is a military aptitude test which the government uses to find out which kids would be best at killing people, helping get supplies to a person needing to kill someone, or getting someone else to kill someone. My problem was that I was late that morning and I had also forgotten that the test was that day. Additionally, I was not remotely interested in plunging into the MIS unless they offered me a free trip to a leadership camp with girls, which they actually got around to doing a little later. I turned up just in time to be told that I was being locked out of the test with none other than the girl that I had a crush on since eigth grade. We were told to go away and so we did. We decided to go on a drive in my car up the canyon, over the top and down the other side on a road called the Nebo loop. It was late fall and it was beautiful. She sat on the bench seat with me closer than the outside seat but not cuddly close and I was wondering what a spacing like that might indicate. We talked about school and my sister who had been dating her brother when she ran away and shaved her head. We talked about how she had recently broken up with her boyfriend, a topic I was most interested in. As we drove I started to weigh the idea of making a move with this girl and maybe, just maybe, finally getting with the girl of my dreams. I don't know if it was wishful thinking or if it was actually happening but she seemed to be leaning in closer to me and laughing a bit more than usual at what I was saying. I was terrified. I wanted so badly to give a hand hold, or a cuddle, or even -should I dare – a kiss. I agonized and re-agonized because I could not bear the thought of rejection if I was misreading the situation. I tried to think of a smooth way to put it out there without risking outright rejection but she was the kind of girl who would only respect boldness, or so I thought. We had been driving for an hour when I stopped the car to pretend to look at some rocks that I thought might be good to climb. When I was done pretending some other reason to have stopped the car I got back in and we talked in the parked car for a bit while I tried to work up the courage to bust my move. She just seemed right on the borderline of maybe being into it and maybe not and I couldn't force myself to take the chance. I still deeply regret not even trying, who knows right, who knows? I guess I could just ask her now that we are both married and adults with nothing on the line what would have happened that fall day. But I am honestly still nervous that the answer might have been that she was not at all interested or even worse – that she had been. Maybe I will never know and maybe that is a good thing. She finally told me that she needed to be home by three to go to work and it would take about that much time to get back so I cranked up the car and drove out the bottom of the canyon in a town 20 miles from our high school and we talked all the way home. When we got to her house she gave me a hug, got out and said she had a really good time and that we should hang out more. We didn't, we stayed friends but I never came that close to even thinking about the possibility of making a move. She got a new boyfriend and I got a new girlfriend and the stars never aligned for us to be alone and single again. I may have done better on the military test and had less regrets about that.  

Finding the Groove

 We had been enduring the most tedious display of jam band audience abuse from the Steve Miller band for about an hour and a half. We heard solos from every member of the band and I still had not heard a song that I recognized. I was starting to feel like this may have been a waste of an evening. I was hanging out with my date, the two sober members of our group, still trying to make sure the physical contact and distance was more cordial than romantic when the band left the stage without playing a single song I had ever heard. Boo. The hillside started drunkenly cheering and chanting the band name while they were off having a pee and a beverage. I honestly didn't care if they came back out I was not really digging on the rambling musical masturbation of the dude on the steel guitar. When they came back out though the crowd knew that by the process of elimination they would have to play the four songs everyone came to see. They tuned up a little and then went into a pretty good version of “The Joker”. Whaaa-Whuuu. That I could groove on and I started having some more fun doing what passes for a concert dance at a seventies band concert. Then they played “Take the Money and Run”, followed by “Jet Airliner”. Everyone was on their feet jamming out and loving it. It occurred to me that if this band wanted a captive audience for their jamming had to hold us hostage with the promise of their four good songs or people would just leave during the jam part. The finally was a longish rendition of “Fly Like an Eagle” which I have mentioned before I mush have absorbed enough second hand drugs to find really deep an insightful. By the end of the show I was actually really enjoying it and I was glad I came. I would never go back but one time is a good amount of times to do something like that. I never went out with my date again but we did hang out with mutual friends a couple of times and we ran into each other again as adults and she is doing really well.   

I Go To Watch Steve Miller Band Under False Pretense

 A girl that I had a crush on for a very long time was in a history class with me and always sat next to me so we could chat while we waited for the teacher to stop talking so we could get to work. The teacher was a good guy and a veteran teacher who had a really intense speech impediment that made it impossible to understand half of what he said. He ignored his handicap and insisted on lecturing every day for about 30 minutes. It was an absolute waste of time but at the end of it he would hand out notes that we could read in ten minutes and figure out what he had been talking about. In the meantime I was always trying to work an angle to finally get this girl to take a romantic interest in me. One day, quite unexpectedly she asked me out on a date. Specifically, she asked me if I had ever heard of the Steve Miller Band. I had not, but I said yes. She asked if I liked them and I said I guessed so. Then she asked if I wanted to go to a concert with her. I was elated and assumed she had cracked and wanted to move our relationship on past the barren valley for the friend zone and then on into the dating scene. I was super excited and got home showered, dressed up super pretty and put on some of my dad's aftershave for the finishing touch. When she picked me up at the time she had said there was something very curious, a guy who looked about 20 was driving and she was in the front seat with him and I sat in the back. He introduced himself and I did likewise and that is when I realized I was not going on a date with my longtime crush. We stopped by another girls house and she sat in the back with me and now I got the picture I was a fill-in date for her shy friend who was in need of a date of her own. Dang. The girl was sweet and I liked her okay it was just not what I had wanted to believe was happening. We had to stop and buy a ticket for me because I was a late addition and I offered to pay for it but the girl I had been misled into going on a date with insisted. Now I was obligated and I felt like I had been hoodwinked and was being used to fill up a quota. We drove up to the venue and the whole time my date, who I knew, but not well, was closing the distance to more of a cuddle range than a cordial range. I was being nice but I wanted to give off the 'lets be friends and that is all' vibe. When we got to the hill that we were going to sit on while the band played we met up with about 20 other people who I didn't know at all. They all came prepared to enjoy some mediocre rock with some mind-altering chemicals. There was pot, beer and wine on offer but of the group only my date and I declined. The opener played while it was still light out and the sound was terrible so I was not sad to see them go. My date and I were talking and she was actually pretty cool but I was still not really interested in making this thing a permanent arrangement. The girl I was interested in was indulging in some recreational drugs and doing quite a bit of making out with some other dude for someone I had assumed was asking me out on a date a few hours earlier. My date and I got a little contact high, got a little sway dance going on and by the time the band played the 'Time Keeps on Slipping' song as their finale I was just high enough to think the words were pretty profound. They are not. 

Combining Cowardice and Douchebaggery

 I considered how to write this post to put me, if not in a positive light, at least in one that made me look slightly less like a total butt hole. I have decided that there is no way to accomplish this with any reasonable facsimile of veracity and so I resign myself to telling it like it was and hoping time has healed all wounds. I have told you about my ongoing struggle to find a way to break things off with the girl I was not really that interested in and what tipped the scales was when I thought I may have found a viable replacement. That and my friends had starting making fun of me for going out with her even going so far as to make up pun based variations on her surname that they took pains to repeat just two times; often and more often. When I thought I might have a shot at a girl I liked better that may have been more impressive to my friends I did the honorable thing and explained the situation in a calm and mature manner and did my best not to hurt her feelings. Not really, but that is definitely what I should have done but I am a coward and a jerk and so when I wanted out I did that most turdish of breakups and just stopped calling her and not returning her calls. I timed this to happen over Thanksgiving break so I would have a solid week for her to hopefully get the hint and not see me at school and make it awkward for me. After about five days her best friend managed to get me on the phone under false pretenses and chewed me out and I didn't even argue because I knew she was right but I was also committed to ending this one way or another so I didn't relent. After six weeks it was becoming apparent that what I thought was a sure thing with this other girl was more like a misunderstanding and I was left without either, which served me right. What I did next was the lowest of the low. When I got lonely for a little female companionship I called up my recently ex-ed girlfriend, tried to act like nothing had happened and asked if she wanted to go out. Thankfully, I was rebuffed by the ex who had enough dignity to tell me to get bent. She even laughed at me and asked me if I was serious. That, I know, is generally a rhetorical question but she sounded like she wanted to know so I told her I was serious and she laughed again told me I was an a-hole and hung up. I sat in our laundry room with the corded kid's phone resting against my head and waited for the dead line tone to come on. I felt sorry for myself because that is just how narcissistic I was. I hung up the phone and went for a little poopy pants pity party game of one-on-none at the church until they kicked me out. I didn't really see my ex much anymore because we ran in different circles. The next time I talked to her was about a year later when I was with a new girlfriend and my sister who was down for a visit and we stopped by a greasy spoon restaurant where she happened to be working the window. She knew my sister from work, she had been in dance with my current girlfriend and she knew me from when I was a massive jerk to her. She was super nice and said hi to us all and told us she had some great news – she was engaged to be married when she graduated and she showed us the ring which was too big for her finger because it had not yet been fitted. We all told her congratulations and we drove off with our shakes. When we were back on the rode my sister and girlfriend both laughed at me and made fun of me for ever dating that girl and I said I thought she was nice and I regretted nothing. That was a lie to save face, I regretted being such a tool and I was glad she was with someone who appreciated her.  

I Steal Gas

 In the olden days when you needed gas you would get gas and then pay for it after you had it in the tank. It was the honor system and it mostly worked except for the one major flaw in the system, you could just drive off. One night when I was taking the girlfriend I still had not found a way to break up with yet out to the movies I went and filled up the tank of my sporty two-door 1978 Ford Fairmont and then pulled up to the store to go in and pay and get some gum. I went in, used the bath room got a pack of gum, saw the time and realized I was almost late and there was a line so I put the gum back headed back out to the car and drove off to make the curtain in time. It is a good thing I rushed too because who would want to miss every horrifyingly badly acted second of a Claude Van Dam movie? When I dropped my girlfriend off I went to get a late night snack on my way home and when I went to pay I noticed I had way more money than I should have based on the amount I spent on the movie and gas. That is when it dawned on me that I had never paid for my gas and I got very worried. I imagined that after I drove off the old lady running the till at the gas station was on the phone to the cops giving them my plat number and description and they were now on the lookout for a gas stealer that fit my description. I got very nervous because all I could say was that I forgot to pay, which was technically true, but the most obvious lie in the history of police work. I drove home on the back roads and spent a fitful night thinking about what kind of consequences I might face when I was arrested. I am too pretty for prison. The next morning I rode my bike back to the gas station just in case they were looking for the car. I went inside and looked at the list of people they kept on the register that were wanted for driving off. I was not on it and neither was my car. I was a little relived but then I had to decide to just walk away or do the right thing and pay. I actually walked out and had gotten on my bike ready to complete the theft and had a twinge of what may have been guilt or it could have a little fear that I was just not on the list yet and I was still under the gun. Either way I went back in and told them that I accidentally drove off without paying. The girl that was at the till was a bit of an idiot and was not aware of how to call up what I had not paid and said that if I paid her then her till would be off and so I should just go. Fair enough. It was not long after that all of the gas stations switched to prepay making it lots harder to steal gas.  

We Date a Couple That is Breaking Up

 After we arts-and-crafted our way into a date it turned out that none but your truly could drive so I was required to do so. The couple we were doubling with were some friends of my somewhat girlfriend who I did not know. They were breaking up with each other and this was going to be their last date together so they spent the night in the back seat of my car variously entwined and sobbing. Then we were at a horrible Mexican restaurant where they were variously sobbing, entwined and consuming some of the worst cheese enchiladas ever devised by the mind of man. It was tedious in the beginning and only got worse as the evening wore on. We went to the dance proper and got our couple and group pictures taken and then we hung around sitting next to our sobbingly entwined comrades until enough time had passed to load up and go find something else to do. My date asked to to drive somewhere secluded for a little -wink wink- slap and tickle. That was an idea I could get behind but I had forgotten about our lacrimonious baggage. We drove out to a jetty that people called a levee which was at the foot a hill called west mountain which, in turn, was at a boat dock called Lincoln beach. You would have to cast the old beach definition net really, really wide for anything in the vicinity to be called a beach. Yet there we were, and the geography was not the only thing that was not as it should be. We were sitting in a dark car on a dark road looking out at the lake waiting for the steel mill across the way to make its nightly dump of slag into cooling pond which would make that side of the lake glow a magical orange-red against the plumes of steam that would billow up, I mean, if that is not a magical recipe for teenage romance then check your pulse. Romance, sadly, was not in the air so much as the weeping and wailing of the damned loves in the backed seat of my car. I don't know if I ever knew why two obviously passionate and emotional loves were forced to separate. Was it a unforeseen move, a overbearing parent, pregnancy , or another lover? I didn't and don't want to know I just wanted for them to shut up with all waterworks and drama. We tried to make out for a bit but it is really to get the mood right when there is a snippet or blurb of teenage histrionics intermittently intruding. It bored so deep into my psyche that it placed a white hot poker right on that little piece of brain which is responsible for liking people and generally being happy and burnt it right up. I counted the minutes until we could go home, but what was this? A twist! The lovers didn't want to go home to face their fate and be separated and they begged to stay out for as long as possible. Nope. I told them some story about how I would be murdered and then beaten if I was late getting home and they asked that I drop them off together at neither of their houses. That I could do just to get them out of ear shot. Them gone I took my date to her house and then went hoe and stayed up all night talking ot my brother’s friend about his mold allergies which sounds boring but in contrast to the insipid tumults of adolescent emotions that I had to endure for five hours it was riveting. I never saw our star crossed loved again.