In which Facebook ruins my teenage crushes

I realized the other day that I know the current whereabouts of the majority of the guys I've ever dated or had a serious crush on.

There's something a little underwhelming about the reality of this.

There was that point, sometime after leaving my home town, where, in the midst of a big city where I knew such a minuscule fraction of its inhabitants, I would wonder "whatever happened to so and so" and if I would ever run into them on a random street corner again.

(Of course, the only one that this ever happened with was The Worst Boyfriend Ever.)

Then Facebook happened, and they all stopped being mysteries.

This really hit me when, one random recent Saturday morning, I received an email informing me that Russ had added me as a friend on Facebook.

Russ' and I's history can be summed up quite simply. I'd met him a few times. We never had much of a conversation, but he made it clear whenever we met that he thought I was hot. I had recently broke up with a long-term boyfriend, so I called him. We made out on a handful of occasions, and maybe went out on a date or two. He got annoyed when he discovered that my "I'm-not-looking-for-a-relationship" did not mean "I'm-looking-for-no-strings-attached-sex", and we quickly faded out, relegated to obligatory nods if we ran into each other to make it clear there were no hard feelings. I honestly never knew much beyond what movies he liked.

Yet, 10 years later, he adds me on Facebook. I'd noticed him on it before, but never saw much of a point of contacting him. What, exactly, would we have to say? Remember that time we made out during Sleepy Hollow? Or the one time we had coffee? Still, out of sheer curiosity, I accepted, wondering his motivations-- of which there seemed to be none. I said hi. He said hi. That was pretty much it.

Now, as it it wasn't odd enough that I know what my high school boyfriends are doing with their lives, I even know what the guy I made out with in college is doing on Friday night (apparently having a BBQ, if you were wondering).

Crushes who nothing ever actually happened with are even more surreal. It seems that when things never really developed the way you'd hoped with a certain person, or when your relationship with them never had a messy end point, you always wonder if they were really that special. And what Facebook has shown me is that, while they may vary on where they end up in life, they are all just so tortuously real.

I remember when I received notification that the guy I fiercely crushed on for the entirety of my 13th year had added me. He was the older boy who teased me mercilessly in the way that only heartbreaking 17 year old boys can, by throwing me into the lake with my clothes on and tango dancing with me in the middle of the street. He had brown hair that always flopped into his blue eyes. He was just so achingly dreamy. I eagerly clicked on his profile, to see what had become of him, more than ten years later. And while he hadn't necessarily changed... he was just so painfully average. Sure, he wasn't ugly, he seemed to be happy and he didn't communicate solely in text speak... but he just wasn't as magically special as I recalled. And he couldn't help but lose a little of that shine in my memories.

Sure, there are advantages to all of this. I'm not gonna lie and say I didn't feel a tinge of smugness when I discovered the lying guy who crushed my heart at 16 gained about 100 pounds. I've also gotten back in touch with many a lost friend, including exes or ex-crushes who are genuinely good people I'm happy to see. Still, I can't help but wonder if there was something to be said about certain people remaining a bit of a mystery.

Partying like it's 1999

As mentioned, oh, about two posts below, this weekend involved the latest attempt to convince me I am an adult: my 10 year high school reunion.

Truth be told, it was really quite a low-key affair, nowhere near deserving the significance it has accrued in pop culture and people's nightmares. Only about a third of my small town grad class made it out to any of the events, due to a silly bout of high school drama about the lack of planning of a formal event, along with those "real life" responsibilities that keep us from venturing back home at a moment's notice. Sunday afternoon was the "formal" reunion, really just a picnic in the park with little ones running about in all their resplendent cuteness. Saturday night, however, I declared "pretend you are 18 again night", and hosted a party at my parents' house, much like I was known to do when I was actually 18.

Of course, one can't have a grad reunion party without at least a few random observations, highlights, and not-so-highlights, can they?

• Us late 20-ers can't drink nearly as prolifically as we used to. My mom actually made fun of the number of full cans of beer and half drunk bottle of vodka remaining. I personally had to call it quits post-Jager shots, despite the calls to bust out the tequila.
• The guy who used to be skinny and wear thick glasses who has now had laser eye surgery and has buffened up will find an excuse to take off his shirt after a few drinks, no matter how ridiculous.
• The guy who dumped me in Grade 11 and the next month made out with my friend while we were all sleeping on the same mattress felt the need to announce very loudly, on numerous occasions, that we had slept together. So much for my discretion over a decade ago. He also told me approximately six times that he was sooooo proud of me while tightly hugging me.
• When mentioning that my boyfriend could not make it out due to having to finish off his Masters thesis, several people declared him to be but a fiction, and referred to his name in air quotes for the rest of the night.
• In a perhaps less than sober attempt to prove his existence, I then called the Duke at 1am and passed around the phone to random people to talk to him.
• I will admit to being more flattered than I should after overheard a guy, in his rankings of the hotness of the girls of the party, declare me the winner. Even though I disagree with the idea of ranking hotness in principle. It just takes a little flattery to make a hypocrite out of me.
• It is a little funny to hear that the meanest of all the mean girls, who was known to threaten to beat up smaller girls at random, yours truly included (and very out of the blue, I may add), had declared that she would never come to our high school reunion, stating "Why would I want to see those assholes again?" Wait, we're the assholes?
• Someone actually pulled out my parents' copy of my Masters thesis at 4am, and started drunkenly reading it aloud, while inserting random words like "butterflies" and "sex" into it.
• Only one person asked me when I was getting married.
• Sublime makes me happy. However, a lot of the other music on the kitschy 90s hits station I put on to reminisce was a little weaker-- hello, C&C Music Factory.
• It is funny to realize you missed someone more than expected. It is also funny how seamlessly some interactions can flow, despite all the time and space in between.

The space of ten years

Nostalgia is a little more prescriptive at some times than others.

It is a downright predictable feeling over the past week, what with the emails zipping about regarding the ten year high school reunion occurring in a mere two and a half weeks. It certainly doesn't help that a few of the more adolescent traits have returned with this reminder, with the with-children arguing with the without-children about venues and alcohol consumption, sprinkled with a good sized dose of sarcasm and small seeds of resentment that have somehow remained over the past decade.

My flight is booked. I've decided to avoid asserting the seemingly ubiquitous distaste for everything associated with high school, and rather uncooly admit that I actually didn't mind high school so much. I've also firmly decided to avoid the social comparison pre-requisite that is seemingly petrifying others. Why should the fact that I am unmarried and still renting matter any more to me on this particular day?

But, yes, emails from names you have not seen in print for a long while certainly do get you thinking. It was under this reminiscence that I pulled out an overstuffed photo album from the back of my closet, planning to flip through as I made dinner, thinking "I can't believe it's already been ten years."

This is the photo album, really, containing the most detailed picture of my late adolescence except for perhaps the handscrawled diaries hiding in a box in my parents' attic. It spans from my surprise 16th birthday party all the wall to just past my going away party, at 19, when I left my small hometown to move to the big city.

I flip through the pages, and there I am.

There's me with blonde hair, orange hair, red hair, brown hair.

There's me smiling, back against the heater in my high school.

There's me, arm in the air, proudly brandishing a giant bottle of Baby Duck sparking wine.

There's me, my arms around my best friends on my parent's reclining couch.

There's me, sitting on a boy's lap.

There's me, rushing into the icy water for a New Years Polar Bear swim.

There's me, dancing.

The thing that can't help but notice is just how young I truly am. My eyes look so much bigger, my posture more awkward, my arms slight, my clothing just that little bit askew. Occasionally, there is a photo of me stretching, unaware as my flat torso peaks out, so much less conscious of my body. I am so much littler than I remember. I can't believe this young girl thought she was so very grown up, was having sex, was behind the wheel of a car.

It's a little shocking, to feel like those memories were just yesterday, then to see the physical realities of how long ago they really were. It is certainly provided a quick jolt reminding me that I am, in fact, really an adult.

I can't believe it's only been ten years.

Because I was feeling self-centred today...

... I present to you some random facts about me.

I have an issue with turning down free food. I feel as though I am obliged to eat it by virtue of its lack of cost to me. I also try to pretend that this lack of cost overrides its caloric value, hence the reason I would never chow down on mini-pepperonis in my regular life, but will eat an entire bag when placed on a plate in front of me with toothpicks. This also that while I only drink one cup of coffee a day when I have to buy it, I always have a cup on the go in my workplace with its free coffee.

When I was in high school, I was known for my ever-changing hair colour- bleached blonde, jet black, orange, fire engine red. People often don't recognize me anymore when I return home with my real hair colour-- boring old dark brown. Even though I haven't coloured my hair in years, I still feel an urge whenever I walk by the cheap hair dye in the drug store. I liked being a fake red head.

I may one day murder a person for the most banal of offences. I am the type to forgive tremendous interpersonal slights, but remain irritated about the smallest rude acts. I blame it on growing up in a small town, where someone would chase you for five blocks to return the dollar that you dropped. I am affected at way too deep a level by the incourtesies of the city-- people slamming the door in your face, almost hitting you in their car, not giving up their seats for elderly women, walking in to you. A few days ago, a man in the train station ran head on into me, full tilt (and I'm a pretty small lady), then dashed off without even stopping to check on me or apologize. Fifteen minutes later, I arrived home, and the Duke asked me how I was doing. I said "I'm going to start killing bitches." Oddly enough, I can still be at the same party as people who have betrayed me in far more substantial manner, like the girl who told my boyfriend how much sex they would have had had they ever dated... I need to start getting my temper's priorities straight.

I can usually tell when something I write is going to get little response within the first hour after I post it. I then have to sit on my hands for the next several hours after that to make sure I do not impulsively delete it, deeming it no good because it isn't eliciting a response. This is the danger of having a brief stint of comment popularity. When no one read me, I judged my writing on its own merits. I'm working on getting back to that.

I sleep talk like a mofo. Usually, it is indiscriminant mumbles. However, there have been occasions when my unconscious has betrayed me. For instance, after a party, I was sharing a bed with a friend. Unknown to that friend, I had a mad crush on her ex-boyfriend. Well... at least it was unknown to her until I called out his name in my sleep.

I have seen 49 of the artists on my iPod in concert, the majority of them in the past three years. I am a bit of a concert whore. As cliched as it may be, Radiohead still stands out as the ultimate-- even though I was in the midst of a torrential downfall as I sang along to Karma Police.

My arachniphobia is totally illogical. I know it is not out of the ordinary to be afraid of spiders, but I have no problem at all with most bugs. In fact, once I was checking out this weird bug with a friend, and it was only when my face was inches away that I noticed its extra pair of legs and started to panic.

I know all the lyrics to Ain't No Fun by Snoop Dogg and co, aka. the foulest song on the planet. I'm not even comfortable quoting it here. If you are lucky enough to get me drunk, I will most likely rap it to you. It is one hell of a show.

When I was 12, all my friend were drooling over Eddie Furlong and Jonathan Brandis, while I had a crush on Charlie Sheen. Even at that age, I knew this was wrong, so I told no one. Now he creeps the hell out of me.

For a brief time this year, I was the #5 ranked contestant, and one point away from 1st place, in the CBC Hockey Pool, which has over 50 thousand contesants. I figure this scores me bragging rights for life.

I make the Duke feel my abs almost every day after I work out. I pretend he is impressed each time, but, really, I think it bores him.

I could survive off dill pickles, salt water taffy, whipped cream and cheese if I had the choice. I would probably not want to make the Duke feel my abs if I ever actually did this, though.

I get really uncomfortable when people fall asleep on public transit beside me. I also feel strangely vulnerable falling asleep in public places, like on airplanes. The idea of strangers watching me sleep is really bothersome.

I was a vegetarian from around the age of 10 through 20. I drove meat eaters crazy when they tried to feed me, as I was a vegetarian who despised multiple vegetable, including onions, peppers, mushrooms, olives, broccoli and cauliflower. I even went through a brief period where I disliked lettuce. I know that makes no sense.

I don't have a birthmark. My mom claims that my dimple, located near the top of my left cheek, is my birthmark. This dimple also guarantees that for the entirety of my life the primary adjective to describe me is "cute".

Sticky pages

Whenever I go to pick up a package or buy some stamps at the closest post office to my apartment, located in a magazine store, I am always awed by the sheer number of issues dedicated to the most obscure of topics. Belgian photography magazines, Spanish architecture, Chihuahuas Monthly...
However, what always entertains me the most is the sheer volume of pornographic magazines.

Am I the only one who is surprised that the porno mag is still thriving?

I guess growing up in a small town, with the bulk of our magazine selection taking up a half shelf at 7-Eleven (as a side note, my town's 7-Eleven was not open 24 hours, which is exceedingly lame. It is a sad day when one can't get a burrito at 3am). The only exception was the small selection of plastic covered magazines behind the clerk-- Playboy, Hustler, and perhaps one more specialty magazine-- allowing for very little discretion for the dirty magazine connoisseur.
This also allowed for very little underaged consumption of such magazines, meaning that my teenaged males friends would hang on to their acquired issues with utter fervour. I would then discover these very crinkled and bent magazines stuffed in the corners of my guy friend's rooms, that I might flip through when they weren't looking out of curiosity. Perhaps due to the lack of such readily available material-- and the overtness of the "back room" in the one video store in town with dirty movies-- I busted more than one guy friend staring with consummate focus at the blurry and jumbled screen of the Playboy channel we didn't subscribe to in my basement, hoping perhaps to see a boob somewhere amidst the gray haze.

Of course, then there was the internet, and everything changed. Boobs were no longer the mysterious creatures to be glimpsed on late night television, but were available in full force via the magic of Google. Not only that, but there was selection-- if you had a think for Portuguese women in bear costumes, they were only a click away! And I guess I just kind of imagined that, outside of the few cultural staples, like Playboy, the dirty magazine was soon to be obsolete.

But the magazine store has proven me wrong. There are, in fact, more dirty magazines than I ever dreamed existed. I don't know if this was always the case, and I just led a sheltered small town life, or if they have upped their variety to compete with the internet. There are quite literally more than a hundred of these glossy issues, with glaring slogans, like "Hot Housewives" and (my personal favourite) "A Bear's Life". I feel the need to peruse through the aisle out of morbid curiosity, just to discover what titles have been able to keep a market over the years.

Perhaps also because of the clandestine nature of purchasing these magazines in a small town, I also feel the urge to watch the people browsing the aisles as I wait in line for my parcel. Some walk in with a purpose, grab their glossy of choice, and stride out. Others browse like they are at a museum, slowly pacing, stopping occasionally to fish a magazine from the back, and then contemplate its cover. I giggled like a school girl when a man dressed like a sea captain, in a giant yellow rain slicker with matching hat, held up his potential purchase to the light, and I could see what must have been triple Gs proudly displayed on the back cover from metres away.

What money can't buy

It never occurred to me until recently that my parents didn't have a lot of money.

It wasn't that we were ever poor, per se. We always had food on the table and clothes on our back. My dad always worked full-time, and my mom almost always was working most days of the week. In fact, my parents, in what I come to realize more and more each year is amazing kindness, often were offering support to those friends of our even worse off than us-- like how they bought my best friend her prom dress after her father handed her a $20 bill.

This holiday, the Duke and his brother drove me back to my home town on their way back to see their family, stopping to spend the night at my family home. It is not that I wasn't aware that we grew up differently on the surface, they in a residential suburb of a big city, in a home with a big garage and soft carpets, me in a small town and smaller home filled with random antiques and curiosities. But, still, we'd grown up with the same morals, and the same sense of needing to work for your accomplishments, so the contrast never really stood out to me.

On their continued drive, the Duke's brother remarked to him that he had a newfound respect for me, seeing that I had accomplished so much coming from such a different environment. At first, this seemed a little absurd to me. My parents were always wonderfully supportive of me, always believed in me. How was I at all disadvantaged? But, with a little thought, I realized that, unlike a good chunk of my peers in graduate school, I came from a family in which no one went to graduate school. In fact, no one in my family went to college.

This same revelation hit me again while flipping through the program of the conference I recently attended. In the first section, there were several pages dedicated to the winners of the prestigious diversity awards, an award I had never considered applying to, since, as a Caucasian heterosexual woman of European background, I had never considered myself as fitting into the category of "population typically underrepresented in graduate school". I then noticed that "first generation college student" was also lumped into this category. I think I actually commented to my friend about how I found this odd and incongruent for me, as despite technically fitting into this category, I didn't feel as though I matcged the label of "underrepresented population". She told me that I should give myself more credit.

The thing is, I never thought of myself as having to bear a burden to go to university (well, except for financially, as I have paid for all nine years of university without help from anyone except scholarships, grants, and some student loans). It was just something I always wanted to do, and I did it. Nothing about my parents' lack of university diplomas felt like it slowed me down at all.

The other day, I was reminiscing with the Duke about how, at around the age of 9, I had desperately wanted to go to an autograph session with one of my favourite hockey players in a city an hour away on the weekend. I had been heartbroken when my parents had flat-out refused. The Duke asked me why they had declined, and I told them that this question had perplexed me greatly for years to come, as it seemed so out of character, and I was never really given a point blank answer.

Suddenly, I had a bit of an epiphany-- they didn't have the money to take me there. Then, all the pieces started to fall into place. The truck that was always breaking down when I was little. My mom's telling me that if I wanted Calvin Klein jeans, she couldn't buy me any back to school apparel. The girl who asked if I was poor because of my clothing. My sadness at not being able to participate in the summer theatre programs due to the triple-figured fees required, and the fact that, at the age of 12, I knew better than to ask. My paying rent for living at home in my first two years of college. Having to leave our rental house behind, in part because it was being torn down for subdivisions. My mom coming home, distraught, saying she'd been laid off.

The fact that I only realized this at 27, to me, testifies to me the important aspect of all this, though-- that it didn't matter at all. My parents loved me unconditionally, supported even my most ridiculous phases, and made for a beautifully memorable childhood and adolescence. On top of that, they took in troubled foster kids, and let friends live in our basement or even in a tent in our backyard in tough times. They taught my about morality, kindness, empathy and self-sufficiency. All of these are infinitely more valuable than a college fund or those designer jeans.

The worst boyfriend ever

I have a theory that everyone needs a horrible romantic relationship at same point in their life. I'm not talking about abusive here, but rather someone who takes you for granted, is too jealous, is unreliable, even unfaithful. 

The reason for this? To find your boundaries. 

We are all a little clueless when we first start dating. If you were like me, your role models were your "mature" friends who had boyfriends from 13 onwards (when I was still in the awkward caterpillar eyebrow and twelve sizes too big t-shirt phase), sitcoms, or Sweet Valley High. We are told it is supposed to a perfectly smooth ride, with talking on the phone all night every night and slow dances. We have no idea how to react when he doesn't like our friends or he doesn't want to go to the school dance with you. We don't know which of his quirks we think are adorable and idiosyncratic, and which are just plain mean. We have no idea how we are supposed to be treated. 

As harsh as it may seem, being treated like a doormat, for most of us, will show us exactly how we don't want to be treated. 

As such, even though I can say that my first serious boyfriend, Logan, who I dated for 10 months in Grade 10, is still one of the great dirt bags to walk the earth, he taught me a hell of a lot. Logan is the only guy who will ever treat me as miserably as that, because after him, I could see his traits in other guys from a mile away, and would avoid them like the bubonic plague. And if anyone ever started on any of his style trips on me? I have the faith that even my 16 year old self could have walked out the door.

Logan was probably everything a desperately insecure 15 year old girl should not have been kissing. Judgmental, angry, jealous, controlling, though mighty cute, funny, and seemingly dedicated. 

He decided he liked me the way I was, and thus, I was forbidden to change. He would turn around and walk away from me, shaking his head in disgust, if he didn't like the clothes I was wearing. He would grumble angrily if my new CD didn't meet his approval. I even hid my class projects from him for fear of his disapproval, such as the time I did a biography on Drew Barrymore, as I knew he thought she was a "slut".

He was insanely jealous, and would try to fight any guy who was friendly towards me. When I tried to stop him, he would accuse me of wanting to be with them, so I learned to just stare at the ground as he shouted and shook his fists. He would also wildly confront anyone who expressed concern for me. He never hit anyone, but that was more to do with their skills at backing away and negotiating than a flattening of his temper.

I made the mistake of letting him be my first everything, losing my virginity on my bedroom floor. He then believed he had the right to me at anytime, as though sex was solely his decision, and I was merely an accessory to it. I distinctly remember sleeping in the same room as a friend, and him chastising me to tears because I wouldn't have sex with him there. I actually tried to curl up and sleep on the bathroom floor, as though the cold tiles were more peaceful than lying beside him.

My sister was stronger than me in all of this. Despite being all of 12 years old, one time after he had berated me over the phone, I left to walk to his house, she called him, this big 16-year old, and told him to stop being so cruel to me. 

I actually set to my reminiscing about Logan yesterday over dinner, when my friend, after laughing at her distress at her first time being dumped, asked me what my most horrendous "dumped" story was.

I started laughing hysterically at how truly awful it was.

And I told her about how, in French 10, we did a fashion show. My friends asked me to be their model for a pair of shorts and a tank top. I asked them if I could wear a jacket with it. They said yes, but ended up giving away the jacket to another catwalker, so I strutted my stuff anyhow. I didn't tell Logan, but someone else reported back to him.

He asked me to meet him on the street, and proceeded to call me every name on the book. Slut, whore, tramp, you name it. In the midst of these slew of words, I was told he never wanted to see me again. The cherry on top was when I ran away, crying, he threw snowballs at my head.

I fell asleep in my parents bed, clutching my stuffed bunny. 

And I took him back the next day. 

One of the conditions of us getting back together is that I had to ask my french teacher to delete the video of me in the fashion show.

He dumped me four times in total. The fourth time, I didn't accept his pleas to come back. These pleas proceeded to bended knees, to tears, to persuading friends to knock on my door, to 3am drunken visits that began with poetry and ended with him storming off with vows to kill himself.

I still said no.

Perhaps a better victory would have been to say no the first time he broke up with me, or the first time he called me names. 

But I'm still proud the final answer was no.

As painful and unfair as it was to go through so young, I am infinitely glad I went through it at age 15, rather than at 18, 20, 25, like I see friends going through now. It is almost like one of those diseases, like the chicken pox. At least if you get it when you are young, you are immune to its later, more dangerous adult form.

And, small town that it is, that was not the last I saw of Logan. Later that summer, his poor heart apparently recovered enough to sleep with a visiting friend of mine in my bed. On my 19th birthday, he was coincidentally at the same bar, trying to fight the ex-boyfriend I'd dated after him, still holding a grudge years later. 

And just as I was wondering if I was holding onto my grudge a little too fiercely, I saw him at a friend's birthday party around five years ago in UndergradCity. He began hitting on my friend, but when he heard how we knew each other (she had dated the Ex's friend for a year-- a guy who was a bit of a ladies man in high school), he said to her "Well, if you dated him, I hope you got yourself checked"... as in STDs. He accused a girl he just met, and was trying to seduce, of having STDs.

Some things never change.

Small town bar

An annual tradition in HomeTown is the Boxing Night Extravaganza. The various people home for the holidays all gather at the local pub early in the evening, generally heading down to the local "nightclub" (I use this word loosely) after a sufficient buzz has been accomplished.

This year I again find myself the recipient of multiple phone calls in the days and hours approaching Boxing Night. "What's going on tonight?" "Are we meeting before?" "Is so-and-so coming?" "Can I crash on your parents' floor?"

In high school, I was the resident co-ordinator, playing at being a social butterfly, knowing where the party was at, and offering up a sleeping bag and floor space to anyone without a ride home or too drunk to drive afterwards. It's a role I deliberately eschewed when I moved away, ricocheting into the opposite "going with the flow" orientation, as it gets exhausting serving as everyone's planning middle man. However, going home is like a time machine, where everyone treats you a little like your 18-year old self-- and, well, my 18-year old self was the party go-to girl, so my fate is sealed for the time being.

The first step of Boxing Night, though, is not pre-drinking and planning a meeting place. It is deciding what to wear. This is of the utmost importance, considering you are most likely to run into at least one of each the following: ex-boyfriend, ex-crush, and former stalker. As such, you need to look good. Very good. However, HomeTown is also a place where most people wear winter gear to the bar on a Friday night, which means you can't look too done up-- because then you are "too big city", and thus likely to be shunned. I was once deemed to have turned big city because my earrings were too big. This means that a delicate balance needs to be struck.

Deliberately casual yet coordinated, then the pre-drinking begins, as people arrive and squish into my bedroom, like old time sake. I have not drank on my bed in a long time, considering I have a living room and coasters now. We have taken a bit of a step up, though, drinking store bought wine and fancy mixed drinks, rather than whatever beer comes in an 8-pack or whatever homemade wine we could scam.

A little more nostalgia hits as we drive downtown, too many people in one car. Like old times, I am the one crammed on a friend's lap, my head grazing the roof. We teeter on icy sidewalks, and make our way into the pub around 7:45. There are already no tables, so we claim the corner by the foozball table as our own. My phone buzzes near constantly, as more people announce their upcoming arrivals. We all hug and summarize our lives in response to the countless times we are asked "What have you been up to over the past year?" I don't mind this question quite so much as the "How much more school do you have left?" or the much more direct "Aren't you done school yet?"

I notice this year that I don't know a good third of the bar like I used to. It occurs to me that coming back to HomeTown is no longer everyone's first priority over the holidays. People have their "new" families-- spouses, children, in-laws, or jobs that do not halt because of the significance of a particular day. Perhaps this is another one of the realities that comes along with the fact that it is my (yikes yikes yikes) ten year high school reunion this summer, and I am, in fact, getting old.

I stand by our territory of the foozball table and a guy of about 19 tries to start chatting me up. As he is getting his game on, and I try not to giggle too much, a friend hands me a drink. It is wet on the outside, as he has just carried up an enormous round from the bar, and seems to have spilled a little. Just as it occurs to 19-year old to ask me my name, the drink slides out of my hands and shatters to the floor. He actually backs away slowly. I go over to my friends, and laugh that I have inadvertently found the easiest way to get rid of a guy.

Except he comes back and tries again. Apparently he mistook my clumsiness as intoxication and figured he still had a shot. And tries to impress me by telling me all about the first year psychology course he had taken. Yes, indeed, guys, the way to impress the woman completing her PhD in psychology? Show her how much you know about psychology from your first year. Educate me, baby! Of course, this was after he pretended to run away when he first heard what I studied.

Of course, I run into the checklist of people, including exes, former crushes, and random people I hadn't thought about in years. There is also a guy I went to elementary school inexplicably wearing a polar bear costume. I joke with a friend that I just needed an awkward former drunken make-out partner to make the night complete.

It is soon after that I notice the Ex's best friend, who I have previously deemed ABF (Alcoholic Best Friend) at the bar. The vodka perhaps artificially enhancing my nostalgia, I go over to say hi. He is drunk and ecstatic. The first thing out of his mouth is the comment I've already recounted below about the Ex needing me more than ever. He then tells me he is buying me a drink, despite my claims that I am not in the mood for double fisting, as I have a fresh drink in hand. He buys me one anyways, and then proceeds to pour out his heart about his girl troubles, disregarding the fact that we haven't seen each other in two and a half years. He doesn't ask me a thing about myself, rather begging me for detailed plans of action about what he should say to his ex-girlfriend and current crush. As my friends come to extricate me from the situation, he slurs "Please just give me a few minutes with her. I promise I'm not trying to molest her. She's been my counselor for years."

A few minutes to closing time, we exit the bar. There is no hope of getting a taxi any time in the next hour, given you can count the number of taxis in the town on one hand. Two of us walk to the front door of another bar, where people have chosen to go instead of paying the unheard of $10 cover charge at the "nightclub". Seven of us set to walking up the enormous hill home.

Snow is tumbling from the sky, as we walk down the middle of the empty street. Despite the drunken cries around, it is strangely peaceful, as though the snow muffles it from our ears. We walk a half block backwards, so we can watch the snow sprinkling on the view below. As we make it to one person's destination, someone grabs a six-pack of beer, and someone else two inner tubes. We spin and slide down the steep street on the inflated rubber, a lone car beeping its horn at us as we skim by, our hair frosted in snow. I decide at this moment, despite my instincts earlier in the night, that I refuse to be too old for this.

My Soundtrack

Thanks for all the lovely tales of songs that have memories woven between their melodies! It was fascinating to think about which few notes bring up a rush of images for different people. 

Before I get into the musical peephole to my brain, though, I have a few loose ends to tie up for my First Annual Holiday Mix-Tape Contest (which I really could have named something far wittier than that. I'm a little disappointed in my serious lack of puns).

There were 39 comments in total, representing something closer to 36 entries. Using the magic of Randomizer.org, I selected four random numbers, which represented the comment number. 

The winners were:

Comment #1- Nutty Cow of Parlez-vous moo?

Comment #23- Hope of Hope Dies Last

Comment #28- Daisy of Fresh as a Daisy

Comment #35- K of Off the Record

Nutty Cow and Daisy win Hijinks: A Soundtrack (Vol 1), which has 18 of my possibly less well-known favourites, and Hope and K win Vol. 2, including 20 of your favourites. 

(Psst, if you haven't gotten back to me with your address, please do as soon as possible! I'm heading out of town on Wednesday morning and would like to have them sent off before I leave... plus,  most of them are flying across the ocean, and I would love for them to make it your way by Christmas!)

***

Smell is routed differently than the other four senses. The dorkish explanation has to do with the fact that the sensory nerves in the nose go to a different part of the brain than the other senses, and are thus closer to the area responsible for memory. Anyone who feels the rush of memories fly in when they catch a breath of pine or the scent of perfume can attest to this. Although, ostensibly, sound is not processed in this way, I wonder if music may have a trap door somewhere by the nose, because, for me, the first few notes of a song can take me back in time in an instant.

Here are a few of those songs with more direct routes to the past...

I Think We're Alone Now- Tiffany

Picture two girls, aged 8 and 5, their oversized shirts tied in knots, dancing in a semi-coordinated fashion in a hallway in front of their parents sitting in kitchen chairs. Don't forget the two feet tall teddy bears their uncle won for them at a carnival serving as the "boyfriends" in this little dance number, thus having the lyrics directed at them.

Yep, that's me and my little sister. I was ever the performer, hitting play on my Fisher Price tape deck, and telling my sister what her new back-up dancer moves were. After our Cyndi Lauper number on the bed, my mom officially relegated all future performances to the hallway.

Our performance of "I Think We're Alone Now" was probably us at the top of our game, complete with hand acting out exaggerated heartbeats to "The beating of our heart is the only sound". In fact, even now, nearly twenty years later, we still remember the moves. And are more than happy to demonstrate them for anyone who is lucky enough to be around during the combination of us two, alcohol and Tiffany.

You Oughta Know- Alanis Morrisette

I am fourteen, with bloodshot eyes, my blackest shirt, my back hard up against the lockers. As of yesterday's lunch hour, I have been dumped. I am surrounded by friends, chattering away, trying to distract me. Still, as I see him coming down the hall towards me, my fingers press down hard on the play button, so that angry lyrics fill me ears and don't allow me to hear the sound of his sneakers on the linoleum floor.

(The funny thing is that I hadn't the slightest clue what she was referring to when she said "Would she go down on you in a theatre?")

Smoke on the Water- Deep Purple

My mom does not sing in regular fashion. She makes up words and lyrics, she hums, she do-dos. Because of this, I do not know Smoke on the Water due to the lyrics, but rather the baselines as sung by my mother as she made tea in the morning.

Do-do-do... Do-do-DO-do.

Another Lonely Day- Ben Harper

I sometimes make stupid decisions. An hour after I spoke the words I never imagined would roll off my tongue, ending more than six years with one man, I made one of them. Our tiny apartment seemed so empty that it echoed, so I, in a deceptively nonchalant move, decided to listen to Ben Harper and finish putting together some neglected photo albums.

And promptly squeezed every last tear I knew existed into pools onto the glossy images below, as Ben read my mind, singing "It wouldn't have worked out anyway, now it's just another lonely day."

A Man of Constant Sorrow- The Soggy Bottom Boys

As I was packing my last box to move to the proverbial big city, my father was discovering bluegrass music. This was one of the first songs he asked me to print out for him.

These days, it seems hard to imagine him without a guitar in his hand.

Sublime- Santaria

Nothing ever quite captures how carefree summer is in high school. 

Barefeet, wind through your hair as you sing at the top of your lungs, camp fires, night swimming, popsicles, sweaty kisses, and working just enough to buy a new swimsuit or to pitch in for gas in your friend's 1986 Hyundai Pony.

An ode to making out

Less than two weeks away from my annual holiday visit to HomeTown, planning has already begun for various reunions and bar nights. This talks, of course, lead me to reminiscing-- thoughts of lunch hours, sleepovers, camping, house parties... and making out.

Making out was different back when it was the end goal, rather than just a brief stopover on the way to another destination. There is something about the furtiveness, the franticness, even the awkwardness that I almost miss-- tangled shirts, undone buttons. 

There was so forbidden about it, as though you always had to be vigilant to the sound of footsteps or a knock at the door, but you would still let yourself get a little more caught up and carried away than intended.

Sure, as a girl, you were forced to remain especially attentive to the whole situation and how it progressed. You'd have to keep it at the forefront of your mind what "the line" was, blocking his hands with yours or murmuring "We'd better stop". You'd have to prepare yourself for the puppy dogs eyes, the whispering pleas and promises, or even the lines of desperation (who can forget blue balls?), shake your head, stand your ground, reluctantly or not. 

Still, there was something enticing about those moments when you weren't too sure how much you could resist, when you could get that swept up despite having all of your clothes on.

Maintaining the Halloween spirit

I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to Halloween.

And when I say traditionalist, I mean I like to pretend that I am still ten years old.

I don't like Halloween for "adult" reasons, like having an excuse to sluttify everyday careers and show off my goods in a socially appropriate context, or to dance in said underdressed state under a blacklight at an overpriced club.

I like it for the kid reasons- creativity, haunted houses with cold spaghetti as brains, finding ways to put on a winter jacket while still keeping your costume intact, face painting, jack-o-lanterns. Oh, and CANDY.

I am convinced that my love of candy corn will lead to my downfall in some way or another.

(As a side note, when I went to the epic grocery store last, their bulk section had about five different varieties of candy corn. I felt like a small town girl who had just set foot into downtown NYC-- my eyes are now open!!)

My love for Halloween is such that I continued trick or treating until an absurdly late age-- well through high school, in all actuality. We weren't those teenagers who just put on a hat and sneered at those opening the doors in a misguided attempt to get free candy, later egging the houses of those who denied us. We still went all out in our costumes, but were respectful of those who denied us candy due to our age (although we may have pouted a little when they closed the door). Perhaps it was a small town thing, but it was actually quite standard to keep shouting "Trick or treat!" well into adolescent.

Despite my small stature, I have now ceased my knocking on people's doors in a request for candy. Sadly, though, I have still not had the opportunity to be on the other side of the door, handing out candy. All my life, I've lived in seemingly inaccessible locations-- down long driveways, in back lanes locals didn't know existed, in basements suites and apartments. The year the Duke and I started dating, I eagerly bought bags full of assorted candy and headed to his place on Halloween, as he had a front door out onto a main street-- apparently too main and busy of a street, as not a single ghost or witch knocked on his door. I may have been a little crushed.

This year, Hallowe'en is looking to be a bit of a bust, in all honestly. I live in an apartment, so no trick or treaters. For some reason, I have been invited to three parties on Saturday the 1st, when Halloween is on Friday. Furthermore, the party I am most obligated to go to is a non-Halloween bridal shower, meaning I will have to forego the two costume parties-- though I may insist on showing up in costume. On Friday, everyone seems to be wrapped up in going to overpriced club events, and I flat out refuse to pay $50 to listen to a bad DJ merely because it is the 31st and there are some fake cobwebs hung in the bathroom. I want a *real* costume party, dammit, with creepy punch and Monster Mash playing over the stereo!

At least my Halloween spirit hasn't been totally crushed, though, as yesterday did involve a surprise birthday party at a pumpkin patch...

A pumpkin in a pumpkin... can you handle it?

Our various jack-o-lanterns...
My jack-o-lantern. He looked like a pretty evil demon until I added whiskers, though I still think there is the slight possibility he may watch me while I sleep.
So at least the kid in me was able to cling to Halloween a little longer this weekend...

Elicitor of apologies

The Ex emailed me over the long weekend to say "It may be a little late, but I am so sorry."

There should be some validation in these words, something reassuring in his realization of how raw I had become when I finally walked out the door. Instead, there is concern- knowing him as well as I do, he must be at a very low place indeed for this realization to have come about. Rock bottom seems the only surface hard enough to rattle him. By all accounts, this is where he has fallen.

I can't help but remind myself that he knows me well, too. Maybe this is why I'm hesitant to accept this apology as an entity in and of itself. It feels as though there are implicit conditions involved, that by me reaching out to receive these words, I am also obligated to check in on him, ask how he is, wish him well. He knows this is my tendency. I'm afraid I may be pathetically incapable of just taking what I need from this apology, despite having been meticulous in my lack of contact, only returning messages, never starting them. He's seen me do this before, in my comprehensive responses to the pleas for support from another ex, the one who I had never sought out in the seven years after he had stomped on my heart, but saw fit to email me out of sheer desperation, depression and his own experience of heartbreak, supposedly because I was the only person he could think of for genuine support. The Ex told me I was a fool then, and now that he is playing that role, it is the Duke who is telling me not to be a fool, that this apology is just bait from a lonely man.

I attract apologies like a magnet.

These apologies only occur under very specific conditions, though. My heart must have been stomped on, or, at the very least, kicked around a little. I must have healed it through sheer force of will, initially by faking the steps of moving on until there is real force behind my footsteps. The contact then must occur utterly out of the blue, a ringing phone piercing my unrelated thoughts. Then comes the sorry's, the declarations of ruminations, of guilt, of not knowing what they had at the time, in more or less words. Sometimes this is stated in the form of simple catharsis, free of motivations, while other times, it is more like an attempt to get a toe back in the door they may have well slammed themselves. This scenario has plated out five times now, in one form or another, starting at age 15 up to this weekend.

I used to place this in a romanticized framework. I told myself I had served a purpose in their lives, taught them a lesson, that I had come into their lives a year or two too early. Now I wonder about what it really says about me. Maybe it isn't that I am this wonderful, earnest, unappreciated woman. Maybe there is something specific to me that leads me to be taken for granted. Maybe they just know that I'm the easiest person in the world to apologize to-- that I will accept it even when I shouldn't.

(And, yes, my Google Reader is at 500 and rising. Your Princess is a very, very busy bee on the verge of drowning-- shan't bored you with the details. So sorry for the lack of bloggie love. Just take pleasure in the fact that each time one of you posts something new and my number rises, it is like you are giving me your own personal mini-guilt trip!)

Clicking for royalty!

I know, I know, I keep on sending you away from my blog this week.

But, I promise, it is so worth it.... because I'm guest posting for fellow royalty today.

So come visit me in the Kingdom of Princess of the Universe, where you can read all about my fierce lust for Joe Hardy and my career as an amateur sleuth.

PS. Congrats to Crushed and arguably Yoda (I suppose I may be showing the most leg) and Nilsa (I am technically wearing orange, but maybe it looks pink) for choosing the correct legs!

Home

I'm home.

It is funny how certain I am in that statement.

This is especially true when, though silent mathematics, I realize that in a few more years, I'll have lived away for longer than I resided in this house. 

Still, despite making the same observation each time I inch into city limits-- that it feels like time has slowed and that nary a day has passed since my last visit, even though it has nearly a year-- it never fails to astound me.

I know people define hometowns in different ways. Some label it the place where they were born, others the place they resided the longest, and others eschew the notion of hometowns altogether. For me, it is puberty that makes all the difference in the world. 

We only moved here when I was ten, and while I have fond memories of tree houses, picking raspberries, and sloshing in pig pens, life prior to moving is more a series of idyllic snapshots than a genuine connection. I re-visited that city years later, and found little to be familiar outside of the numbers on the mailbox.

But here, everything is soaked in memories.

And nothing stands out more than firsts-- which are what adolescence is all about.

My first french kiss was in the foyer of the civic centre. 

My first date was also in the arena at the same location, where the junior hockey team still plays.

My first drink was down a precarious hill, in a secluded wooded lot, the entrance of which I pass every time I walk downtown.

My first time drunk was at the youth centre, where skateboards still echo today.

My first time skinny dipping was late at night, where you can see the lake narrow as you pass on the highway.

My first real job was at the only mall in town.

My first time smoking pot was underneath the bridge we drive over on our entrance to town.

The first I love you I really believed at the time was on a rock overlooking the water where we still picnic, whereas the first I love you that I still believe was real was spoken across the room from where I now sit.

My feet are touching the same place my feet touched when I lost my virginity.

These memories flood me as my eyes catch another detail or my feet turn a corner, though only a few make it past my lips. I fear that if I started, really started, the words would be like a waterfall, an unstoppable stream of consciousness, and might drown those around me. 

And, so, I let a few leak, like raindrops, while the rest swirl about in my head, until I step on the plane and they drain into the background, seeping away to make room for the other details of life.

The semi-annual awkward fest

Every six to nine months, The Ex and I decide that a catch-up coffee is in order.

This time around was brought about by a text message I sent after seeing his apparent twin on the street... something akin to "Were you just on Main Street?"

When his (tres, tres jealous, as some of you may remember) girlfriend texted me back from his phone, I knew he was in trouble.

And in trouble he was, as I found out from him the next day, when he told me that my clearly salacious text had led to her accusations of our secret plans to get back together.

I guess he assumed we might as well meet for coffee in the aftermath of her regular bouts of insecurity, rather than face another round at a later date.

Meetings with him are always rife with an odd contrast of sorts. A lot about him is familiar-- the smell of his car, or the way in which he orders his coffee. Yet the talk always feels so shallow. We are usually able to make it about an hour by virtue of sheer catch-up-- the lives of ourselves and others-- marriages, babies, houses purchased, job changes, holidays, and so forth. At around the hour point, after we've gotten down to the updates on grandparents, things start to get a little slow, and we veer into "Are you excited about the new Batman?" territory. 

There is also a contrast in our manner of tackling conversations about our current partners. I circle around it a little bit, using terms such as "we" to describe my life. He asks me no questions. While talking about the city's rental market, I mention nonchalantly that the Duke and I are living together, he winces almost automatically, and tries to cloak it by an artificially casual "oh yeah". He avoids the relationship small talk, and jumps head first into the deep end, going into the same story he tells on each of our biannual meetings about her jealousy and their arguments. I feel as though I am being baited, and thus bite my tongue, though I can't help but retort "She does know that women make up 51% of the population, right?" when he tells me she was angry about him going to a beach without her because there would be girls there.

We end things before we cross the uncomfortable silences line, with a smile, and a vow to meet up again in the next six months or so. He adds in "... which should be the next time I'm allowed to see you."

And although I do appreciate the light level of contact that we have been able to maintain, as I ride the train back home, I can't help but wonder what we talked about for six years.

Of reunions and small town papers

It came to mind yesterday, while at a event scattered with random faces from my past, that my ten year high school reunion is due to rear up next summer.

It really should have occurred to me earlier, honestly, given the hushed, wine-sprinkled tones my friend spoke to me in on Saturday night. She whispered of her growing impatience at her boyfriend dragging his heels in his proposal, despite their already-planned-to-the-utmost-detail nuptials. 

We women tend to use the reunion as a yardstick of sorts. It elicits some rumination about whether we are where we would have imagined while being paraded around the gymnasium in prom regalia. And though I disagree on principle with the notion that your classmates should serve as you comparison point, I still have found myself cursing under my breath that single year off between finishing my undergraduate degree and starting graduate school, for that year may be the thing keeping me from being referred to as doctor by the time the kitsch 1999 musical medley rolls around. After all, I have a student loan while they have babies, so it would be nice to have something formal to show other than that dreaded "student" label that threatens to haunt me forever more.

It doesn't help that I grew up in a small town. Our graduating class of 70 was the biggest in the school's history. Not only did it make for seemingly incestuous date-swapping, given the lack of make-out worthy guys, but it also made for an ease of keeping track of classmates. Sure, some of us stayed (generally of the rapid baby-making variety), while lots of us fled to the big city. But Facebook, in all its world shrinking power, has nothing on the power of small town gossip. Of course, my parents decided to the spread of my life updates not only through my mother's chatting over bakery counters, but by declaring my receipt of my degree in the back of the Daily News, along with the obituaries and advertisements for the local AC/DC cover band. Thankfully, by the time my Masters rolled around, everyone had just taken it for granted that I was perpetually in school, and could be bothered to take too much noticed.

Lest I make this sound like middle America, I promise you it wasn't. I went to the high school where someone's idea of a beginning of year prank was to relocate a pot plant to the fresh soil in the middle of the school field. Students flocked to scour it for buds before the administrators noticed, only to find that the culprit was versed enough in marijuana cultivation to have stripped any sign of them. My high school was down the highway from a beach where nude bodies frolicked among the clothed and you would have to deal with the humiliation of forced steady eye contact when running into your unclothed friend's father-- all with a bongo drum soundtrack. 

Our primary division was not between jocks and nerds, but rather hippies and rednecks. I was firmly on the hippie side, sealed there by virtue of my original first name with the girls named after seasons and trees, despite my Grade 10 attempts at being a fashionista with silver nail polish and pleather jackets. The rednecks drank in gravel pits and went snowmobiling. We drank in forested backyards and went to raves. I was deeply chagrined by my little sister's fall to the dark side when she dated one of the chief tobacco chewers, when I would only venture as far out of my group as a jock, who were the few groups of people who could bridge the hippie-redneck divide. Even know, I am shocked when one of the rednecks adds me on Facebook, for although I assume I've left those crude divisions behind, I'm never quite too sure that anyone else will do the same.

It is questionable whether anyone will actually take the helm to organize a reunion, especially given that the woman we all took for granted as having the required level of school spirit now has two babies to occupy her time. So perhaps I will be granted a few more years to get that PhD, a husband, and everything else my 17-year old self expected, and, in the meanwhile, can use my biannual visit to one of the local bars to receive a refresher on the lives of others.

The Wal-Mart Diaries

By popular demand...

When asked about life in my hometown, I usually reply with a series of praise about the scenery, the atmosphere, the people. However, I generally qualify this with a statement of "But you have to leave at some point, unless you want to continue working the same job you did when you were a teenager."

Because, when I was a teenager, I worked at Wal-Mart.

It is a little odd that there was even a Wal-Mart in my home town. This was the town that managed to keep out the mighty McDonald's by virtue of grassroots petitions and local paper headlines declaring the evils of corporations (it should be noted that other paper headlines included "Main Street Oak Tree to Be Cut Down: Locals Enraged"). Ever since its arrival in its 1990s take-over of North America, Wal-Mart has been pretty much a constant source of controversy in our town, from its underselling of local businesses to its desire to sprawl across the underdeveloped portions of the waterfront.

However, another quality of small town life is its lack of employment; as such, Wal-Mart became popular for the minimum wage crowd. Thus, despite my hippie sensibilities, I ended joining the ranks of the big-box employees for one summer.

What did I learn in my 4-months wearing a blue vest?

• Wal-Mart can't decide if they want to seem prestigious or all-accepting. This is the only way I can explain the fact that I had to go through three interview portions (including a questionnaire about my responses to employment related moral dilemmas-- "A co-worker confides in you that he has been smoking marijuana on his work break. What do you do?") to get the job, yet they still seemed to hire absolutely anyone (from the purple-haired to the retired many years prior) with few standards. Seriously, some of the people I worked with were the least socially skilled individuals on the planet, making me wonder how they even managed a 15-minute interview.

• Another sign they took themselves too seriously? Managers were forbidden from socializing with employees. I remember a poor 20-something assistant manager who moved from a major city to take over an open position. He worked really long hours, but was disallowed from even going for coffee with anyone from work. I remember actually having an honest conversation with the guy the day I quit about how ridiculously lonely such rules left him. It's Wal-Mart, people, not a law firm.
• 
  
• Working in the toy department had its pros and cons. Pro? Being able to wear a crown and boa while working with no one blinking an eye. Con? The second you turn a corner, your three hours of work cleaning the action figures aisle will be destroyed.

• Despite my prior glamourizing of the infamous Wal-Mart greeter position as the easiest job of the planet, it is also the most boring and the most humiliating. People will humour a 70-year old woman accosting them with stickers and salutations, but their responses to a teenager tend to be more characterized by pity and disdain.

• Some people took their job way too seriously. They would only speak about the company and Sam Walton in the most glowing of terms. They would frantically call out any break of protocol. They would lead the morning exercises (which included finger stretches) and the Wal-Mart cheer with utter gusto.
• 
  
• Ah, yes, the Wal-Mart cheer. Contrary to what you may have hoped, it is not an urban legend. Those of us lucky enough to open the store got to shout and gesture along to "Give me a W!"
•  The second best part? "Who's number one? Our customer, always!" 
• The best part? "Give me a squiggly!" (for your information, squiggly represented the dash-mark, and was accompanied by this odd wiggle-dip.)

• The day I wore a skirt to work was inevitably the day they sprung on me that I would unexpectedly be left to cover the garden department, and thus would have to haul 20 bags of manure into the back of someone's truck.

• On the same note, they seemingly never had enough people working on one day, meaning I would be covering literally up to eight departments at once while getting paged to run a till. Also, you were only trained for the department you *officially* worked at, meaning the customers looking at barbecues probably knew more than I did when I was called to help them.

• The customer's-always-right mantra gets rather tiresome in a hurry, especially when people would literally try to start bargaining with me or would return nasty, stained apparel without a receipt-- and the management would appease them. It was then that the customer would shoot me a nasty glare, as though I was purposely trying to screw them over by being willing to haggle with them over the price of an electric scooter.

• Kids getting excited about new shipments of Lego or Hot Wheels is cute. Grown men? Not so much. In fact, we had one man who would be waiting outside the doors before opening every weekend to raid the Hot Wheels section. Whenever someone new was hired in the department, he would scam them by telling them that the department manager promised him he could look through the new shipment box that morning-- which was a complete lie and would leave you with an utter mess of itty-bitty trucks strewn about the aisle.

Not to mention Wal-Mart radio is sheer torture-- a medley of non-offensive soft rock favourites and irritating repetitive jingles-- including one set to the tune of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" that chanted "Roll back, roll back, roll back some prices for me, for me!"

Oh, the memories....

Missing: One Princess (or standing in a creek again)

**yawn**

That's really about all my brain is capable of right now.

It's that garbled end of semester madness, with a splash of "holy crap I'm moving in weeks!" thrown in the mix.

Despite being a class full of PhD students with many, many years of memorizing and reciting back textbooks (which we all thought we had officially moved past), my clinical neuroscience prof is not convinced by the general norm of not giving final exams at this stage in the education process. As such, I have regressed to 20 again, snoozing over my textbook as I repeat over and over "serotonin acts as a neuromodulator at the caudate nucleus in the OCD loop... or, crap, is it dopamine?"

I find it exceedingly ironic that they ("they" being the omnipressant "man", or perhaps just the clinical program in general) still feel they need to make me jump through the multiple choice hoop while, the day prior, they have me writing pre-sentencing reports or providing psychotherapy. 

And does anyone have a solution to the epic moving dilemma of finding enough boxes? 

Moving boxes have to be symbolic of something. I can't think of anything so valuable that a person will traipse about the city, inquiring at random liquor stores for, or even pay $3 each, which is in turn so value-less in matter of days.

So, yeah, life is fun. 

And I am sleepy.

As such, in a blatant cop-out, I'm providing you with one of my favourite posts of yore. It makes me smile, at least!

Standing in the creek with my shoes on

We were ten years old.

His name was Stuart.

My parents, being of the hippy denomination, took us most years to an annual May Day celebration. It involved pot luck lunch, themed quests through the woods (Alice in Wonderland one year, with my aunt dressed as one of the card guards), and, yes, a dance around the May Pole.


There was also some sort of parade, lead by the May King and Queen. All the girls yearned for the part of May Queen, though the boys really couldn't care less. This honour was bestowed merely by selecting the right card.

And, when I was 10, it was my lucky year. As May Queen, I wore a crown of flowers, and led the parade with Stuart, the May King, one of only three boys who volunteered for the task.

After the mini-parade, him and I take a walk through the woods. We stray from the path, and decide to walk through a creek with our shoes on.

As we're sloshing through the creek, he turns to me and says "I like you". He then pauses, and says "Like girl-boy like."

I hesitate. "I like you, too."

He then spits out the kicker: "I want to kiss you."

I stand there, motionless, water rushing by my feet. For some reason, with my heart pounding, I agree.

And, standing in that creek, we count to three, and then quickly press our lips together.

He, being the more experienced one and having kissed a girl before, declares that we should kiss again for longer. We again do the count down, and hold our mouths together for a count of six.

We then decide we should probably be getting back to the party, and emerge from the forest, with no one the wiser, not then not for years to come. This was my darkest untold secret for more than a year.

I never did see Stuart again. I couldn't even tell you what he looked like.

However, I think I will always remember the feeling of wet socks between my toes.

Outhouses: A cautionary tale

Part of growing up with hippie parents is summers spent in the great outdoors. We usually spent a few weeks in July or August sleeping beneath canvas shelters and eschewing watches for "camping time."

We were not the RV or running water types, though. We laughed off those folks as high maintenance. My family was the down a gravel back road to a secret forestry site where we bathe in the creek type.

Unfortunately, this also made us the outhouse type.

Being forced to do one's business in a hot, poorly ventilated shack full of daddy long-legs, damp toilet paper, and other people's waste is probably no one's idea of a good time. As such, I became an expert at crouching. 

However, even worse were the urban myths surrounding outhouses. 

Teenagers who skulked behind bushes, waiting for an unsuspecting camper to enter, at which point they tipped the outhouse over. 

Children who had accidentally tumbled through the enormous hole, where no one could hear their cries.

And, the most dreadful of them all, the pervert who lived at the bottom of the outhouse pit, watching the unsuspecting user from below.

Despite this colourful range of imaginary tales, I had never heard of anything quite like the anecdote recounted to me last night.

A good friend of mine's family has a cabin quite literally in the middle of nowhere. Over the Easter long weekend, her and her fiance made the several hour trek to the cabin, arriving late at night. Given the snow on the ground, and the several months since the last round of visitors, the pipes had frozen. Fatigued, they decided to wait until the morning to pour boiling water down the drain to thaw it. 

However, before falling asleep, he decided that he needed to, ahem, do some business. Rather than leave said business in the toilet overnight, he bundled up, grabbed a flashlight, and ventured to the nearby outhouse.

Upon his return, he crawled back into bed, muttering about how much further the journey had seemed. She just giggled at him and his frustration after a long day.

The next morning, she awoke, and set out to the outhouse. 

It seemed he had not been kidding when he spoke of the longer journey-- somehow, through the course of a stormy winter, the rickety outhouse had  ended up 30 feet from where it originally stood, and was now located in the middle of the neighbour's yard.

This also meant it was 30 feet away from its pit.

Which meant that he had taken a crap in the middle of the neighbours' yard.

Neighbours who, thankfully, had not ventured to their cabin this particular weekend. 

And, as such, the two of them covertly moved the outhouse back to its original location, and were extremely grateful for the covering effects of snow.

Otto

Time for another edition of the continuing eight facts about me (in my sad and egotistical attempt to get to 100).

#52- If you look closely at the the inside of my right calf, you will see a faint white outline about three inches long, curving slightly almost to form the letter S.

For half of my 16th year, I was headlong into a long-distance summer romance with a big city boy who sent me heartfelt letters and saved up his allowance and part-time wages to take Greyhound rides to visit me.

I went to visit him for a week, only to find not the romance promised, but rather days spent in his basement watching TV with only hints of the sunshine behind the curtains.

However, a group of us did go on an day-trip to a lake. Rather than going to the public beach, it was instead decided we would sneak through a hole in a chain-link fence to some private section of the beach.

As the sun dimmed, we traipsed back up the gravel road. I was last to crawl through the fence, and as I squeezed through, an exposed section tore through my skin.

The wound was cleaned as I gasped in the car ride to McDonalds.

My boyfriend looked down at the seeping cut, and remarked "It looks like an S. Now you'll never forget me."
His name was Steve.

And now, despite the cruel way things ended, and not having seeing each other in ten years, when I trace the line down my leg, I am forced to think of him.

#53- I shed an absurd amount for someone who still seemingly has a full head of hair. Long brown strands end up embedded in clothing and food, almost if by osmosis. It wasn't so bad when I lived in a carpeted apartment, as most of it could be easily vacuumed away. But now that my floors are all hardwood and laminate, a broom won't remove them that easily, and a weekly Swiffering revealed near living dust bunnies in every corner, made up of Princess locks. There are even a handful of hairs somehow adhered to my bathroom ceiling (did I mention that I'm 5 foot 3?)

#54- Despite a semblance of maturity, I have a ridiculously juvenile dirty mind. I giggle frantically when sportscasters use terms such as "penetrate the zone". Today, whilst in my neuroscience class, I became fixated on the fact that the pituitary gland looks an awful lot like a pair of testicles.

#55- I wanted to be a writer when I was in the fifth grade. Whenever we had a writing assignment, while the rest of the class would write a few pages, I would write a tome of several chapters, which would then be read to the class instead of a regular fiction book at reading time. Before my family moved away, I entered in what seemed like a prestigious children and teenager's writing contest. My piece was a tale of a famous pop star's (I still remember her early 90s name-- Stephanie Silvano) dog who was kidnapped for ransom, told from the point of view of the dog. It was entitled "Dognapped", and included such dramatic scenes as the distraught dog being brought into a bar (which I had my mother describe to me), and such well-crafted lines as "This is a bar? The whole time I thought he was talking about a candy bar!"

Genius. I know.

The actual award ceremony was held after we'd moved hundreds of kilometers away, but my father was able to attend, as he still had some job tasks to finish up before he completed the move. I waited with desperation for the news of my placing, and exploded with questions when he walked in the door.

He proudly, with a hug, handed me a third place certificate.

I started to sob. Everyone assumed it was tears of joy. And though I played along, they were really tears of disappointment.

#56- Again, when I was 16, I also was privy to another scar. I decided that the ideal way to express my originality was to get my bellybutton pierced. Unfortunately for me, the fact that it was still relatively rare, and that I lived in a small town, meant there was only one possible body piercer in town. She was crude and tattoed, and told me, despite my insistence that I was not currently sexually active, that I would have to have sex doggy style for the next week.

She also used an earring gun on my belly button.
(Which soon afterwards became against piercing regulations.)
It hurt like hell.
And became an infected mess for nearly 6 months.
Once it healed, and I was able to proudly show my bejeweled navel at the beach, I was left with a little circular scar around the initial point of puncture.
The worst was that, by the next summer, every other girl had it done-- minus the telltale earring gun scar.

#57- I went through a rather unfortunate tomboy stage pre-adolescence, accompanied by the mandatory short, moppish haircut that belied my true gender until puberty reared its ugly head. The unfortunate aftermath of this phase was a number of highly unflattering family and school photos strewn about the house. My best friend, who also spent a year with an unseemly henna'd red mushroom cut, and I thus decided to make up a story about our adopted brothers, Pedro (me) and Raoul (her). We told anyone who asked that Raoul and Pedro were preferred to us, and we were thus shunned from family photos for a few year period. However, in the 7th grade (aka. when we both had moved onto badly applied makeup), Pedro and Raoul sadly were infected with rabies, and, in solidarity, jumped off a bridge.

This was all meant in fun, of course, but it was comical the one time a boy I was fiercely crushing on grew exceedingly silent when I solemnly told him the tale, and looked at me with such pity.

"I'm so sorry."
"Uhhhh... I was kidding. You know rabies is curable, right?"

Awkward.

#58- I believe that mashed potatoes are approximately equivalent to heaven. I had planned to make chicken satay last night, but a sudden mashed potato craving led me to taking the Duke and I out for dinner to a local pub merely because of their mashed potato side dish. It may be my destiny to die from carbohydrate induced shock.

#59- When I was 13, a friend and I made a pact to hold off on shaving her legs. She then broke that pact, but forbade me from doing the same. I think this was in part because she was highly invested in being the pretty one, and me remaining the dowdy sidekick. I hoarded razors, eagerly awaited her family holiday. When she returned, she bemoaned my now hairless legs, whining "They were so beautiful and feathery!"

Coincidentally, upon her absence, I also had my first "boyfriend" ever, who I secretly kissed in a tent, went to a hockey game with (eek! my first date!), and never saw again.

Essentially, I hurried through the steps of entering adolescence when she wasn't looking.