A lot of years, I miss this date, I think about it afterwards, but today I happened to be paying attention to the calendar, so I thought about it all day. Okay, not all day. Just when I had some down time (like in the car).
So what happened Feb. 23, 2000 at 9:30 or 10:30? A cute story. My high school boyfriend officially asked me to be his girlfriend. I don't even talk to the guy anymore, or really think about him, but I happen to know all of the anniversary dates of my major relationships, and he was the first one. You never really forget the first.
Feb. 23 used to make me cringe. The breakup (and the last several months of the relationship) were kind of ugly, as teenage love gone wrong tends to be. Okay, they were really ugly. I spent most of my time pining after another guy (or two) that I could never have and wanting to stab my boyfriend with pointy sticks. He felt the same way about me (pretty much). So that's never a good thing. We were one of those super annoying old married couples in high school, the ones who SWORE to anyone who would listen that we were going to be together FOREVER.
Feb. 23, 2001? I got a diamond ring. It wasn't spendy or anything, but it still meant we were pre-engaged. After the initial "You know you're seventeen and you're COMPLETELY INSANE, right?" people started to believe it. We were together a year and a half before we finally admitted that we absolutely hated this relationship. People were shocked. My mother cried. She thought she had a son. My dad rolled his eyes and said "what made you think they were going to get married? I knew they weren't." Hehe my dad always tried to be the voice of reason in that relationship, but my mom wanted to believe in high school love. So did I. I mean, I was seventeen. I knew EVERYTHING. Or so I thought.
So after it failed and I had to eat my pride with a rusty fork and no salt, I did not want to think about Feb. 23. Every time I heard our song on the radio ("Amazed" by Lonestar--that was everyone's song who started dating Jan-March of 2000!) I wanted to bash my face into the steering wheel. I used to like that song so much, too, it was a great power ballad, which makes it so hard to turn off. After awhile, I changed the words to something like "every time our eyes meet, this feeling inside me, makes me want to vomit on your face."
Side note: if you're in high school and you're picking a song for you and your boyfriend/girlfriend, don't make it a song you really, really like. Because you'll probably break up, and then you can never listen to that song the same way again.
But now, that we are officially 12 years out (ugh, 12 years ago was high school???) it doesn't bother me so much. I can look back at it and go, oh that was cute! Kind of. Sure, a lot of our relationship was totally cringe-worthy (the crap we told each other, ugh, I can't think about it, and it made it pretty hard for us to be friends many years later, more on that in a bit) but it was a cute high school romance. At least, that day. Before we (I) went totally off the deep end and decided we were getting married. (Honestly I don't remember whose idea it was first, at least, out loud).
We were juniors, and we had been hanging out for about a month. We had the same group of friends at that point. I had kind of floated around from group to group, being a new kid I could get away with this, and after Christmas starting spending a lot more time with this group. He claimed that he'd noticed me practically the first day of school, however, or at least the first football game. I kind of noticed him sometime that winter, I think. The sad part is, our last names varied by about four letters, which meant we were locker mates. So I was inches from him for several months without us ever really crossing paths (or at least me remembering it.) Some high school couples shared lockers? There was no need to for us. Our entire high school careers we were smack next to each other any time our class was put in alphabetical order (yearbooks, lockers, seating). We even graduated next to each other. Ick.
Anyway, that semester, (the first of the new millenium!) we ended up having history class together. Along with my then-best friend. You know how jealous girls can be in high school, and how possessive of their friends...she's thinking we have this class together and can hang out with each other and suddenly all my attention is on a guy (one that she went to the fall dance with AS FRIENDS) and she doesn't have any prospects...it didn't go over well. So it was a weird love triangle for a long time. Oh, teenagers. Everything is such a BIG DEAL. So much drama.
I realize at this point that our history teacher was really, really cool. Because he put up with the three of us passing notes back and forth (boyfriend sat next to me, best friend sat behind me) all semester. And we weren't exactly discrete about it. No, there was no texting, this was old fashioned paper messaging. Only my boyfriend had a cell phone at that time. There was still land-line drama.
So we'd been flirting heavily and hanging out a lot since January, and I was really hoping that Valentine's Day would be THE DAY that he finally asked me to be his girlfriend. I even remember what I was wearing--black flared pants, a red v-neck t-shirt (those kind with the double front so there was no seam at the collar that were so popular in 99-00??? You remember???? You know you do.) and a white cardigan. Totally ready for Valentine's Day. And...he didn't ask me. We went to Bruggers after school with our friends like always. Totally not special. The weird part was, I'd gotten three flowers (our school did carnations: red for love, pink for crush, and white for friends.) Two pink and one white. White was from best friend, obviously. One pink was from my soon to be boyfriend, which he admitted. And the third was a secret admirer. Never found out who that was. So weird. I accused all my friends of doing it as a joke, but they were just as baffled as I. Plus the handwriting was bad (not on purpose) and obviously male.
I was so bummed though, that I didn't have a boyfriend on Valentine's Day. You know, thinking back, I'm not sure that the boyfriend did get me a flower. Maybe it was only two. I think that maybe he was thinking about it, but decided the flowers were dumb. We obviously already knew we liked each other, we spent all our time together. So he really felt like an idiot when I got one from some random guy, and not him. I seem to remember now that was how it went down.
Back to the point--we were in history class exactly one week later--Feb. 23--and passing notes back and forth when he officially asked me to be his girlfriend. Turned out he thought Feb. 14 was just a little too soon, we needed another week apparently. He wanted to make it exactly a month that we'd been "officially" hanging out. I remember writing yes!!!!! on the piece of notebook paper, and immediately looking at the clock above the door so I'd always remember the exact minute he asked me.
Huh, yeah, that worked out real well. Maybe if we'd stayed together, I'd remember the exact time? I decided to look in my planner to see if I wrote it down (I always save my planners from each school year because I didn't use them for homework, I used them as diaries).
Nope. I wrote down (in pink ink no less) "Well, everyone thought we were going out, but we formally decided to be B/F G/F today!" and drew a bunch of hearts in gold ink. My friends and I were crazy for gel pens. Crazy.
But oh, this planner. It makes me laugh every time. I wish I could post a picture but I am too lazy to take out my camera and upload one. For the entire first two weeks of February, my best friend and I were fighting (about various things, including my soon to be boyfriend) and I wrote "still mad" on every day in those two weeks.
My planner also confirms that my second guess at the flower scenario was right--I did only get two flowers on Valentine's Day. And it was not exactly a week later that we started dating, it was 9 days. Valentine's was Monday, Feb. 23 was Wednesday. I know, because it really matters, right? I also see that I forced him to watch home movies one Sunday afternoon. Oh for shame. Generally no one wants to see your home movies. No one. Except your parents, which is why they shot them in the first place.
Man, this planner is like a book of embarrassing secrets. Good thing it never fell into the wrong hands. All my crushes are written all over it--with days I saw them and what we did, etc. I wish I could say that behavior changed when I got to college...but it didn't.
I also found my schedule from that fateful quarter/semester. My locker was 845D, which would have made my boyfriend's 844D. I had American History first period (which means likely 9:30 is the right time, or possibly even 8:30), Sculpture second period, Advanced English third period, and Computer Essentials period four. (Woodbury only had 4 classes a day at that time, each 90 minutes).
Ah, computer essentials. We were supposed to be learning the Microsoft Office Suite, but instead we learned how to illegally download songs on Napster (remember Napster???!?!) and hack into people's email accounts. Okay, the teacher didn't teach us any of that. That was all bonus from my classmates. He didn't each us much MS Office either, in fact I think we were handed instruction booklets and left to figure it out, which left so much more time for illegal downloading and hacking.
I also found: my fourth quarter schedule, some computer essentials assignments I printed out; several ads for nail polish colors I wanted (all pink); a good luck card from my friend when I tried out for the dance team; a Valentine from same friend; an overdue book notice for the book "I Love You, Am I Trapped Forever?" (ooo, what an ominous premonition!); a detention slip from my English teacher Mrs. Stinger for being late to class (too busy making out with boyfriend in hallway); a fortune cookie slip from a fortune cookie my boyfriend gave me (he made it in cooking class along with cream cheese wontons and we ate them all in one sitting and got sick).
And the piece de la resistnace: a slip we had to fill out for the yearbook (or newspaper?) about our likes and dislikes. Obviously I never handed it in, since I still have it! I described my personality as crazy (understatement of the year), talked about staying in bed as long as possible in the morning (question was what do you always do before you start your day), most embarrassing moment was when a friend wrote a love letter to my crush and signed my name to it in 8th grade (hmm, I don't even remember that!), I hated it when sophomores ruined things for everyone, hated when guys acted so horny, if I could give the opposite sex one piece of advice it would be grow up, if I could change one thing about high school I would let juniors go off campus for lunch too (only seniors could). My favorites: clothing was Delilas, TV show was Popular, sport was dance team, movie was Titanic, and perfume/colonge was CK One/CK Be. Does that ever scream late 90s, or what?
It does make me think of perspective, though. Sometimes you look back at a time in your life and think you were soooo happy, and everything was perfect; or you look back and think it was the worst ever. Then you read a diary and realize everything wasn't perfect (you were fighting with your friends all the time) or it really wasn't that bad (your crush told you he didn't like you.) You forget how much drama there was, then realize that the drama wasn't anything that actually mattered. Sometimes you wish that you could go back and shake yourself (this is not bad--wait until you're 27 and broke and don't know how you're going to pay your rent or EAT!) Sometimes you want to go back and shake yourself from a situation that you thought was really good at the time but you know will turn out horrible in the end.
Most of the time, I wish I could go back to my eleventh grade self and tell her to go ahead and date that guy, but keep it casual and move on after a few months. Date other people. Have more experiences in high school than just him. Make more friends! I just saw most of my high school classmates at our reunion in November. They are such cool people, and I wish I would have gotten to know more of them in high school instead of sticking with the same bunch the whole time. Fortunately, I have Facebook now, where I can keep in contact with them instead of waiting for the next reunion to come around.
So younger kids, take that for what you will. I hope my daughter (and other future kids not in the world yet) will listen to me someday when she's in high school and thinks this is the end of the world.
It's not. Something else to my eleventh grade self (and I've probably said this in other posts) is everything will turn out all right in the end. I still need to remind myself of that some days, even staring down 30 :)
p.s. I never mentioned what happened with my ex and I trying to be friends. I'm pretty sure I've talked about it in other posts (like the 9/11 one?). Anyway. I don't recommend it, even five years out. We still knew way too much about each other, and we could only have a good few hours together before fighting about stupid stuff that happened in high school. Maybe ten years out we're mature enough to let it all go? I'll probably never know, even though we live only a mile apart right now(just like in high school!). Which makes life all the stranger...
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Look Out...Pregnant Woman Loose On The Internet!
Okay, tomorrow I am 18 weeks along, and definitely feeling better again. Like myself. But very, very opinionated and with a short fuse. The sickness was apparently replaced with sudden annoyance at everything and everyone! Yikes. I was going to try to stay off my blog, but hey, that's what the Internet is for, right? To post angry thoughts directed a cyber space? So the question is--did you make my sh*t list? Read on to find out...and brace yourself.
People That Live In Minnesota (and the general north) And Hate Snow:
Okay, seriously. Look around you. Check your GPS coordinates. You know what country are close to up here? No, it's not Mexico. It's CANADA, mother f---ers! CANADA! Which is not known for its tropical temperatures! They don't call it the Arctic Tunda for nothing. So you live next to Canada. That means in October--May, we should not be surprised when it snows. And we should not whine and complain when it does (or say how much we love it when it does not.) If you really hate winter that much, here's a really simple solution. MOVE!!!!!!!
Teen Mom 2:
I don't watch this show with a whole lot of regularity, so I'm not sure of everyone's names. But that Joe kid who is dating the blond girl, who is whining that he has to pay child support? GET OVER IT! You created a child. She's let you off the hook this long without paying a dime, and you live with your mother f---ing parents and she's on her own. Grow a pair. Funny thing about kids, is when you make one, you have to pay for it. If you didn't want to pay for child support, then you should have kept your dick in your pants!
Janelle...wow. I have almost no words. That idiot you call a boyfriend is using you. He's a manipulative loser. I know because I've dated one. WALK AWAY. But you never do, every time he says he wants you back you just go crawling back, even though he's abusive. Seriously. You probably don't care because all you want to do is smoke weed. I feel bad for your son, you've got to be somewhere on the list of The Worst Mothers Ever.
True Life: I'm A Sex Offender:
I am all about forgiving people that make a mistake once. Who hasn't screwed up once? Who hasn't driven drunk or done drugs or had sex with a fourteen year old? The thing is, when you make the same mistake twice, you're just an idiot. This eighteen year old kid had sex with his fifteen year old girlfriend, then they broke up and he got arrested. Okay, you made a naughty. You learned your lesson, right? Wrong. He turned around the next year and fooled around with a fourteen year old. With his dick. He got caught. Now, I don't feel bad for you. Now you're just an idiot. But now I know about the punishments for sex offenders. And the sad thing is, they're good for real sex offenders, who probably never follow them because they're bad people and they don't care. But when you've an 18 year old who had sex with his fifteen year old girlfriend, they're way to strict. This kid is following the sentence because he doesn't want to get in trouble again. That's not fair. Something needs to change.
Packer Fans:
It's funny to me that the Packer fans spent two seasons ripping on everyone else's football team, tooting their own horns. But as soon as they lose, (and they can't even admit that it was in the first round, because it wasn't a wild card game--seriously that's lame. It was their first playoff game and they blew it. Get over it) they can't stand to have anyone else making fun of them. So you can dish out all the crap you want, but you can't take it back? Grow a pair.
Lauren Scruggs:
This one is touchy, because everyone seems to feel really bad for this girl. And I admit, she seems like a really nice girl. I almost feel bad for writing this. Almost. If you're not sure who I'm talking about, she's the model/blogger who walked into a moving plane propeller. Google it. I felt bad for her at first, but at the same time I was going "who is stupid enough to walk into a moving plane propeller?" She is, apparently. Isn't this a common sense thing? It's not like she's five years old. This plane has a propeller on the front. That is how it flies. It doesn't fly on wishes and rainbows. So when the plane is running, I should stay far away from the propeller and the front of the plane. Isn't that how someone with half a brain would think? And now we find out that the pilot TOLD her to walk around the back of the plane, actually reached out of the window of the plane and grabbed her arm and told her to stay away from that propeller! How much more does a person need? This isn't like a hot stove when you're a kid "don't touch, that's hot!" and you touch it anyway and get a painful blister. She lost an eye and an arm. Did she really have to learn that lesson the hard way? Couldn't she just have listened to the pilot and common sense? But I guess not everyone has common sense. That's why there are democrats, right?
Paula Dean:
I am so horrified that everyone is so angry at this woman for hiding the fact that she has type 2 diabetes. SO WHAT? She made her lifestyle choices, she never put a gun to anyone's head and said "eat my food every single day." The common sense thing plays in here again. Obviously her food is not the healthiest. She's not telling you to eat it all the time, you have to figure out that you shouldn't eat it every day. But we live in a society that lives on fast food--McDonalds, and I'm not even going to tell you what I learned about mechanically separated chicken parts yesterday. Let's just say even if I could eat chicken nuggets and patties, I would not. Tonight, the Travel Channel had a special called "State Fair Food." Pretty much everything was deep fried. There was deep fried beer, deep fried bacon, Krispy Kreme cheeseburger with chocolate bacon, and even deep fried butter! And people are mad at Paula Dean? Americans are fat, sick and lazy! So why are we coming down on Paula Dean for having a fattening cooking show? You bunch of hypocrites!!! Stop blaming everyone else for your problems and look down your own damn pie hole! No one is force feeding you. The government could probably stop this but they want everyone sick and dead so they don't care. And honestly, I don't want them to stop this because they need to stay out of our lives. People need to start making their own decisions. The joke that is the FDA needs to start doing it's job. I'm not even going to get into it, because it would take another blog, but our FDA is terrible. Cook your own food and use your stupid brain!
American Idol & Jersey Shore:
Die. Seriously. I hate you. AI is old and tired and sad. No one cares anymore. Jersey Shore is a picture of everything that is wrong with this country. It has made me never, ever want to visit the east coast. They're like orange animals. Can we please go back to sitcoms? Where we're not just relying on putting people who hate each other together to make drama? Yes it can be a guilty pleasure, but it really is lazy. There's tons of people in Hollywood who want to be writers. Can someone please write something that is better than this crap? Like House. I love House. And supposedly it's not coming back. Sad days.
SOPA:
Yet another reason for me to write this post. Because if this bill goes through, I might not be able to? The government could shut down my blog with no rhyme or reason if it feels as though I am using material that is pirated? That's a lot of crap. No one wants their stuff stolen, I get that, but this is way too far. Once again the government needs to stay the f-- out of it.
My Husband:
Who right now thinks he knows everything. Just kidding, sweetie. But seriously. Shut up.
And now, to balance this out a bit, a few of the things I love:
Skittles
Olives
House (Dr. Greg House is hot)
NY Ink (I love Chris Torres and Meghan Massacre together. I want more about this relationship (or lack their of? Can we please answer this?))
My dog
My computer
Writing
My job
The Oatmeal
and Three Lakes, of course!
People That Live In Minnesota (and the general north) And Hate Snow:
Okay, seriously. Look around you. Check your GPS coordinates. You know what country are close to up here? No, it's not Mexico. It's CANADA, mother f---ers! CANADA! Which is not known for its tropical temperatures! They don't call it the Arctic Tunda for nothing. So you live next to Canada. That means in October--May, we should not be surprised when it snows. And we should not whine and complain when it does (or say how much we love it when it does not.) If you really hate winter that much, here's a really simple solution. MOVE!!!!!!!
Teen Mom 2:
I don't watch this show with a whole lot of regularity, so I'm not sure of everyone's names. But that Joe kid who is dating the blond girl, who is whining that he has to pay child support? GET OVER IT! You created a child. She's let you off the hook this long without paying a dime, and you live with your mother f---ing parents and she's on her own. Grow a pair. Funny thing about kids, is when you make one, you have to pay for it. If you didn't want to pay for child support, then you should have kept your dick in your pants!
Janelle...wow. I have almost no words. That idiot you call a boyfriend is using you. He's a manipulative loser. I know because I've dated one. WALK AWAY. But you never do, every time he says he wants you back you just go crawling back, even though he's abusive. Seriously. You probably don't care because all you want to do is smoke weed. I feel bad for your son, you've got to be somewhere on the list of The Worst Mothers Ever.
True Life: I'm A Sex Offender:
I am all about forgiving people that make a mistake once. Who hasn't screwed up once? Who hasn't driven drunk or done drugs or had sex with a fourteen year old? The thing is, when you make the same mistake twice, you're just an idiot. This eighteen year old kid had sex with his fifteen year old girlfriend, then they broke up and he got arrested. Okay, you made a naughty. You learned your lesson, right? Wrong. He turned around the next year and fooled around with a fourteen year old. With his dick. He got caught. Now, I don't feel bad for you. Now you're just an idiot. But now I know about the punishments for sex offenders. And the sad thing is, they're good for real sex offenders, who probably never follow them because they're bad people and they don't care. But when you've an 18 year old who had sex with his fifteen year old girlfriend, they're way to strict. This kid is following the sentence because he doesn't want to get in trouble again. That's not fair. Something needs to change.
Packer Fans:
It's funny to me that the Packer fans spent two seasons ripping on everyone else's football team, tooting their own horns. But as soon as they lose, (and they can't even admit that it was in the first round, because it wasn't a wild card game--seriously that's lame. It was their first playoff game and they blew it. Get over it) they can't stand to have anyone else making fun of them. So you can dish out all the crap you want, but you can't take it back? Grow a pair.
Lauren Scruggs:
This one is touchy, because everyone seems to feel really bad for this girl. And I admit, she seems like a really nice girl. I almost feel bad for writing this. Almost. If you're not sure who I'm talking about, she's the model/blogger who walked into a moving plane propeller. Google it. I felt bad for her at first, but at the same time I was going "who is stupid enough to walk into a moving plane propeller?" She is, apparently. Isn't this a common sense thing? It's not like she's five years old. This plane has a propeller on the front. That is how it flies. It doesn't fly on wishes and rainbows. So when the plane is running, I should stay far away from the propeller and the front of the plane. Isn't that how someone with half a brain would think? And now we find out that the pilot TOLD her to walk around the back of the plane, actually reached out of the window of the plane and grabbed her arm and told her to stay away from that propeller! How much more does a person need? This isn't like a hot stove when you're a kid "don't touch, that's hot!" and you touch it anyway and get a painful blister. She lost an eye and an arm. Did she really have to learn that lesson the hard way? Couldn't she just have listened to the pilot and common sense? But I guess not everyone has common sense. That's why there are democrats, right?
Paula Dean:
I am so horrified that everyone is so angry at this woman for hiding the fact that she has type 2 diabetes. SO WHAT? She made her lifestyle choices, she never put a gun to anyone's head and said "eat my food every single day." The common sense thing plays in here again. Obviously her food is not the healthiest. She's not telling you to eat it all the time, you have to figure out that you shouldn't eat it every day. But we live in a society that lives on fast food--McDonalds, and I'm not even going to tell you what I learned about mechanically separated chicken parts yesterday. Let's just say even if I could eat chicken nuggets and patties, I would not. Tonight, the Travel Channel had a special called "State Fair Food." Pretty much everything was deep fried. There was deep fried beer, deep fried bacon, Krispy Kreme cheeseburger with chocolate bacon, and even deep fried butter! And people are mad at Paula Dean? Americans are fat, sick and lazy! So why are we coming down on Paula Dean for having a fattening cooking show? You bunch of hypocrites!!! Stop blaming everyone else for your problems and look down your own damn pie hole! No one is force feeding you. The government could probably stop this but they want everyone sick and dead so they don't care. And honestly, I don't want them to stop this because they need to stay out of our lives. People need to start making their own decisions. The joke that is the FDA needs to start doing it's job. I'm not even going to get into it, because it would take another blog, but our FDA is terrible. Cook your own food and use your stupid brain!
American Idol & Jersey Shore:
Die. Seriously. I hate you. AI is old and tired and sad. No one cares anymore. Jersey Shore is a picture of everything that is wrong with this country. It has made me never, ever want to visit the east coast. They're like orange animals. Can we please go back to sitcoms? Where we're not just relying on putting people who hate each other together to make drama? Yes it can be a guilty pleasure, but it really is lazy. There's tons of people in Hollywood who want to be writers. Can someone please write something that is better than this crap? Like House. I love House. And supposedly it's not coming back. Sad days.
SOPA:
Yet another reason for me to write this post. Because if this bill goes through, I might not be able to? The government could shut down my blog with no rhyme or reason if it feels as though I am using material that is pirated? That's a lot of crap. No one wants their stuff stolen, I get that, but this is way too far. Once again the government needs to stay the f-- out of it.
My Husband:
Who right now thinks he knows everything. Just kidding, sweetie. But seriously. Shut up.
And now, to balance this out a bit, a few of the things I love:
Skittles
Olives
House (Dr. Greg House is hot)
NY Ink (I love Chris Torres and Meghan Massacre together. I want more about this relationship (or lack their of? Can we please answer this?))
My dog
My computer
Writing
My job
The Oatmeal
and Three Lakes, of course!
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