An old memory flashed through my head today as I was taking a shit at work(although not a required piece of information for this story, it’s where I do my best thinking). Back in 7th grade I met a girl. She was born on the same day I was, some thirteen hours before me. Her name was Gina. She was my first girlfriend. Obviously, at 13 years old, it wasn’t any kind of real relationship, but that’s sort of the point at that age. She was the babysitter for my little sisters when I was not available. We met, and begun hanging out, when we were both scheduled for babysitting duty. We watched some t.v. and played Spy Hunter on my sweet Apple IIGS computer. We talked on the phone everyday, even went as far as exchanging Christmas presents – she got me ‘Too Hot for Love’ and ‘Theatre of Pain’ by Motley Crue, I made her a copy of MC Hammer’s ‘Hammer Please Don’t Hurt ‘em’ I know, I was lame, she was cool. So a few weeks of this passes and it’s glorious. Until the mixer.
Oh God.
Remember those? Where the girls all dance like crazy little fools and the guys are over in the gym playing basketball or whatever else prepubescent boys do – the “cool” boys are dancing with the girls, but I certainly wasn’t one of those guys. So, Gina comes up to me on the basketball court with a herd of her friends and simply states, “the next slow song, we’re going to dance.” A deer in headlights I am. It’s like I had lost the ability to do anything at all. I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, couldn’t do anything but stand there. I’m frozen with fright and nervousness. I mumble a non committal response, which is taken as a yes, and she walks away. She exits the gym and I unfreeze. What the hell am I supposed to do? I hate crappy music, I hate dancing, and I’m not really all that comfortable around girls. I mean, I did go head bang to Motley Crue for a bit, but that’s about as much dancing as I was doing then. Well, the current song that was playing ends. Fortunately, the next one is the B-52s doing ‘Loveshack’ or something equally cheesy. I’ve got a few minutes that I don’t have to think about dancing. With a girl. To crappy music. I can only assume that the guys reading this have some idea of what I’m talking about because I cannot begin to explain what I was feeling at that point in time. It was like everything nerve wracking that had ever taken place was waiting to happen again. I was devastated.
Then it was time….
As the slow song started, I panicked. I headed out of the gym, making my way towards the bathroom, trying to stall or avoid the inevitable. In order to get to the bathroom though, I had to walk by one of the entrances to the other side of the gym, where the dance was taking place. Oh boy, gotta make this quick and smooth. I slid past the door, and for a moment thought I was home free. “Dave!” Oh shit. Damn it. Now I’ve got to dance. I turn around and there she is, with her herd en tow. This strikes me as a little odd, but I respond. Hey, how’s it going? Nervously. Then I notice the look in her eye. That look is accusing me of ditching out on our dance. I make some lame excuse about how I had to hit the bathroom and I’d be back to dance. She doesn’t buy it at all.
“We’re breaking up.”
She lifts her chin – her friends all follow her action, and takes off back into the gym. I’m left standing there, still in shock over the whole ordeal. So much stress for such a dumb little dance. I turn heel and make for the bathroom – I actually had to go now. After spending a few minutes in the bathroom composing myself for next contact, I head back towards the gym. A girl stops me in the hall, apparently she’d seen the whole thing, and asked if I was okay. I said yeah – because I was, I felt better than I had all night – and went back to join my pals playing basketball (this girl, strangely enough, I would have a crush on through early high school though I never did work up the balls to ask her out. What can I say I’m a chicken).
I get back to the gym and all my friends want to know what happened, so I relay the story, and they’re upset for me. It was nice to hear them say they had my back. Shit, I was happier not to deal with the stress anyways. A bit later, some of my friends leave the gym. Hey, where’d you guys go? They blow it off, they went to get a drink, to the bathroom, outside, no big deal. Okay, fine. So we get tired of basketball and decide to go run around the school. As we’re walking out of the gym and head past the dancehall, Gina’s pals stop us. In unison, “Hey Dave, piss off!” arms raised in a “flick off pose” minus the finger, and they walk away(I don’t actually remember now what exactly they said, but it was along those lines). At this point all of my friends break out laughing and mocking the girls. I turn around, confused as to what had just happened. I ask them what the hell that was, like when you see somebody just go off the handlebars for no apparent reason, and they begin to explain. Apparently, when they were “out getting a drink” they had all gone up to Gina and said, “Hey Gina, HONK HONK!!” while grabbing their crotches on the honks. I lost it. I couldn’t believe they’d do something like that, especially without me. I about died laughing. We tore off into the school and terrorized lockers for awhile.
That night went from awful to great all because of those guys. I still call those guys my friends and hang out with almost all of them on a regular basis. I’ve always known I’ve had great friends, but sometimes they still do things that surprise me. That was one of those times when I realized how good of friends I really had. And still do.
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