I Love you and Other Stupid Things men Say

12:21 PM

I should offer two warnings to begin. One, to my parents, I’m about to talk about boys. Two to the men reading, there will later be a post titled “I’m Listening and Other Conniving Things Women Say.”

I think we should start at the beginning. In kindergarten while the girls were chasing the boys, I was hanging upside down on the monkey bars with them. My brother and I are close enough in age that we played together all the time. It just seemed that all boys should be as fun and cool as him. Alas, not so. My first introduction to other boys landed me a time out at recess with a bag of ice to my busted lip. The cute brown-haired boy punched me.
Maybe, that’s a little too far back.
One of my first “boyfriends” was in middle school. I was a bit of a late bloomer and most boys still didn’t really keep my interest in that way. I had crushes of course, but I could take or leave the opposite sex. Maybe my standards were just too high even then. Chris was dating my friend Lindsay. They held hands, went to movies, and played put-put. For whatever reason, they got bored and went their separate ways. Lindsay in her infinite wisdom said Chris should ask me out. I shrugged my shoulders and said OK. Why not? He gave me a bouquet of daffodils in a Pepsi can one day. It was sweet but what was I to do with them at school? I put them in my locker and they died by the end of the day. My locker and all surrounding ones reaked of dead flowers.
I love that in our middle school the true sign of a relationship always centered around two things. Either you held hands with this person at ALL times, or you were a piece of possibly bad costume jewelry the other had given you. I may have lived in a town of late bloomers.
Let’s skip ahead to my freshman year, where I had my first kiss and first “I love you.” Stupid boy.
I knew Josh years earlier when he both attended a day care, which may have possibly been the worst in the state. I’m not lying here. The paper even wrote about them. It was a good southern day care, with good southern women, who believed spanking still had it’s place in discipline, whether they were their own children or not. Josh was three years older than I was, and even at that time, I thought he was one of the biggest dorks ever. We didn’t see each other for a few years. Puberty seemed to help both our outlooks, and in the end, I thought he was somewhat hot. Now I know I really just thought he looked a whole let better, and that seemed good enough. He broke up with a neighbor friend of mine and two weeks after homecoming, he was holding my hand in the halls. If my first boyfriends hadn’t had such sweaty hands, I might find the act more bearable. Some director – sorry, I don’t remember – decided to redo Hitchcock’s masterpiece, Psycho. I don’t remember, because the parts I did see weren’t that great, and the experience of seeing the movie in general left a sour taste in my mouth. Josh ruined that movie for at least three people opening night: me, and my two friends who came along as a double date. One friend still brings this up on random occasions.
Within the first few scenes of the movie, Josh was trying out his moves. He wasn’t clever, just the basics of the arm around the shoulder and the slow moving in to test his limits.
“Shit,” I thought. “He’s going to kiss me now?!” I really wanted to see the movie. I like Hitchcock films.
But there it was. His big face and wet lips pushing me back. The entire time I should have been thinking about what I was supposed to be doing. It’s not as if you really get lessons in this. However, I think he should have had lessons. All I could think was, “Really?! This is what I’ve been waiting for? What the hell?” A peck from my boyfriend in middle school playing spin the bottle was more entertaining than this.
He pulled away and tried his best to have this proud smile. It reminded me of a cheesy 80’s teen drama. Spot on John Hughes, spot on.
Before I could see the poor blond step into the dreaded shower scene, he was on me again. I remember trying to pull away from him to catch some air. I had sat in the seat against the wall though and there really wasn’t anywhere to go. I sunk down in my chair to get away but this apparently gave him the wrong idea. He just kept coming. I remember thinking that he probably was a good swimmer. Twenty minutes later - my friends had decided to time it from the save the distance they had moved to – he stopped. I breathed a huge sigh of relieve and began to think of a subtle way to wipe his slobber off my mouth. He sat back smug in his chair as the crowd discovered the lonely inn keeper was also the lonely inn keeper’s mother. “We all go a little crazy sometime.”
A few days later, he passed me a note. I waited to read it when I got to class. “I know it seems too soon, and you don’t have to reply if you don’t want to. But I love you.” Thank god, it was a note. If he would have said it to my face, I don’t think I could have hidden my emotions. I was confused and a little angry that we throw this on me so soon. It had to be lie, or at least some line he thought would convince me of other things. Being young and stupid though, I would later reply. Wasn’t that what I supposed to do? Of course, as soon as I said it I knew it wasn’t right.
He would have almost gotten away with the entire routine except one important thing. A year after I decided he really was a bad kisser and just lame, my best friend came to me. “Would you mind if I went out with him?”
“Knock yourself out. Why should I care?” And really why should I care? It’s high school. Even then, I knew the statistics of how many high school sweet hearts actually stayed together through college and beyond.
Men, well boys, should know that girls ALWAYS talk. And sadly, good girl friends talk about everything, sometimes too much. I think for a little while there, she stayed with him just too check if he would use the same pattern as with me. He said he loved her. He wined and dined her, brought her flowers, and unfortunately left her wanting to wipe her mouth after every kiss.
This led to both my girlfriend and I to make an almost unspoken pact. You always upgrade.

…….