Wednesday, December 21, 2005

The Road not Taken

When I was but a lad I had a huge crush on a girl. Let’s call her Alison, mostly since that’s her real name and I can’t be bothered to think of a pseudonym for anyone right now. She was in the grade below me. She was also a cheerleader, but not the stuck up kind of cheerleader. She was just a delight to be around. Nice to everyone. People liked her, she was even nice to her little sister who followed Alison one grade below her. I think she also liked puppies.

Anyway, when I was a junior in high school, I was placed in the most advanced math class, and because this was rural Mississippi, a bunch of her classmates were also at the same math level, Algebra II. Technically, I had already done Algebra II the year before in California and was ready to move onto Trig., but remember, rural MS. Alison, the love of my life, though she knew it not, sat to my right. To my left sat another cheerleader, let’s call her Tammie, since that was her name, and behind me sat the lovely Jill (also her real live name). I sat in the front row, basically flanked by hotties. Kewl, as the kids say.

The only real problem was that the cheerleaders, while pretty intelligent people, had certain tendencies toward airheadness, as could be expected based solely on stereotype. They (especially Jill) were forever asking me questions. The nice thing was that Jill gave backrubs on occasion, so no complaints from Jon-boy on those days. I loved going to math, obviously, and not just because I’m a Math nerd kind of fellow. A) it was easy and I got good grades since I’d already had the material before, B) hotties C) more hotties and backrubs from a hottie. Duuuuude.

So one day my friends and I are sitting around and someone says how lucky I am to be surrounded by the hotness in math. I’m all, “Nyahh, dude, they just ask for all the answers. It sucks.” (Have to be cool around my buds, you know.) “You like that Alison chick, huh?” “Me? She’s cool, but nyahh.” (Again, cool was much more important than the facts).

“You should totally ask her out. I think she might like you.”

I’m going to omit a long series of “No way, Dude!” type sentences from the narrative here. But you can imagine.

Finally, I said, “I’ll ask Alison out if you ask out Tammie. And you,” pointing another dude-friend, “have to ask out Jill.” More “Dude!!!"-ing ensued, but that became the deal. We’d each ask out one of the hotties, once one of the rest of us did.

Which was perfect. Tammie was totally taken and Jill wasn’t allowed to date until she was 24, I think. (Strict as all get out father figure there, I believe). I had no intention of ever doing anything but stammering around Alison, so I was pretty much in the clear.

Then the very next stupid week, Tammie broke up with her beau. My friend Mike said that now was the time to strike. Or something like that. Somehow he convinced me that I should be the one to ask out Alison first and then the he and my other bud would follow suit. And to make the date seem more palatable to them we decided to present it as a large gathering of folks. The hotties and me and Mike and the other guy (who’s name sadly escapes me right now) would be on a triple date. The hotties wouldn’t be scared of our nebbish geekiness (though Mike wasn’t too bad and the other guy (let’s call him Todd), while not over blessed in the looks department and I say this as a pretty perfectly heterosexual guy, was pretty good looking), and maybe we could pull this off.

So I sat down that night with the school directory in my lap, phone in one hand and a bottle of Scotch in the other. OK, I didn’t really have a bottle of Scotch there for courage, but I certainly wished that I had. I did the whole thing where I dialed six digits of her phone number and then hung up. Then dialed all seven, but hung up before it could ring. Then let it ring once and hung up. (This was before the days of Caller-id, so Alison and her kin had no idea I was basically calling and hanging up, saints be praised).

Finally, I let it go all the way to someone answering the phone. I stuck to a script that I had written out on a yellow legal pad, “Hello, this is Jon. May I speak with Alison, please?”

She wasn’t there the first time I called. Got all worked up for nothing. But I was prepared for that contingency. (The legal pad had a flow chart, you see). “May I ask when she might be home?” and I was told to call back in an hour or so.

I was calling under the false pretense of needing Algebra II homework pages or some such. Then the plan was to move her somehow into the realm of talking about going out to eat with the other hotties and my homies. Yo.

No idea how I actually pulled it off. But one minute I was talking rather inanely about math and the next I was asking her to dinner with my krew. “It’s going to be fun, Mike and Todd and you and Tammie and Jill! And me.”

Miracle of miracles, she said yes. I’m so freaking smooth. Right after I got off the phone I screamed (not unlike a little girl) and called Mike and Todd and told them to get busy, ‘cause I had set it all up.

Problem was, they chickened out. They never called their assigned hotties and so the date never went anywhere. Though now that I give it some thought, it’s possible that they got turned down flat and just used the excuse of being too chicken as a cover. I could and should have just gone ahead and gone out with my hottie, but I had the sneaking suspicion that she had only agreed to go with me because she’d be surrounded by her gal pals and they’d be able to overpower us if things got too geeky for them.

But I did become better friends with her. So much so that one day she expressed her desire to go out with a very large boy named Frankie. Frankie was on the football team and had the whitest smile you’ve ever seen on a teenager. That he could smash a beer can on his forehead just made him that much cooler. I was friends with Frankie. I had actually made a point of being friends with all the largest football players I could. I knew the story of the Mouse and the Lion with a thorn in his paw pretty well. Specifically, I’d help Frankie with chemistry, but on this one occasion I helped him in the amour dept. as well.

You see, early that month Frankie had expressed to me, through a series of grunts and gestures, that he found the lovely Alison delectable and that he’d like to go out with her. Though I still did hold a torch for Alison and was kind of afraid of Frankie, I wasn’t exactly sure what to do.

I told Frankie that he really should ask Alison out and he did and they became the cutest couple you ever did see and they went to prom that year (Frankie and I were Seniors by this time) and last I heard Frankie married Alison a few years after that. I warned him before he asked her out that he better treat her right, though. Yes, little scrawny Jon, standing up for his woman’s honor.

All in all, though I kind of wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t chickened out and called Alison up after my buds went down in flames and said, “Hey, Alison, the big date thing won’t be happening, would you still like to go with me to dinner?”

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Holy Crap! Look at all this STUFF down here. It's awesome!

 

Really, I'm glad you made it down here. Almost no one ever comes down here. I'm like in a freaking dungeon down here. I get lonely. But not you. YOU made it all the way to the end of the page. For this I think I've a little crush on you. I don't know, is "love" to strong a word to use in this situation? Well, if it's not "love," then it's very strong "like." I'm totally in like with you for coming down here. You are awesome. Please love me back! I know, I know, I shouldn't be all needy, it's not attractive at all, but you don't know how it is to be stuck down here. Who scrolls all the way to the end of a page anymore these days? Anyway, thanks for shedding some light down here in the depths. I appreciate it. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a dollar, OK?

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