Wednesday, June 20, 2007

The One Time I Was a Part of the “Cool” Kids Crowd

Let me tell you a story from my past.

Back in the day I was a scrawny kid. I’ve filled out nicely now that I’m officially 40 and all and I weigh 576 pounds, but back in early high school, I had zero meat on my bones.

Which meant that I wasn’t on the swim team. Being on the swim team at my high school was an excellent place to be. We didn’t even have the best team, but all the cool kids were on the swim team, and they threw the BEST end of the season party.

So I had a dilemma, I very much wanted to go to the Big Bash end of the season party, but I was very much not swim team material. Not only did I not have much in the way of muscles, but I was a lousy swimmer. I still am a pretty pathetic swimmer. To this day, I can’t do the Australian Crawl. I just can’t get the “turn your head and breath in rhythm with your arms” thing to work for me. Seriously, it’s quite comical to watch me try and swim. I tend to flail about and people start shouting, “are you OK?” and they inevitably toss me a life preserver, just to be on the safe side. And forget the butterfly stroke, that requires even more coordination. I can do the back stroke (except the flip turns, people end up throwing me a life vest when I try those flip turn things as well) and the breast stroke was also out back then, because the team had an excellent breast-stroker (heh, he said breast-stroker) and we mustn’t forget that I didn’t have enough meat on my bones to get across the pool.

And I had a crush on this one girl (name completely forgotten now), who was an excellent swimmer and was on the JV team. So I pretty much desperately wanted to get close to the swim team, since I could be near her and have the possibility of getting stoned at the infamous swim team party.

What? I was young and stupid and it’s hard to think with all those unfamiliar hormones floating around in your system. It’s amazing I even graduated and ever became semi-productive, my friends.

Anyway, I discovered a small loophole in the grand caste system of the swim team hierarchy. If you were a timer for the swim team, you’d get invited to the Big Party. The timer’s job was to hold a stopwatch during practice and time people. Not a difficult job, which was good because it was hard to think while actually doing the job.

You see, the OTHER benefit of being “on the team” (timers were included on the team, unofficially and for party purposes of course and you’d get your picture in the yearbook, too) was that you got to be dressed in street clothes and be near all those girls in swimsuits. For hours at a time, every afternoon.

Not so stupid now, am I?

So every afternoon after tennis practice (I was on the tennis team, I sucked, but that’s a whole ‘nother story), I’d trot over to the pool and ogle girls and click my stop watch. And shout encouragement, of course, that was the other part of my job. And keep track of people’s best times and their splits and all that. I had a clipboard and everything. Imagine a rail thin dorky blond kid with glasses, a slight overbite, a clipboard and a plaid flannel shirt and you’d have me in all my 15 year old glory.

That was possibly the best time of my young life. Had all the time in the world, high school was easy and I got to see girls in swimsuits every afternoon. Not to be too puerile about it, but please understand, this was the early 80s, and seeing nearly nekkid women folk was almost impossible. It’s not like there was an IntarWeb, chock full of that stuff, you know.

Anyway, I told you that stuff up there so I could tell you this stuff:

The year rolled on and we came to the last meet of the year. The party was planned and I’d been given my sacred “Shee-yah, dude, you should totally come, it’s going to be a trip, man” invitation. Plus, I got thrown in the pool, which was some kind of right of passage as well. The coaches and all the other people (like timers), who got to stay dressed during practice and meets were tossed in the pool with their street clothes on. I tried to give my standard excuse for why I shouldn’t be thrown into water: “Please don’t!!” but that piece of logic wasn’t fooling anyone.

So I arrived at the party. Had my Dad drop me off down at the wrong address and then I walked the rest of the way to the party. I was getting a ride home, (stupid in retrospect since everyone I knew was plastered to the gills), but I had to get a ride to the festa.

I got drunk on Löwenbräu and vodka shots. Not actually drunk, mind you, but pretty well buzzed. (Two beers and one vodka shot, yes, I am a lightweight). And one puff of a skanky joint that tasted like shoes and probably wasn’t really weed, but some oregano mixed with aged mower clippings. (Yes, I totally coughed up a lung when I tried to inhale). But I was feeling pretty decent all things considered. There I was at the best party, people liked me, no one was stuffing me into a locker, I was mildly buzzed off free booze, biding my time to “make a move” on the swimmer girl I had a crush on and oh, the “if-only-my-dorky-D&D-buddies-could-see-me-now!” of it all.

Time passed. The music was pretty loud, but not so loud that authorities were called. People were wild and yelling, but not lighting things on fire and pillaging the outlying regions for booty. A nice mellow and cool crowd, the swim team. They probably all became massage therapists or life trainers later in life. They were just cool people.

But back to me!

I had a few more swigs of my Löwenbräu and got up the courage to approach my crush, Mandy. She was out on the lawn leaning on a huge oak tree. She was alone and it was the perfect opportunity for me to use my alcohol fueled courage and charm offensive.

I still can’t remember here name and I’m not crawling through all the crap in the garage to dig out a yearbook, so let’s just call her Mandy, OK?

“Hey, Mandy, how’s it going?”

“…”

“You did great today at the meet. Your time was great in the 100 Free.” (ed. note: See how I work in my usefulness as an official timer right there, kids? Smoooooooth, baby, I’m smooooth.)

“…”

I said a whole bunch of other stuff about the meet and our team and the history class we shared and finally that I liked her a lot and maybe we could go see a movie sometime after I got my license before I realized that Mandy wasn’t holding up her end of the conversation too well. She hadn’t actually said anything since I’d walked over. She’d apparently had more than two Löwenbräu’s and maybe had a bit of the good stuff “passed on the left hand side.”

“Hey Mandy, are you OK?”

At which point, she threw up on my shoes.

I held her hair back so she wouldn’t get puke in it, because, you know, that’s what you do when you have a crush on someone, right? And steered her away from my feet, of course.

After she was done tossing her mittens up, she said, “Thanks, Brian” and sat down on a tree root. Put her head on the tree trunk and closed her eyes for a bit.

Those of you playing along will note astutely that my name is not, in point of fact, Brian.

A guy named Mike wandered over and started talking to her and they eventually ended up making out right there in the middle of the yard on the tree’s vast root system. Then next week in history class, I overheard her telling her friend that she knew Mike was a sweet guy because he held her hair back while she puked at the party.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it seems like there must be something in there. Besides, “never let someone puke on your shoes, that smell doesn’t come out of leather,” that is.

Jon scribbled this mess on 06/20/07 at 12:53 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

The One Time I Was a Part of the “Cool” Kids Crowd

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