My Near-Miss

I've mentioned this before in a few posts in the past, but let's go through it again:
The summer in-between my freshman and sophomore years in high school, my parents uprooted me from my birth state, Texas, and moved me to the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona.

Shortly after moving all of our possessions and selves to the Grand Canyon State, we were told that we would have to endure the plight of having to live in an apartment for a month while our house was being completed.

Since we'd moved during summer vacation, this left me with no convenient outlet for trying to find friends, leaving me to desperately prowl around the complex looking for people my age.

To make a long story short, the only person I ended up meeting during this adventure was a twentysomething pot dealer named Garth, who had an affinity for The Doors and a bong made out of a real human skull. Essentially, Garth was not exactly the type of friend I was looking to make at this point in time.

Aside #1: Though he does sound a lot like a few people I know. My, how times change.

Not long after this failed friend-finding mission, I began hanging out across the street from a high school a block away from the apartment we were staying in (not my future high school, by the way) in hopes to maybe hang out with a small group of teenagers that I'd noticed leaving the school one day in the early afternoon; looking like they were part of some sort of school club.

And part of some club they were. As I would later find out, this half-dozen strong collection of my peers turned out to be the school's Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game club, meeting up before the school year had began to plan out meetings and the like while sharing an enjoyable game of Yu-Gi-Oh between friends.

Aside #2: This blog post is brought to you by Yu-Gi-Oh: "The Funnest Trading Card Game Out There!"

But like I said, I was completely unaware of this fact as they walked up to me and started questioning me relentlessly. During this questioning, I couldn't help but stare at the sole female member of this microposse, named Jessi, who returned my advances by staring and smiling at me flirtatiously. So in order to get closer to her through her friends, I walked around the area with them over the next hour, pretending to get to know all of them, but only truly being interested in her the entire time.

Luckily, my "hard work" paid off, and everyone else with a penis left Jessi and I alone, talking to one another like it wasn't a huge deal (which it totally was, for me). Eventually our conversation winded down, and we exchanged numbers and made plans to do something the following day.

Thrilled, I returned home to tell my mother, who didn't share my excitement. Crushing my hopes of having Jessi over to our apartment the next day, she told me that she and my stepdad would be visiting our new house all day the next day, and that I was not to have any visitors while they were gone.

Naturally, I completely ignored this, and invited her over anyways, reasoning to myself that they'd be gone all day, and that if I had her over right after they left and had her leave a short time later, all would be well.

Surprisingly, all was well. They awoke the next morning, got dressed, and left without suspecting a thing. As planned, Jessi came over shortly after they'd left, and we walked around the complex for a few minutes, talking, before heading to the apartment to "hang out."

Aside #3: I used quotes to point out the euphemism I'm trying to convey here. I hope I've now drawn enough attention to it.

Before I continue, I'd like to take a second to break down Jessi's appearance during this meeting, from head-to-toe. I've intentionally not said anything about it until now. You'll see why.

Head:
-Short brown hair with multicolored streaks in it.
-Big eyes, with tons of eyeliner. Wore a small jewel on her upper cheek.
-Small, diamond lip stud.

Torso:
-Huge breasts barely contained by a band shirt she'd taken scissors to.
-Tons and tons of bracelets. So. Many. Bracelets.

Legs:
-Short jean miniskirt.
-Leopard-print tights.

Feet:
-Semi-tall socks. Yes, over her tights. Yes, in the summer.
-Converse she'd drawn all over, rebelliously.

What I'm getting at, is that besides for her ridiculously proportioned boobs (which totally wasn't why I liked her), she was just like 80% of the girls that were at that age when I was. Except sluttier (which was totally why I liked her).

Basically, she was not the type of girl you want your mom catching you with. But lo and behold, fifteen minutes after I'd taken her back to "my place," laid her out on my parents' bed (after closing and locking the door, of course), and taken her shirt off, my mother opened the front door and stepped into our living room.

Hearing this and panicking, I handed Jessi her shirt and ushered her into the adjoining bathroom, telling her to step into the shower/bath and close the curtain, just in case. Closing the door to the bathroom and opening the one that lead from the bedroom to the living room, I stepped across the threshold and faced my mother.

"Hey, what are you doing?" she asked suspiciously.

"Nothing. I was just going to the bathroom in there," I said, completely innocently.

"Oh really?" she asked, stepping past me and into the bedroom.

Aside #4: Growing up, my parents always assumed I was up to no good, or lying to them. This lead to me usually being up to no good and lying to them about it.

Scoping out the room, she lingered at the threshold for ten seconds before deciding not to go further; her mannerisms not unlike a velociraptor from Jurassic Park.

Aside #5: I'd almost have rather her been one, come to think of it. In fact, I can safely say that I'd rather be put in a cage match with one of these prehistoric killing machines than my own mother. Freud would love me.

"Well, we just went out to eat down the street before going to the house. I forgot my sunglasses, so we had to come back," she explained, after turning around and walking towards the front door.

"...oh, alright," I offered, following her to the door while consciously trying to make my rapid heartbeat stop showing through the front of my shirt.

With that, she left. After watching my parent's car pull out from the parking lot and waiting a few seconds to make sure she didn't come back for some illegitimate reason, I walked through the living room and bedroom, opening the door to the bathroom, finally pulling back the shower curtain to find Jessi standing there, still shirtless and shaking slightly.

"Why didn't you put your shirt back on?" I asked.

"I didn't want to make noise!" she exclaimed. "I didn't know if she would walk in or not!"

Completely ignoring her ridiculous reasoning and grinning, I said, "I thought for sure she was going to find you."

"Me too," she said, stepping out from the tub. "What happened?"

As she put her shirt back on, I explained the events of the past few minutes.

"Wow, I can't believe we came that close to getting caught. I should probably leave in case she comes back," she said, once I'd finished speaking.

"But...no! She won't be back for a few hours," I pleaded. "Please don't leave."

Aside #6: The first, but not the last time I'd say those last two sentences together.

"I don't feel comfortable here anymore. I'm gonna go," she said, sadly.

Less than five minutes after my mother had, Jessi departed from the apartment, promising to call me sometime in the next few days so we could meet up again. She never did.

But looking back, I'm very glad she didn't. Any girl that thinks, even for a split-second while under loads of stress, that putting on a t-shirt is loud enough to be heard by someone in a different room, through a closed door, is no girl for me. I don't care how slutty she is, or how big her boobs are.

The Green Crayon Story

As a person born after the 18th century, I grew up using crayons as an outlet to control my budding artistic "ability." Being a person growing up in the 1990's, I had a crayon set that had dozens of colors, ranging from gold and silver to lime green and burnt umber.

Aside #1: I've never seen "umber" used as a color outside crayon-speak.

As any kid that has ever owned a single crayon will tell you, when one of these wax sticks was worn down to a useless nub, it was a sad day for all involved. Even worse, when one broke into two equally useless pieces, the resulting anger unleashed from the single affected child could be dangerous.

Or, if you were like me, you'd simply throw away the pieces and get on with your life. Such was the case, one afternoon during the second grade. I'd snapped my "basic" green crayon in half while coloring something with the sort of feverish back-and-forth motion that is usually reserved for the most violent of those among us males who masturbate regularly. Not wanting to walk all the way to the trash can in the kitchen from my boy-cave located in the far back of our house at the time, I opted to throw the bits away in the bin located in the bathroom next to my room instead.

Aside #2: When I was a kid, I begged my parents to let me have a trash can in my bedroom, something they didn't give me until I was well into my teens.

I should have never seen that crayon again. But I did, the next day after I'd come home from school. Both pieces were sitting on the dining room table in front of my mother, who was sitting in her usual dinner-time seat, waiting for me. Immediately, she launched into what I now assume was a rehearsed speech about how she had been cleaning the bathroom earlier and had found the crayon pieces in the trash. Upon further inspection, she said, it appeared that the crayon had been bitten by a pair of human teeth, assumedly mine.

Now, I feel like I need to mention my age again at this point. I was in the second grade, around the age of eight or nine. I started reading when I was three or four. At the risk of sounding slightly egotistical, I was by no means a dumb kid. Sure, I'd done dumb things just like any other child, but I was way, way beyond the point of eating crayons. Wax, to me, just didn't seem appetizing.

Which is precisely why I was baffled when faced with this accusation. Not knowing how to handle being falsely accused at such a young age, I immediately started bawling and trying to string together a sentence to form a defense without sobbing in-between words. Taking my crying as a sign of admittance, my mother demanded that I go to my room and told me that we would discuss my punishment when my stepdad came home from work a few hours later. I don't know what happened inside of my head at that exact moment, but tears stopped flowing and the gears in my head started turning. I knew that once the both of them had rallied against me, all hope was lost, and that I would be labeled a "crayon eater" forever. So I summoned every bit of courage I had at the time, and outright denied having nibbled on that crayon or any other crayon before, and that the one in question had just broken in two.

Naturally, my mother was having none of this. Having been given the entire day to form this batshit crazy scenario in her head, she was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had in fact taken a bite, her argument driven home by the fact that the crayons' edges didn't match up as if from a break.

Aside #3: I don't know if I colored with one of the broken halves before throwing it away, or if she'd tampered with them, but they really didn't match up. I'm still not sure why.

Then she brought something up that must have seemed like a trump card in her mind. A few days previous, I'd gone to the restroom and stood up to see that my feces was a dark green. Freaking out, just as any paranoid child would, I immediately ran to tell my mother about this revelation, dragging her by the arm into the bathroom to show her what had just come out of me. Being assured that "sometimes it happens," I thought nothing more of it.

Aside #4: Over a dozen websites tell me that this is a side-effect of either eating too much green food or an iron overdose. Being a kid that survived off of artificially colored crap and chicken nuggets, it very well could have been either.

But she did. Seeing my green poop as the final piece of the puzzle in her case against me, she would hear none of my arguments in defense of my maturity level. Logic didn't even sway her, refusing to admit that it was odd that I'd tell her about my bowel movements when I should have known the cause outright.

This was the stalemate we were in until my stepdad arrived. Taking her side just as any good husband would, all hope seemed lost. But some small part of me knew that an injustice had happened, and continued to refuse to admit that I'd done anything that they were accusing me of. Seeing this as insubordination and an outright lie, I was told that I would have to sit on the couch in our family room, doing absolutely nothing, until I admitted that I was lying and that I had in fact eaten the crayon.

I sat there for three weeks. Every day after I came home from school I'd make a beeline straight towards the couch and sit there until it was time to eat dinner, after which I'd go straight from the table to bed. There was no way I was ever going to own up to something I hadn't done.

And I never did. Eventually, my couch-sitting sentence was reduced to a few hours a day, followed by an hour, followed by nothing at all. My parents had given up on trying to get their version of the truth out of me, and we didn't really speak about it much afterwards. They never admitted their folly, and I never again tried to correct them. It became an anecdote lost in the sands of time.

Years later, after all of the wounds from this event had healed, the three of us were out to eat with my younger brother at a generic chain restaurant that gives children a packet of crayons to every child that walks in the door. Of course, my brother received one, along with whatever coloring placemat they were offering that month. Opening the crayons, my stepdad removed the green one and offered it to me.

"Appetizer?" he asked, grinning smugly.