Wow y’all. That was fun. Thirty-eight comments for my little plot on earth here. Thanks! .. it was nice to meet all of you hidey-hiders. And now I have more blogs to read, and include on my Blogolution update at the end of the month.

I only wish I had something enlightening and cerebral to say today. Maybe I could keep some of you around. I was going to try an old favorite trick from NaBloPoMoHowLowCanUGo, but random.org kept giving me numbers that pointed to “I don’t eat red meat.” or “Fireballs and Smarties are my favorite candy.” And seriously y’all, how much can I write about that?

Lucky for you, random.org does have a little button on it that says “Again!” (Really with the exclamation point and everything. And why does that make me think of this little guy in Dinosaurs?)





There was an episode where he screams “Again!” to be thrown against the wall. That’s what I hear when I click that button.

Annnnywayyyyy. Focus Hot. Geez. Thank you once again for coming by to visit.

I kept clicking. And it gave me 99. And so I clicked again. And I got 99. Again! I clicked and got 6. And then, one more time (because, while “I sold her to buy my first car.” has some possibilities…meh. It was sad. I hated selling my horse.). Again! 99.

I took it as a sign. And so, you get: “I lost my virginity when I was 16.”

I walked into my Spanish 3 class the first day of my Jr. year in High School. (Does it worry me that Shortman is a Junior? Why yes! it does, thankyouverymuch.)

Behind me sat this gorgeous guy that I’d never seen before. Tall. Dark. Handsome. With the best dimples in the entire world. And a cute nose. And dimples. Did I mention?

I mean, how in all that is holy in this world did I go through two years in this school and never see this guy? Sure, there was over 700 people in my graduating class, but believe me……if he had been roaming the halls? I’d have been on his tail (oh, and what a tail it was!).

I nearly wet my pants when I felt a tap on the shoulder a few minutes later.

“Hey”, says TallDarkHandsome. “What is this woman like? I just moved here from St. Louis - so I don’t know any of the foreign language teachers.”

I’d had her for two years of Spanish already, but at that point, I didn’t remember her name. What I wanted to say was something like “Let’s go down to the vocational education hallway and make out between the Auto Shop and the Metalworking class.” (Not, you understand, that I’d ever been there before.)

I must have mumbled something halfway intelligent because we started talking every day. We talked about the crappy football team; his baby brother (6 months old - his Dad had just remarried); classes. Whatever. Then, he asked me out. To the football game. Friday night. It ended up being Homecoming, but neither one of us even knew that at the time. When we found out, he apologized and said if he didn’t have to work, we could go to the dance, but the game was the best he could do.

Sigh. An entire evening with TDH? No parents having to drive us? Sigh. I guess.

I can’t remember what I wore. (Jeans and a sweater probably, it was October.) I remember he was driving a white Chevette (he later tried to teach me how to drive a manual transmission in it, but that wasn’t the stick shift I was focusing on). He came up to the house, met my parents, and we walked out to the car.

There was someone else sitting in the car. His neighbor. Who I knew from school. He brought another guy on our date????

“Sorry”, he says, flashing me those dimples. Hell, he could have brought his mom if he flashed those dimples. “He needed a ride, and knew we were going to the game. But he’s not riding home with us.”

My knees buckled. (And no, that wasn’t the night I lost my virginity……we’re getting to that. Patience please.)

So, we dated regularly after that. About 3 months later, he came over to “help me babysit.” Um, after the kids had been put to bed. I obviously needed help raiding the refrigerator and sneaking the parents’ cigarettes, because the kids went to bed at 9. He was there at 9:45. Snirk.

And it happened to this song. Clumsy. Fumbling. But oh so memorable.

He dumped me 3 months later. While working on the stage set for the Spring Musical, he met this little chorus harpy. I was only grateful that he graduated that year, and I didn’t have to see them walking through the halls together. I fantasized about sticking a pen into her eye, running her down in the parking lot, seeing her fall off the stage. I cried more then than when Practice and I split.

That was 1981. In 1992, I moved back to Michigan with Mr. Hot and Shortman. (Shortman and TDH have the same first name, but so does my brother, and my dad, and Mr. Hot’s brother….it’s a popular name.) I was walking through the grocery store with my mother. Suddenly, over the loudspeaker came a voice:

“Will TallDark andHandsome please come to the service desk? Mr. andHandsome? Please come to the service desk.”

I looked at my mother. Did I hear what I thought I just heard? She nodded. Yep, she’d heard it before. He was managing the store. He was in town.

We tore over to the service desk. He was there. Grayer, certainly, but he smiled at the clerk and I fell into those damned dimples again. I walked up to him, looked up and said “TallDark?” He started laughing, and we hugged and I introduced him to my son. (I may have mumbled the dork comment, “No, he’s not named after you, really.”) He told me about his four kids and his wife and where they lived. How the baby brother grew up, and that his Mom was still in Colorado. And then we had to go.

I never saw him again. We shopped that store every week, but I never heard him paged. I never ran into him in the meat department or the bakery.

One day, I was sitting at the kitchen table telling my new sister-in-law how Mom and I had run into an old boyfriend at the store and that he had 4 kids. Mom had no clue that TDH was THE ONE. I leaned over to SIL and whispered, “I’m glad he wasn’t that fertile when we were dating.” Suddenly the light clicked on and I heard Mom gasp.

—- Oops. —-

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