…unless you mean it.  

I don’t think this is one of those confusing things.  I think this is pretty basic no-brainer shit.

 A kiss on the forehead is the thing that is like “I am going to protect you, you are safe with me” stuff— it’s not what you do to some girl you’re kinda sleeping with maybe but you’d never date her.  It’s definitely already-dating-her stuff.  Don’t do it if you are not dating because it’s confusing and it’s going to get her hopes up when she shouldn’t and you know it.  

Hand-holding is an “I want you this close to me always” thing.  Don’t do it unless you want her close to you always.  

Please please for the sake of a million future girls and one in-the-past me, please don’t ruin these two wonderful things.   

1.  ”There’s a sucker born every minute”

Reason for hate:  Guys that sucker is meeee.  Every time.  Be nice?  

2.  ”Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me”

 Reason for hate:  ”No!  It’s their fault for being an asshole TWO TIMES!  No!  It’s my fault for being a sucker!  No!  It’s society’s fault for teaching me that I should be a sucker!  No!  It’s my fault for blaming anyone but myself for my fucking problems!…”

Maelstrom of inner conflict.  

“Once bitten, twice shy”

Reason for hate:  Does this actually happen to people?  Really?  Because  I just keep repeating the same mistakes.  That’s what we all do, right?  Under the guise of ‘learning from them’? 

“Calm down”

Reason for hate:  Stop being patronizing.  

“The one that got away”

Reason for hate:  Past relationships, through the lens of time, are never actually very good unless you parted amicably and everything was fleshed out and there was no escape-tinged “getting away” involved.  

…so this never happens actually.  

I was at my friend’s house after school and we were on AIM “flirting with” (annoying) boys from school because it was 8th grade, and a screen name I didn’t recognize started talking to her.  It was her friend Michael, who went to the school she transferred from, and she told me I’d like him and let me talk with him.  I don’t remember this initial conversation, but I took his “sn” (didn’t that just make you cringe??) home with me, and thus began one of the best/worst things I have ever done in my life.

Michael and I had a lot in common.  We both liked the original Winnie-the-Pooh stories, pop-psychology and personality quizzes.  We talked about skiing, Disney movies, our families, our 8th-grade philosophies of life.  We flirted constantly— he was always making winky faces and he—ok, both of us— made sort-of veiled references to kissing and hand-holding and our limited understanding of sex.  

I fell for Michael SO hard.  I would run to the computer after school and we’d talk for two or three hours almost every afternoon.  He liked me, too, because it was the internet and we could talk about anything we wanted.  We knew it was weird and it was the internet, but we had conversations like this:

Me: Aren’t you worried that I’m some 40 year-old man or something?

Michael: I know that you’re not because you know _____.  

Me: Ok but what if I’m really ugly in real life?  

Michael:  You’re funny.  Funny girls always grow up to be the hot ones.  

A boy liked me for my personality!  And because he thought I would be “hot” in the future?  I don’t know.  

 We migrated to talking on the phone after two or three months.  We’d talk and talk and I’d hide in my room and pace around and dance because I was so giddy because a boy liked me and boys at school did not like me and I thought something was wrong with me.  Michael was a secret I could have, that even if the boys at school tormented me and called me ugly and told me to “go home”, I could go home and talk to a boy who wouldn’t do those things!

8th grade was ending, and Michael wanted to meet me in person so he could be my actual boyfriend.  I wanted to meet him and I wanted a real boyfriend so badly.  I have a journal entry from late May, 2003:

“Michael asked me if I wanted to go see Finding Nemo with him this weekend.  I told him I’d call him back later.  I’m SO NERVOUS AND EXCITED I DON’t KNOW WHAT TO DOOOOO I told him I’d call him later TONIGHT!!!!”

…I never went.  Not sure if I called him, although I think I did.  I can’t quite be sure of what reason I gave myself, besides being too nervous and clearly not actually ready for a boyfriend and how weird the situation was from the beginning.  I never heard from him again because I deleted my AIM account right afterwards, and went for almost 10 years without using any ‘chat’ at ALL until less than a year ago when a boy talked to me on gchat.  Little did he know.  

 I’m not sure what the whole thing taught me because I went to camp that summer and high school the next fall and kind of buried it, but I have printed-out AIM conversations that prove that it all happened.  I don’t know Michael’s last name, although I have an idea of his last initial and kind of what the syllables sound like, and I’ve tried to find him on Facebook a couple of times but I don’t know if I’ve actually found him or just people that might be him.  I wonder what he looks like and what he’s doing with his life, and I wonder if he remembers, and if he ever wonders if I turned out to be the ‘hot, funny’ adult girl that he was so confident that I’d be.  

I guess I hope that one day I meet someone who thinks I’m as worth talking to for hours and hours as 8th-grade Michael seemed to think I was.  

“I made the choice to sacrifice that bra for the greater good of getting out of there quickly and never hooking up with you again.”

“…I’m pretty sure at that point you also had decided to never hook up with me again either.  My main question is what did you do with it because it was my favorite.”  

“Before you started ignoring me, I was planning to have the conversation the next time I saw you about ‘when one of us gets tired of the other one, let’s be adults and let the other person know instead of ignoring them.’” 

“You thought that I thought it was more serious than it was; I didn’t know you thought that.  There were probably things I did that made you think that, so why didn’t you say something when I did those things?“   

“Something I will always remember about you, even though I’ve already mostly forgotten everything about you, is how you hid all of my clothes behind your dresser and then denied it” 

“Sometimes I choose not to ‘take the hint’ to get you to say it out loud and I know I am being aggravating”

“Whose pajamas was I wearing?”

Nails nails nails nails.  Real jobs are for people who don’t want pretty nails.  

Seeing Bands Anxiety strikes again!  

… there was this boy that I liked, and we’d been hanging out for I don’t know like two weeks, and he was like “let’s see this band I like on Friday”

In my diary, I wrote “little does he know that by asking me to see this band with him he is effectively deciding that this will be the last time he sees me”

I was right.  

Next time a boy I like asks me to see a band, I will have a Really Important Birthday Girls Night Thing and we can do something later in the week.  

I love personality quizzes.  Like the Meyers-Briggs obviously but also equally obviously I love knowing What Color is Your Aura? and What is Your Power Animal? etc. etc.  Personality quizzes are also useful in computer class in high school when you can pick a quiz like Which Mario Kart Character Are You? and use it for flirting because boys love Mario Kart; you are the sneakiest.  

The other day, I found a paper I’d printed out from a  quiz I took in 7th grade.  It told me basically that I smile a lot and I do nice things and this is great until BEWARE there are people who aren’t nice and they will make you sad and I thought a) “this is what everybody wants to hear, that they are the nicest and it’s the other people who are the sucky ones, I see what you did there quiz” and b) “well this is the same answer as I get NOW on my personality quizzes I’m going to disregard point ‘a’ and instead think oh NO I am the SAME PERSON AS 7th GRADE”.  

So I’ve graduated college and I’m playing house and adult and stuff and I was thinking you know, there really are a lot of things these days that I used to think were just kind of “maybe I’ll grow out of this” but I haven’t really.  I made a Some Things Never Change list that I can refer to in 10 years and be like “yep, that’s me” or “nope, that was a phase” and thus explain the universe.  Here are some things that I may or may not always do:

1.  Think “I definitely don’t need any more clothes” in December and then by February magically having all of these new items that I wear every day and I have no idea what I could have possibly worn before.

2.  Stubbornly refuse to refill my prescriptions until about 10 days after I’ve run out for no reason besides “pharmacies are really stressful, I should wait until I’m in an excellent mood”

3.  Think “this Shiny New Boy might actually—” right before he makes it clear that he isn’t actually.  

4.  Get really dizzy think I have a disease/think every headache is an aneurism/compulsively check my pulse to make sure my heart is beating normally and then remember that food and hormones explain pretty much everything.  

5.  Get flustered and ultimately decide to leave bookstores empty-handed when there is a cute guy who works there because I CAN NOT BROWSE OR FIND ANYTHING WHEN YOU ARE CUTE AND ALSO HAVE EXPERTISE IN THIS AREA.  

I don’t know if I actually want these things to change though, because I’m kind of used to them.  We’ll see, though… I might call my doctor on Monday and ask for a refill of my prescriptions, a whole week in advance!  That is, after I see other doctor to talk about how I’m always dizzy and have weird headaches.  Life.  

Some lucky fourth-grade girls got manicures and cupcakes. 

I really want to just work in a bakery and do nail art and forget this whole “teacher” idea.  

…but I just had the realization that there is a STRONG possibility that it has poisonous lead paint that is going to make me crazy

…ier