Rebellin

As I was listening to Internet Radio, a favorite song from the past came on… Insensitive. I remember that this song really spoke to me when Darryl broke up with me, but you have to wait for Darryl’s story, because he won’t hit the spotlight for a few more entries. Until then, this will give you an idea of his impact on me back in college.

Insensitive by Jann Arden

How do you cool your lips
After a summer’s kiss
How do you rid the sweat
After the body bliss
How do you turn your eyes
From the romantic glare
How do you block the sound
Of a voice you’d know anywhere

Oh, I really should have known
By the time you drove me home
By the vagueness in your eyes
Casual good-byes
By the chill in your embrace
The expression on your face
That told me
You might have some advice to give
On how to be
Insensitive

How do you numb your skin
After the warmest touch
How do you slow your blood
After the body rush
How do you free your soul
After you’ve found a friend
How do you teach your heart
It’s a crime to fall in love again

Oh, you probably won’t remember me
It’s probably ancient history
I’m one of the chosen few
Who went ahead and fell for you
I’m out of vogue, I’m out of touch
I fell too fast, I feel too much
I thought that you might have
Some advice to give on how to be
Insensitive

I took a brief hiatus from the High Fidelity Series, but I’m back… I received numerous comments/e-mails about my high school stories, but I’m sorry to tell you people that it’s now time to move into the college years. However, based on your response, I may return to the high school days for a chronicle of funny memories…

OK, so Freshman year in college… The year is 1997, and I was still getting used to my newly found freedom. (You know, freedom from parental oversight, curfues, etc.) But I was still very religious, as I had been for a good portion of my life. I attended church every
Sunday, went to a women’s Bible study, and joined Campus Crusade for Christ.

I think I met Blake through Campus Crusade for Christ. (Disclaimer: I don’t have anything against this organization. They just seemed to be a collection of freaks at my school at that particular time.) Blake was studying to become a minister.

We dated for a few months, and let me tell you, that minister in the making screwed with my mind. We’d kiss, and then the next day, he’d tell me that we really shouldn’t be kissing because it would make our minds wander, and that was a sin, etc., etc., etc. Then, the next time I saw him, he’d want to make out, and then would lay a guilt trip on me again. I swear it was like dating a man with a personality disorder.

Blake was also strongly opposed to alcohol consumption. Considering at that point in my life, I had never been drunk, and had only had small amounts of alcohol with my parents, this wasn’t a problem.

Until one day, when I went to a party and drank a beer.

I mentioned that to Blake the next day, and all hell broke loose. All kinds of mentions of sin and hell and alcoholism…

Man, I had a beer. There’s no sin in that. Granted I was only 18, but still, it was just a beer.

Over Christmas break while my brothers and I were all home for the holidays, I invited Blake over to rent a movie.

Now my brothers knew about Blake’s borderline religious freakiness, and decided to play with him. Unbenownst to me, they invited over a few friends, cracked open some alcohol and arranged a poker game with my parents and their friends at the kitchen table. By the time Blake arrived, the poker game was in full swing, and they were (purposely, I think) being loud and using profanities.

In fact, I think there were a few ‘God Damnits’ and ‘Jesus H. Christs’ thrown in for good measure.

I remember Blake and I sitting in the attached family room about 2 feet from the TV because we could hardly hear with all the commotion that was being made in the kitchen. I was so embarrassed and livid with my brothers… And parents, who seemed to be playing along.

It was about one or two weeks after this little episode that Blake called me and said that he thought it was best that we didn’t see each other anymore. Actually, I think he worded it that we needed to take a break from each other.

It was that momentous opportunity that I chose to get drunk for the first time ever. In my dorm room, Amber and I mixed up some Kool-Aid and Smith’s brand Vodka (the ultimate in a cheap college drink), and I proceeded to drink it with a vengence.

I was also very sick with a cold at the time, and was on the verge of losing my voice.

At one point, I decided that I needed to call Blake to announce to him that I was drunk. Ha! How funny would that be?!

Well, Blake wasn’t home, and I think I left him at least three messages in my horribly hoarse voice saying, ‘Blake, I’m druuuuunnnkkkkkkk. What do you think about that?’ or ‘Blake, I’m drinking Smith’s Brand Vooooooodkaaaaaa.’

On a sidenote about that night, Amber was wise enough to turn on the tape recorder, so I have a priceless tape of me the first time I was ever drunk. You can hear me ramble on about Blake, and about Smith’s Brand Vodka, which is charcol filtered, nonetheless, and how I needed my DCT lip balm. Somewhere along the line, Amber invited over Rob and Tim to see the spectacle of drunk Lynnette in her dorm room.

The three of them chatted with me (this is all on the tape), and then one of them (let me note that all three of them were sober, as this was a school night) decided that it would be tons of fun for us all to take a shower together fully clothed.

Even my first-time-ever-drunk-self saw that this was a stupid and ridiculous idea, but they then decided they were going to force me into the shower with all my clothes on. Perhaps it was a ploy to sober me up.

I would have none of that.

Being thrown in the shower with all of my clothes on was the worst possible fate I could think of at that point in time, so I crawled under my bed and grabbed on as the three of them tried to pull me out to put me in the shower.

On the tape, you can hear the drunk hoarse me protesting, and I think they just eventually gave up, because I know they never got me into the shower fully clothed.

Anyway, back to Blake. I later found out that the reason why he broke up with me was that he was dating some MARRIED 26 year-old woman in the Campus Crusade for Christ. I am so serious. And then, I kept finding out how hypocritical those Campus Crusaders were, and I found myself unable and unwilling to deal with that hypocracy. I stopped going to church, started going to more parties, and I didn’t find myself wanting to go back to church or think about religion until I graduated from college.

It’s not that I became an athiest. It’s not that I went wild or did crazy things. Yes, I went to parties and drank but that was really the extent of it. It was kind of like I was saying, ‘God, I believe in you, but I’m really fed up right now, so I’ll come back to you when I’m ready.’

And I did. Although I haven’t really been a regular church-goer for a while, I think that the big man and I are on good terms now, and I definitely turn to him for guidance and support.

So there you have it. The story of Blake, the man that turned me away from religion and drove me to drinking. Blake ended up getting married to a younger girl in our junior year of college. During my senior year, I had the pleasure of having a class with him. It was in a big lecture hall, and I recall seeing him come in late and sit down at the back of the class, but I never acknowledged his presence. Take that!

I’m sure he’s a minister somewhere, confusing the minds of his entire congregation. Isn’t that a comforting thought?

And before I end this entry, I just want to say that I now think my family’s staged poker game was a really funny idea. They’re not heathens… Just lovable people with a REALLY GOOD sense of humor. I just wish someone had tape recorded that incident!

I used to hang out with Amy in high school. Amy just left a comment saying that I shouldn’t forget to mention Tim and Rob in my High Fidelity series. Although neither of them would make my list of high-impact guys, they were involved in my first date ever, and that story is worth telling.

So here was the situation… Tim liked me. Rob liked Amy. I wasn’t really attracted to Tim, and Amy wasn’t really attracted to Rob. But somehow, someone decided that we should all go on a double date together. I think Amy and I were freshman at the time, and Rob and Tim were juniors.

We decided to go to the movies. This time around, I was smart and actually asked my parents’ permission. Although I wasn’t allowed to officially date yet, my parents gave me permission, on the condition that they would drive Amy and I to the theatre and then pick us up afterwards, because, as Mom said, ‘I know what happens in cars.’

Ah, the wisdom of a mother.

So my parents dropped Amy and I off at the theatre, and we met the boys there. Needless to say, since there wasn’t really a mutual attraction between any of us, it was rather awkward.

I specifically remember that we went to see Look Who’s Talking with Kirstie Alley and John Travolta. The opening scene of the movie shows a bunch of sperm swimming towards an egg.

This was the ultimate in embarrassment for my 14 year-old self on my first date. I wanted to melt in my seat. As the spermies were swimming on the big screen, I seem to recall that Tim was trying to put his arm around me, and I was turning 50 shades of red and trying to squirm away from his prowling arm.

After the movie, we went to the arcade that was next to the theatre. I don’t really remember the details, but some guys started trying to pick a fight on Rob and Tim, who, to put it gently, were not the fighting type at all. (In other words, they would have gotten their butts kicked if they had tried to defend themselves.)

So, the guys suggested that we get in their car and go across the street to McDonald’s to get away from the bullies.

Meanwhile, I was on my FIRST DATE and my parents had specifically said not to get in their car because THEY KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN CARS, and it was a big quandry for me… Let my date get his butt kicked or get in his car. (The thought of letting the boys go and having us stay never crossed my mind.)

We eventually did get in the car with the boys, who drove us to McDonald’s and then drove us back across the street in time for us to meet my parents without my parents knowing that I had been in their evil car.

So that is the end of my first date story… I actually ended up being pretty good friends with Rob and Tim through my second year in college. They were on the swim team with me. But here is another good story involving them…

Amber and I had gone over to their dorm room (Amber and I were freshman in college at the time, and Rob and Tim were juniors). Both Tim and Rob were very smitten with Amber, and were constantly vieing for her attention. This particular day, Tim decided that Amber should give him a haircut.

He had a buzz cut, so all this really involved was her using the electric razor to trim his buzz cut. Well, I don’t think Amber realized that she had the attachment that would cut his hair REALLY short.

So, picture this… Tim is in a chair outside of his dorm room with his shirt off and a towel draped around his shoulders. Amber starts in the middle of his hairline in the back, and within about five seconds, she realizes that she has just shaved a complete five inch long and one inch wide stripe up the back of Tim’s head.

I was standing there watching all of this, and my eyes got really big when I saw what she had done.

‘Oops.’ She said, and then Tim said, ‘That’s not the word you want to hear when someone is cutting your hair.’

We fetched Tim a mirror, and after seeing the new stripe on the back of his head, he was rather accepting of it. Like I said, he was smitten with Amber, so she could really do no wrong in his world at the time.

Tim decided the best course of action was to just shave his head bald, so Amber went ahead and completed her masterpiece.

He wasn’t an attractive bald guy.

Anyway, I lost touch with Rob and Tim. Last I heard, Tim was a highway patrol officer in New Mexico, so if I ever get pulled over while I’m in New Mexico, I’ll be hoping it is Tim so that he can let me off the hook. I’ll just say, ‘come on, you owe me one after I had to watch sperm swim on the big screen on my first date EVER.’

I don’t know what became of Rob, sad to say. They were really good guys.

The next guy on my High Fidelity list of ex-boyfriends was Chris D. Not to be confused with Chris K., who reads this site. Chris K., we’ll get to you later…

I don’t remember how I met Chris D. We had a class together during my junior year, and he sat next to me, but we never talked. I remember taking sneak peaks at him because I thought he was cute, but never really did anything about it. He was in ROTC (the high school program that prepares kids for the military), and I have a vivid memory of him in his dress whites uniform.

In the social structure at our high school, we were in two different groups. I was more of a jock/honor roll type of girl, while he was a ROTC boy that played football, though he sat on the bench a lot. I don’t know why this made us so different, but it did. We ran with different crowds, and those crowds didn’t quite know what to think when we decided to hang out together.

Chris had a twin brother who happened to be dating one of my good friends at the time. It was double date heaven, and we had a lot of fun. The boys even had matching Chrysler convertibles that were pretty old, clunky and unreliable. In fact, Chris’s car broke down in front of my parents’ house when he came to pick me up for the Homecoming dance. (By the way, we ate dinner at my parents’ house. Mom cooked, and Greg and Jane served us. Very cute!) We had to call his twin and my friend to come pick us up and take us to the dance. The boys were not happy because the had a thing about having separate lives.

At first, the whole fling with Chris was a lot of fun. He was quite the artist, and he drew me fancy drawings with sweet notes. And I guess I shouldn’t call him a fling, because we managed to stay together for six months, which was an eternity to my high school self.

I can thank Chris for my first hot air balloon ride. His father had connections to a man that owned a balloon, so I got to go to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta with him, and have the breathtaking experience of riding in a balloon with hundreds of balloons around me.

Sidenote about that experience: It is actually pretty scary. You can actually see through the weave in the basket, and it is eerily quiet up there. Also, I made the mistake of wearing really tight jeans that day, so getting in and out of the gondola was quite a challenge.

Back to our story… I don’t really remember where and when things started to go wrong between us. Suffice it to say, we were headed in two completely different directions. I was preparing to go to college, while he dreamed of becoming a Navy Seal.

I remember one day when I tried to break up with him, he turned around and hit a wall. Literally took his fist and hit a wall. He was just so mad that he didn’t know what to do with his anger. And that really didn’t help matters. To me, it was immature, and I didn’t like seeing him injure himself because of me.

It took me ages to fully break up with him, because he was very smitten with me. Admitedly, I had been smitten with him to begin with, but once I decided things weren’t going to work, it was a long, arduous process to convince him that we were through.

After we officially broke up, he quickly started dating a younger girl (a sophomore, I believe) that was very good looking. According to rumors, they eventually got engaged, and then she broke up with him because she decided to become a lesbian.

Wow, it’s like Days of Our Lives, isn’t it?

I ran into Chris’s twin brother at our 10 year reunion, and found out that he’s in the Navy, is divorced and has a seven year old daughter. In retrospect, he was one of those guys that was looking to get married young.

At that point in my life, I was convinced that all I that was important to me was getting married and having children. The ironic thing is that was exactly what Chris was looking for, but I think I was wise enough to know that we were just too different to make it work for a lifetime.

Regardless of the breakup, I have positive memories of Chris, and hope he’s doing well. Whenever I think of my ‘highschool sweetheart’, it’s him that comes to mind. Although it’s interesting now that all I can remember is the drama of breaking up, not the six months of good times.

Lesson learned: You can’t force a relationship to be right. It just has to be right from the beginning. Luckily, I eventually found my Mr. Right, though it took another ten years of searching and dating and goofy relationship stories. And that is why there will be more to come in this series. Stay tuned!

I seem to have struck a chord with my former high school classmates that read this site. Thank you so much for your comments, and I want to give one big shout out to you — “Go Monarchs!”

I left off in my sophomore year… And I’m sitting here racking my brain about who I obsessed about during my junior year (besides Doug, of course).

Not much really happened romantically in my junior year… The only thing I can recall is when Amber and I both turned our attention on Paul E. (Yes, Paul, it’s your turn.) We were all in the same group of friends, and there was some strange sort of competition between Amber and I for Paul’s attention. I’m sure it did his ego a world of good. We were both hoping that Paul would ask one of us to prom, and low and behold, he didn’t ask either one of us. Instead, he asked another girl in our group of friends, Karen. Would you believe that those two are now married with two adorable little boys? Impressive, I tell you! I’ve had the good fortune of reconnecting with them lately, thanks to this site, so here’s a shout out to them!

And what did I learn from that situation? Never stand in the way of fate. It was a lesson that I would encounter again in the future, but you’ll just have to wait for that gem.

I’m on a roll, people. We’re now up to my sophomore year in high school in the process of documenting my relationship history, ala High Fidelity. If you’re lost, back up to the High Fidelity post and then read back to the present post. This may be really boring to some of you, but I think those of you that went to high school with me will find it entertaining.

The next guy on the list is Tristan. I met him on a Ski Club trip to Taos. He was a football player. He was Prom King. He was also a senior. And in my world at the time, that pretty much meant that he was approaching Greek God status. (Amber will be laughing at this point, I guarantee it. She never got my attraction to him.)

The Ski Club rode a bus to Taos, and he started talking to me on the way up to the slopes. We skied together, and then we started getting chummy on the ride back home. By the time the bus trip was over, I was hooked. I was also very impressed that a guy of such high stature in the high school social structure was lavishing attention on me.

This happened to be about a month before Winter Ball, our high school’s annual Sadie Hawkins dance. I somehow mustered up the courage to ask him to Winter Ball. Yes, as a sophomore peon, I asked the senior football player Prom King to a dance.

And he said yes.

I was on cloud nine. Not only was I going to my first formal dance, but I was going with TRISTAN. Life couldn’t get better.

The dance went well, and he was a perfect gentleman until after the dance. Basically, let’s just say he made a move, which I rejected, and he pretty much stopped talking to me after that.

I was crushed. I was depressed. I would sit in my classes and daydream about him and how things could have been different. In fact, I did most of my daydreaming in Geometry, which I managed to get an extremely low grade in that semester, prompting another grounding and nightly tutoring from Dad to get me back up to speed.

So what did I learn from Tristan? Perhaps that just because he was popular and smoothe didn’t mean that he was a good guy.

As I was contemplating who would be the next guy featured in my series, I determined that I need to stick with the high-impact guys, because if I keep counting the guys that asked me out, and I said yes, stopped talking to them, etc., we’ll be here for hours.

OK, so after Doug, the next high-impact guy (being a guy that had a notable impact on my path to finding my husband) would be Paul. It was Paul V. I give the initial because I don’t want Paul E., who reads this site, to be confused.

Amber somehow introduced me to Paul V. Details of our meetings and actual dates (it was Freshman year, so dates were mainly going out to lunch together) are vague. What I do remember is that I wasn’t horribly interested in him. I did let him kiss me good-bye one time after he drive me home from school, and one of my brothers happened to see it. That brother then asked me that night at the dinner table in front of the whole family ‘who was that guy you were kissing in the driveway?’. I must have turned many shades of red.

So, I broke up with Paul probably after about a month. And I was cool with it until he started hanging out with a new girl. Then I decided that I really DID like Paul. I wrote him notes and called him, trying to explain how I had found the error in my ways, but it was too late.

Paul taught me regret, and how you always want what you can’t have. Last I heard, he graduated high school and went into the military.

While in middle school and high school, I was obsessed with having a boyfriend. I thought that I would be happy if I could only have a boyfriend. All the popular girls had boyfriends.

And there was one poor, poor guy that I fixated on for the duration of middle school and high school. His name was Doug. He was tall, and relatively cute, and for some reason, I was enamored with him.

I would devise whole schemes for my friends and I to run into him while at lunch or during passing period. At one point, I think he actually did ask me out, which was in eighth grade. He wanted to meet at the movies for a double date, with one of my friends. We were going to see Beatlejuice.

But you see, I wasn’t allowed to date yet, so I asked my parents if they’d take me to the movies with my girlfriend, knowing I could just meet up with Doug there.

All was going according to plan until Mom overheard a conversation with Doug on the phone planning the meet-up. I was promptly grounded from going out and from using the phone.

Oh, the horror.

And I never got the opportunity to go out with Doug again, despite all of my efforts over the next four years.

And boy, did I make efforts.

I think I finally got over my obsession with him my senior year in high school. Imagine how shocked I was to find that when I moved into the dorms at NMSU, my room backed up to Doug’s (i.e. we shared a bathroom wall). We had a few conversations through the vents, called each other a few times, but other than that (and what I overheard upon his return from Drink or Drown Thursdays in Juarez), we never talked.

So why does Doug make my High Fidelity Series when he was never my boyfriend? Well, my fixation on what I couldn’t have meant that all through middle school and high school, I was reluctant to call anyone my official ‘boyfriend’ because I might miss an opportunity to be with Doug.

Pitiful, isn’t it?

I also took many opportunities to t-pee his house, you know, as a way to communicate how much I liked him. I don’t know if he ever figured out who was t-peeing his house, but the really funny thing is that his next door neighbor turned out to be my future sister-in-law, Jane.

I last saw Doug at a gas station somewhere in New Mexico. Even though he was one of the tallest guys in school, he always dated short women, and he was with a shortie at the gas station. That really used to peeve me. Anyway, we exchanged pleasantries, and then said goodbye. I’m sure he was afraid I’d follow him.

I swear I’ve outgrown my stalker ways.

OK, let’s back up to my first official boyfriend.

I was in seventh grade, and his name was Danny. He literally came up to my chest — I think he was THE shortest guy in the school, AND he was a sixth grader.

I had never talked to Danny before. One day, he came up to me in the cafeteria and asked if I would ‘go out with him’, which in middle-school lingo used to mean ‘will you be my boyfriend/girlfriend’, because we couldn’t really ‘go’ anywhere.

I said yes, and then neither of us talked for three months, after which I informed him that I wanted to break up.

I was off to quite a start.

I’m one of the few people in Generation X that has not read High Fidelity. I seem to recall seeing the movie years ago, but a while ago, JB purchased the book after hearing something about it on NPR.

As he was reading the book, I mentioned how I was excited for him to finish it because I wanted to read it.

“Honey,” he’d joke, “this book is for boys.”

And then, somehow, he concocted this deal that I couldn’t read High Fidelity until I read two books that defined the ‘essence of JB’.

The first book was Siddartha. It is the thinnest book I think I’ve ever read in my adult life, but I swear it took me months to get through it.

I’m still not sure how it defines the essence of him.

And somewhere along the line, I think he forgot about the second book I had to read, and he finally gave me ‘permission’ to read High Fidelity on our honeymoon.

I still face a lot of ridicule for the amount of books I lugged on the honeymoon. I think it was something like 7 books and 2 magazines. I managed to read 1.5 books and 2 magazines. Oops.

I didn’t manage to read High Fidelity while on the Honeymoon. (My copy of it has done a tour of Italy!) In fact, I just picked it up last week, after this whole huge deal about the book.

So far, it’s pretty good. For those of you unfamiliar with the story line, it’s a story about a mid-30s single man who owns a record store and was recently dumped by his live-in girlfriend. He then decides to contact all of his ex-girlfriends to find out once and for all why they dumped him. He started with his first girlfriend in elementry school, I believe.

It’s interesting for me to see the guy’s point of view on past relationships and relationships during the formative years. I guess I always thought that guys weren’t affected by those goings on nearly as much as us girls. But this book proves that there are some men out there that are still contemplating their past relationships and what impact those relationships have had on their lives.

I was talking to JB about this, how I thought it was an interesting concept, and meanwhile I was thinking now that could be some interesting content for my blog.

Not that I actually planned to contact ex-boyfriends, but actually to just contemplate what went wrong and how they effected my life.

And as we were talking, he said, ‘you should write about it on your blog.’

Sometimes it’s scary how well that man knows me.

Anyway, that is what I’m contemplating… A High Fidelity sort of series on my site… But that will take much more thought and effort than I have to devote right now, so I’m just going to leave you with that introduction right now.