In which Calvin proposes by burying a ring in a tin of Snickers

We had been dating for three years when Calvin proposed. We had been talking about marriage for a while, but it was time to be formal. We were so smug: all those people who were still uncoupled! They would die alone! But not us. We had even named our children.

Oh, karma can be nasty. After I broke off our engagement, I was uncoupled for many many years. Calvin married a few years later, but it took me much longer, which gave me ample opportunity to contemplate and regret my smugness.

I had already quit grad school in English, not that I don't think knowing how to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in middle English wouldn't have made me even more employable.

Calvin was in his fifth year of college, not because he was slow but because he was majoring in electrical engineering and in physics. Apparently, there is not a lot of overlap between those fields.

It was Christmas 1985. I didn't have any vacation, but this was old-time employment where we got the Monday before Christmas Eve, which was Tuesday, off. We also got Veterans' day, Columbus Day, and Washington's birthday. Plus a turkey at Thanksgiving. And the coffee and donuts cart came around at 10. And everyone left work at 4:30. The good old days. Except I don't miss the smoking in the office. At all.

Calvin was in Austin with his family. We drove up to Waco for the state 3A football championship. Our friend Randy was from Daingerfield and his high school team was playing. Daingerfield is a small mill town in northeast Texas. Randy's parents didn't go past 8th grade, I don't think, and his dad worked in the steel mill. Randy, however, got his PhD in chemistry at Harvard, which makes you wonder what his parents could have done with the same opportunity.

If you watch Friday Night Lights, you know a little bit about how important high school football is in Texas, especially in small towns. Dillon might be a 3A school. Who knows? My high school, Converse Judson, was a 5A school, but my senior year was a big fat waste of time. I only went there my that year and it was not, as my friend Leigh coaches me to say, my favorite. I didn't care at all about their stupid football team.

But I did care about Randy's school's team and a statewide championship is a big deal no matter what, which was why we were driving 100 miles to sit in the cold and watch a football game.

But this story is not about football (although Daingerfield won, which is cool). It is about a marriage proposal.

On the drive back from Waco to Austin, Calvin casually asked me to hand him the tin of Snickers in the back seat.

Calvin did not usually carry large supplies of candy bars with him, so I was suspicious.

He had in the past threatened to give me an engagement candy bar rather than a ring because he teased that the chocolate would last longer. Which, in the end, was prophetically correct.

He asked me to give him a candy bar, but I refused. "Get it yourself," I said. I was really suspicious.

He kept insisting - he wanted me to dig around in the tin.

This was not how I wanted to be proposed to. I was not very gracious.

But I did as he asked. And found a box. That contained a ring.

"Stop the car!" I demanded.

"What?"

"Stop the car!"

He stopped. "What's going on?"

"Get out."

He didn't want to, but I insisted. I got out with him.

"Now get down on one knee and propose properly!" I said.

Are you thinking this is when he should have put the ring in his pocket and said, "Forget it?" Because you would be right. Really. Who gets bitchy about how she is proposed to? I could have been a lot nicer. But I was young and full of visions of moonlight and roses and romance novels and it didn't seem right.

Instead of telling me to take a hike, he did as I asked, kneeling on the graveled shoulder and asking me to marry him, which was more than I deserved.

I smiled and told him yes, then admired the ring, a diamond solitaire, which I had never thought I wanted, all the way back and then on my drive from San Antonio back to work in Houston, where the VP saw it and groaned that they had been so excited to hire a bright young woman and that they wanted me to be a VP someday, not married, which confused me because I did not see the two as mutually exclusive.

A month later, after reserving the church and buying a dress, I broke up with him.

In which I get a crush on one of Calvin's friends and break up with Calvin in hopes that the friend will ask me out but he doesn't

Don't hate me. I was young. And easily distracted. But yes, I had the hots for one of Calvin's friends. And I even broke up with Calvin over it for a little while. How I wish I had kept a diary back then because now I cannot remember if I broke up with him before or after we - you know - for the first time, which was (of course I remember the date - don't you remember yours?) Oct 18, 1983. I am coming up on my 27 year virgin anniversary.

Disclaimer: It is easy to remember my virginersary because it is the day before my birthday. But I think I would still remember it had it happened on another date.

Our junior year of college started. Calvin and I had been writing letters all summer and were hot to see each other again. He had been working for his uncle out of state all summer, so we had not been able to see each other. School started late August, which is just when everyone wants to be in [hot southern city]. It's the best time of the year.

I kid, I kid.

July is better.

I need to back up a little. All of our sophomore year, Calvin and his friends had been talking about their friend, Laurence, who had gone to Small Private School our freshman year and then spent his sophomore year elsewhere at Big State U where there would be more and prettier girls. The male-female ratio at Small Private School those days was almost 2:1, which was great for the girls but not so great for the guys.

And I will go out on a limb here and venture that the smart girls who end up at an engineering school are not necessarily the same girls who have a clue about hair, makeup and clothes. As in, if you made a Venn diagram of Small Private School girls and pretty, flirtatious, cutely dressed and accessorized girls, there would be very little overlap. Sure, there were some extraordinary young women on campus who were both smart and really put together, but the rest of us were either clueless or didn't care.

There was a certain reverse snobbery at Small Private School. In the same way that suddenly, the athletes were at the bottom of the social scale (not the least because it was uncommon for Small Private School to ever win a football game - oh, how I miss the SWC), the girls who (obviously) tried were also scorned.

It was an inverse of the high school universe, where many of us (or maybe just me and I am projecting my NOT BITTER AT NEVER HAVING BEEN ASKED TO A SINGLE HIGH SCHOOL DANCE on others) had been on the sidelines looking in at the cool, popular kids. Nerds are not valued in high school, but at Small Private School, almost everyone was a nerd. But everyone was weird in his own way. Nerd was the necessary but not the sufficient.

Laurence was one of those rarities: smart, athletic, good looking and seemingly unaware of his looks. He could have had just about any Small Private School girl but maybe he thought he could do better. Or maybe he just needed to be closer to home for a year.

[Primo is also smart and athletic and good looking, but he was not athletic in college, unless you count drinking beer as a sport. Since he and I started tennis lessons last summer, he has become a pretty good player and will only get better, but his parents didn't put him in any sports. Any. I was a total klutz and my parents forced me to play soccer in 7th grade when Lubbock started the first girls soccer league. Primo's parents, however, are intellectuals and didn't think sports were a good idea for Primo. They were so wrong.

Primo was also not as cute in college as he is now. He was a skinny little 16 year old runt when he started, but he grew and put on some weight and his skin cleared up and he figured out what to do about his hair and now he is a hubba hubba hottie.]

Laurence returned for our junior year.

I had never met Laurence.

The first time I saw him, he was stripped to the waist doing I don't even remember what. Painting the dorm room? That doesn't seem likely. Why would a student waste his own money on paint? My freshman year, my suitemates and I painted the bathroom bright yellow, but that was just because Laurie's dad paid for the paint.

Whatever he was doing, he was half naked.

You've seen the abs on the sculpture "David?"

Laurence's were better.

I kid you not.

And you know all that stuff about how women aren't as visual, blah blah blah?

In Laurence's case, I made an exception.

He was gorgeous.

And NICE! He was also nice!

I fell in lust.

I looked at Calvin, for whom I had also felt lust, but this was stronger. It was lust unadulterated with You were late to pick me up or You forgot my birthday or We had a fight. It was pure fantasy you never fart lust.

After a few days, I broke up with Calvin. So many men! So little time! I was sure that Laurence, who before the breakup and indeed, ever since, including the time we met up in France for a day when I was on vacation and he was working there, has never shown one squidge of interest in me, would ask me out.

But even if he didn't, surely other guys would. Two to one, people! Two to one!

They didn't.

Not one single guy.

What was going on? Was I hideous?

No. At least, I don't think so.

I had been dating Calvin for several months.

I was branded.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I waited a few weeks just to give it time, but no luck. There was not one single other guy on that campus who wanted to ask me out. Or who would ask me out, better said.

So I went back to Calvin.

Nice, huh?

This has to have all happened before The Event or I would not have broken up so easily. I hope.

Calvin was skittish. We went out to eat at this Italian restaurant in Montrose where we got adventurous and ordered snails, which was not my best food moment, as I have decided I do not wish to eat anything that I want to keep out of my garden, but if you put enough butter on anything, it will taste good.

He told me that when I broke up with him (the Laurence breakup - I haven't gotten to the big breakup), he was waiting for his parents to jump on the bandwagon and tell him that they didn't want him to be their son any more.

I should have stuck with the breakup, given that's where the relationship was going to end up anyhow, but. Well. I have no excuses. I was barely 20 - not even. What did I know? Thrashing around and bruising hearts in the process.

In which Calvin's parents don't like me

Calvin's parents didn't like me.

That was a shock.

I was not used to people not liking me when I was in college. Oh sure I knew I wasn't part of the cool crowd and in tenth grade, Sally D suddenly turned on me after I had been her BFF in ninth grade, but in general, I didn't inspire enmity in people. That I knew of.

The parents of my very short-term high school boyfriend, the one who turned out to be gay, loved me. LOVED ME. In retrospect, there were probably other factors at work, as in, they suspected their son was gay and didn't want it to be true for the sake of his desired career, which was military pilot. Even though he only kissed me once, although we spent several evenings alone at his house, watching the videos of Mork and Mindy that his uncle sent from the States, I never suspected he was gay. I thought he just didn't like kissing or he didn't like kissing me.

I digress.

Mr and Mrs Calvinpere did not like me.

I would hope it was because they didn't want their only child to marry too young and make a mistake and never have the glorious career for which he was destined and not because of me personally. I usually don't invite that kind of animosity in people.

Except for Primo's parents, of course, and his best friend from high school, George, who has also decided he doesn't like me. Many and varied are the reasons George does not like me: I blogged once that kids should be out of diapers by the time they are four; I am not Catholic enough (even though if I were more Catholic, I would not have married non-Catholic, lukewarm at best Lutheran Primo); and most recently, I pulled a practical joke on him that he did not think was at all funny and I think he is way over-reacting.

The good thing about George is that I can probably reason with him, which I intend to do. We will be in each other's lives for a long time and there is no reason for us to be enemies. Unless he decides that I am absolutely unlikeable, even after begging forgiveness for the joke, which WAS funny and had Primo's blessing. And George's wife, who also thought it was funny and if she didn't, she should have warned me AS SHE WAS HELPING ME TO EXECUTE IT.

So I will call George after he has cooled down and we will Talk About It Like Adults, which is something that could never happen with Sly and Doris, as they are not interested in liking me at all [See: I am a Bad Bacon Eater].

I would write more about George and The Joke but he is Primo's best friend from high school and he would be bothered if he stumbled on this blog. George! I like you! I want us to be friends, OK?

And if I ever write that bestselling memoir, I will not include any of the George incidents in it because of course I would write the book under my real name. Primo, who has his eye on that Key Biscayne condo, has encouraged me to publish now under a pseudonym, but what is the point of having a bestselling book if the people you went to high school with don't know about it? You know Jen Lancaster has to be feeling smug now that she is at the top of the NY Times (a New York City newspaper) list. Take that, suckers who fired me! she is probably chortling as we speak. And more power to her.

Ooops. I have strayed from my topic again.

When I met Calvin's parents, I sensed a certain coolness. I attributed it to his being somewhat of a mama's boy, although not from his end but from his mother's. He is an only child, but I don't think that is the situation his mother had wanted. He had never had a girlfriend and there had never been competition for his attentions before.

Still, they were nice enough to me. His dad built me bookcases when I moved into the loud sex apartment in Other Southern City, which, to my everlasting shame, I broke down and threw away when I moved from Other Southern City to Houston, where I had gotten a job, because I could not fit them in my car. I could at least have called Goodwill.

But I don't think they approved of me. I can't imagine why.

I ate Mrs Calvinpere's salad
We had dinner at his mom and dad's house. The table was round and small enough that the place settings were rather crowded. I, who had worked at the faculty club for two years and had set the table for formal dinners there, looked at the salad on my left and the water glass on my right. And the salad on my right and the water glass on my left. Which salad was mine? Which water? Logic dictated that the salad that was easier to reach was surely mine. Who would have a diner reaching with her right hand across to a salad on her left? Not I! And that was when I ate Calvin's mother's salad.

At the faculty club, we served the salads by placing them in front of the diner. So much for my fine dining table waiting experience.

I flipped a crab leg over my shoulder and spattered butter on Mrs Calvinpere
They took us out to a nice restaurant. I made the huge mistake of ordering crabs' legs. How does one eat a crab leg if one is not going to pick it up with the fingers and suck the flesh out? Open it along the side using a fork, of course.

If you stick a fork in a crab leg and then begin to saw it open, you are mimicking the forces used on a tiddlywink.

So when you press down on that crab leg in just the right place with enough force, the leg flips up and over your shoulder, spinning and casting off butter as it goes. The butter lands on your boyfriend's mother and on the pink silk blouse you borrowed from your roommate.

I used the Company Towels
I was at Calvin's mom and dad's house for supper. Needed to use the bathroom. The half bath was right behind the kitchen. The half bath had nice white starched lacy towels hanging on the rack. Towels that had never been used. Towels that were obviously decorative.

But my hands were wet. From washing, duh. I do not pee on my hands. Who does? Are the hand pee-ers the ones who get so bent out of shape about other people not washing their hands? Because if you don't pee on your hands and use your foot to flush the toilet (in a public restroom, natch - it's too hard to flush a home toilet with your toes), then there shouldn't be much of an issue, right? I got over my squeamishness about this issue after living in South America for two years, where there are not hand washing facilities conveniently located next to each outhouse.

I needed a place to dry my hands, but a battle in my mother's voice raged slow motion inside my head: Dooooon't uuuuuuse the Coooooompany Toooooowels! vs I need to dry my hands!

In retrospect, I should have just wiped my hands on my pants, which is what I end up doing half the time now anyhow, as those stupid air dryers never work fast enough. Doesn't it defeat the purpose of using less energy if you have to run through four cycles of the dryer?

I used the Company Towels.

The roof did not fall in.

But the next time I was at their house, there was a small stack of paper towels next to the sink.

I got the message.

In which Calvin and I are caught in flagrante delicto

Remember how Calvin and I finally Did the Deed, despite our pure, virginal, wait until we're married intentions?

Once that genie is out of the bottle. Well. You've been there.

Yet. We both had roommates who NEVER LEFT THE ROOM. Or, better said, roommates who commandeered the room for their own amorous purposes (RENE'), to the point that one evening, when Calvin and I returned to my room, we saw the big potted palm that usually lived in the corner of the room I shared with Rene' blocking the door to the room. (Even back in the early '80s, college students were not wearing ties, which meant the traditional tie on the doorknob was not an option.)

We stopped, confused. Then clarity hit us like a mackerel across the face during fish slapping season.

"I think this means we're not supposed to go inside," Calvin mused.

He wasn't summa and PBK for nothing.

"That's riiiiight!" sang two voices in unison from inside the room.

You see? My roommate and her boyfriend almost always had first dibs on the room. It was their love nest, even when I was there studying. I would sit at my desk, trying to concentrate on the narrative structure of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Rene' and BF would be canoodeling in the big chair that someone had found abandoned by the side of the road in University Park, a fairly tony neighborhood as far as castoffs go, although not as fancy as Really Rich Neighborhood, but RRN people may not have abandoned their unwanted furniture on the curb the way the UP folks did.

It is not easy to concentrate on narrative structure or hidden meanings or where is the sex, which is the main question that drives almost every English major analysis of a work (if it's not sex, it's death), when your roommate is baby talking and cuddling with her boyfriend.

The amazing part of all this is that my roommate was a civil engineering major who got very nice grades and yet did not appear to put a lot of time into her studies. The necking worked for her.

And, in a way, it worked for me. Their shenanigans drove me to the library to study. I made the honor roll for the first time because I spent so much time out of my room. Who knew that a lot of concentration was the key to good grades?

Back to the ranch.

Calvin and I did not have a private place to canoodle and etc, so we were forced to take drastic action, such as necking in the empty physics lecture hall or on top of the geology building. Those are not ideal locations, though. Better to get in the car and drive to the beach and neck while parked on the sand! With the bonus of being environmentally responsible!

It's an ugly beach: brown sand and brown water.  It's the beach for people who have never been to Florida's Gulf coast, where the water is clear and the sand is white.

But it's not hard to get into a romantic mood when you are 20 years old and don't have a mortgage or a flooded basement or are taking drugs that make your hair fall out.

One evening, driven to desperation, we did just that: hightailed it down to the beach. We found a deserted area. Parked. Got into the back seat. Stripped. Started getting busy.

When a bright light flashed through the window.

And did not go away.

We froze.

What to do? What to do?

Blinded, I felt frantically on the floor for my pants, but did not have time to put them back into their proper position, which was on my body.

A knock.

Calvin, who had not completely stripped, as such is not so necessary for a guy, opened the window a crack. This was back in the days when it was possible to open a window without the car being turned on.

A cop shone a flashlight on us.

"Evening, ma'am, sir" he said politely. This was the south. People are polite, even if they are looking at your almost nekkid body. Your almost nekkid body to which they have never been introduced. It would have been rude to comment on our clothing status.

We stared.

"Do you have some identification?" he asked.

"Um. Yes," I answered, reaching my hand back to grab my Small Private School ID out of my jeans pocket.*

Only the pocket was not on my butt where it belonged but somewhere in front of me in the pants that I was holding up to cover my nekkid glory.

Calvin had already extracted his ID from his wallet. I fumbled until I found the ID and then handed it to him.

He took it, looked at it, and handed it back. "Y'all run along now, hear?" he said, probably thinking of his own college age daughter and praying she was not in the same situation.

We nodded. Waited for him to leave. Put on our clothes. Drove back to town. Said goodnight with a chaste kiss.

Nothing will kill the mood like a bright light.



* Wow. Was there really a time I could leave my abode with nothing more than an ID and a key?

In which Calvin forgets my birthday more than once

I am not a high-maintenance girlfriend or wife. Really, I'm not. I don't need jewelry or expensive dinners out or constant attention. I barely wear jewelry and what I wear isn't that fancy. I prefer to cook over eating out because there just aren't that many restaurant meals that are better than what I can make, plus I hate the whole ritual of Dining. It takes too long. And I definitely do not want attention all the time because I am a bit of a loner, or, at least, an introvert. I do just fine on my own.

But.

I want my birthday acknowledged.

I want a present and a fuss on my birthday.

There. I said it.

Is that wrong? Does that make me a bad person?

Primo does a great job on birthdays. He is always so excited about what is doing for me that he gives me my present early. My birthday isn't for a month, but he already gave me a new digital camera for my purse to replace the heavier, bulkier one I've had for five years. You should keep a camera in your purse because when your car gets hit and it's the other guy's fault but you get the ticket because he's a faster talker than you, you can take photos of the cars and the scene and show them to the court, who will waive your ticket, and to your insurance company, who will say, "There is no way you caused that accident" and will go after the guy for the $2,000 in repairs.

The court will also note that nobody has ever brought her own Matchbox cars to re-create the accident (who knew they had their own cars there already?) and they will admire your suit because of course you dressed nicely for court and not in sweatpants with the word "Juicy" across your ass, although perhaps in certain circumstances, that is the attire that would lead to indulgence and the winning of your case.

Calvin was not a birthday guy.

In his defense, he is a bit of the distracted scientist, thinking about relativity and circuits and Big Issues most of the time, but I wanted to be number one in his head.

I never got there. I wonder how things are with his marriage. He married one of my college roommates - a suitemate from our sophomore year. Brenda is the nicest person in the world, but needs a lot of attention. She is not emotionally self sufficient at all, or was not when I knew her well, which was in college and a couple of years after. He did not give me a lot of attention when we were dating. I hope he is giving her the attention she wants.

On a side note, Brenda is also the only person I know of who has lived the nightmare of, "Omigosh I have a 20 page paper on pig iron due tomorrow." Yep. She hadn't read the syllabus and forgot. She spent all night doing that paper and yes, it was on pig iron. This was before the internet, so it was a lot harder to research back then.

In Calvin's defense, he did get me one of the best presents I have ever gotten. For Christmas our second year of dating, he gave me my own jean jacket. Probably to keep me from borrowing his all the time. I still preferred to wear his because it smelled like him and the Polo cologne he wore, a scent that to this day makes me a bit weak kneed. I am not a big perfume/cologne person, but I make an exception for Polo.

I loved that jacket and wore it until it was threadbare. I had the collar turned and wore it some more. I wore it until it was falling apart. Finally, I got rid of it and have regretted it ever since because I have not been able to find a decent replacement jean jacket.

But my birthday.

He didn't do anything for my birthday the first year we were dating. The fact that my birthday was two days after we Did the Deed did not help matters. It also did not help matters that I took my ire out on my friends rather than on him.

The next year, he also did nothing, even though my friends, two weeks ahead of my birthday, were advising him to mark the occasion somehow. I, too, dropped many, many hints, like, "My birthday is coming!"

Birthday arrived.

Nothing.

I got mad at him this time. I had never had a birthday and a boyfriend at the same time and I wanted something special. Not necessarily an expensive present, but recognition. When I was a kid, we didn't have to do chores on our birthday. My mom made a cake and whatever meal we wanted. For one day, the birthday person was the center of attention. My freshman year of college, my mom made a cake and my entire family drove the 200 miles from San Antonio to Houston to deliver the cake and then drove back there the same night. I wanted the boyfriend equivalent of a 400 mile round trip to deliver a cake.

"But birthdays aren't important in my family," he shrugged.

"I don't care," I told him calmly, or maybe snapped. "They're important in mine and just the fact that it's important to me should be reason enough for it to be important to you." I pointed out that he could have folded a piece of paper in half and written "Happy birthday" on it and that would have mollified me somewhat.

I did not point it out in a even, reasoned voice.

Maybe I was a bit immature.

But maybe I was doing it for his future girlfriends/wife. I'm sure Brenda thanks me now.

In which Calvin, the boyfriend formerly known as R.M., and I - you know

Note that I have changed R.M.'s name to Calvin simply because it is easier to type.


You had to know that two college students who had been dating for a while would be tempted to break any vows of chastity, no matter how good an idea such an intention seemed at the time.

Remember I am the one who told my father, the night we were packing the car to drive to Houston the next day to deliver me to college, after he told me, "Now if you're going to get laid, use protection," that "Dad! You know I don't believe in pre-marital sex!" My dad rolled his eyes and said, "It's going to happen. Don't be stupid about it."

And Calvin was a stoic or something silly like that. So we were sure that we were inviolate.

Yet.

We were also normal college students. What can I say? We held off just fine for the first few months of dating, mostly because of intent but also because our roommates never left our rooms. Rene.

We probably would have broken them sooner if Calvin had not spent the summer out of town working.

I wondered about my freshman year roommate, Gloria. She was a Southern Baptist. I am Catholic. I know many fine Southern Baptists, but anyone who knows anything about S. Baptist theology with respect to Catholicism, at least back in the late 70s and early 80s, knows that there is not a lot of intersection in the beliefs. As in, Southern Baptists, I have been told, think Catholics are all going straight to H-E-L-L, that the Church is the Whore of Babylon, the Pope is the antichrist, blah blah blah.

I don't worry a whole lot about what anti-Catholics think because there's nothing to be done about it now. We'll find out when we're dead, right? If the atheists are right, then whatever. I wasted time going to church. If the Baptists are right, then I guess I won't be shoveling snow any more. But there's no point in arguing with someone about religion and faith. Have you ever changed anyone's mind? I haven't. It's better to avoid the topic altogether.

Although I can talk about religion a little bit with my friend Patricia, who is Baptist. We had to attend a funeral - a Baptist funeral for the wife of a friend. Every time we started another song - and there were many and they were the good songs because Baptists don't play - none of that Marty Haugen Gather BS - I would hold the hymnal up to share with her.

She would give a tiny little shake of her head. Knew the song by heart. After the third time, I whispered, "Do you know all the songs in here?"

She rolled her eyes at me. "Of course," she said.

Patricia also knew just about every verse in the Bible, so arguing with her about chapter and verse was pointless. Baptist vs Catholic on Bible quoting? Baptist wins hands down every time.

Gloria told me anyone who wasn't baptized was going to hell, even people who had never heard of God, which I can say with confidence is not the Official Catholic Line.

That conversation was the last one we had about religion. Actually, it was one of the last conversations we had, period. We were roommates because - we were both blonde.

Yes, that's right. The elaborate roommate-matching process based on the three-page questionnaires we had completed before the school year?

Reduced to, "Hey! Let's make a suite of all blondes!" by the upperclassmen who made the freshman rooming arrangements.

Other than our hair, we had almost nothing in common, except, perhaps, the intention to remain virgins until marriage. Not that Gloria and I ever discussed our sex lives or lack thereof with each other. The closest we came to a conversation about it was that I walked around the room naked after a shower because I knew it bothered her. I am not a modest person, so it didn't bother me at all.

She would get into the shower fully dressed. We would see her clothes come flying over the curtain rod. Then she would finish her shower (after washing her hair with the bar soap because she had run out of shampoo and was using mine and our two suitemates' shampoo, so we started to hide it) and her hand would snake out from behind the shower curtain and grab her nightgown. She would emerge clad in her nightie, then sleep on her wet hair so in the morning, it looked as if she had put her finger in an electrical socket.

I knew, though, that she was facing some struggles because I had heard that she and her boyfriend Tad, a senior, a member of the church group with Gloria, and five inches shorter than she was, had been found in the basement fully clothed but in compromising positions. And I accidentally saw them kissing goodnight once, which was almost enough to make me lose my supper, which might not have been such a bad idea because boy, did I eat freshman year.

I wondered if she and Tad ever surrendered.

I am going to say no just because I do not want that image in my mind.

It would have been very very easy to resist Tad. If you know what I mean. Gloria was not particularly physically attractive and she didn't have a nice personality to make up for it, so it's not like she could do much better. (Yes, I know I am being mean here but the truth hurts. Listen, though. If you had a roommate who thought she should be given part of any care package sent by a roommate's mom but wouldn't share her own goodies, wouldn't you think less of her?)

Unlike Tad, Calvin was a hot hot hottie and he smelled fabulous. To this day, a whiff of Polo makes me swoon. Impossible to resist for long, even though we both were adamant that sex was for marriage and we were going to wait. We were!

Then we spent the summer apart, writing letters and making occasional phone calls. Long distance was expensive back then and I was making just a little over minimum wage as a lifeguard and a swimming teacher. I couldn't afford to talk to him that much and he couldn't afford to call me. He did, however, write really nice letters. I wish I still had them.

When we got back to school, we resumed our habit of late-evening walks and necking.

We were going to wait. Calvin claimed he wanted to wait for moral reasons, which I didn't quite get as he and his family were not churchgoers. I think it was more his desire to be stoic and resist his desires. And that he is just a tiny bit of a control freak, maybe? He and his wife, who was one of my suitemates my sophomore year, did wait (I heard from a third party which is odd because really, who talks about this sort of thing?) until their wedding night. Why on earth would anyone but the two of them know this? But yeah - that was the gossip.

I, however, was counting how long before we could be married. Two more years of college. Five to seven years for a PhD.

I had no interest whatsoever in waiting seven to nine years to consummate this relationship.

I began a campaign of "We're going to be married anyhow so it's OK it's just a timing issue."

That was a hard sale.

I finally convinced him.

It took a couple of months.

And then?

I'd been reading romance novels since I was in eighth grade. In ninth grade, I read "Sweet Savage Love" by Rosemary Rogers.

Let's just say these books give female readers the wrong impression. Not what I expected at all.

Still, I was ready to give it another chance. But guess who was the one who was guilt ridden over the experience?

Not me. I was not the one who had to be talked down from the ledge on this.

Eventually, I convinced him. Although even when I had my own apartment off campus, he never spent an entire night with me. Never.

In which Primo tries to keep the peace after the weekly mandatory phone call

Primo: My mom doesn't understand why you are friends with Stephanie yet won't have a relationship with her.

Me: I like Stephanie. She's the only person in your family who has been nice to me from the second I met her.

Primo: My parents say she's not your intellectual equal like my mom is.

Me: Oh good grief. I don't care. Stephanie is nice and we are friends.

Primo: They say she doesn't even have good grammer!

Me: So what? My grandmother said "ain't." Did that make her a bad person? I can look beyond these things, you know.

Primo: My mom wishes you would email her about gardening.

Me: Why can't she email me?

Primo: She says that you're the one who needs to initiate the relationship because you're the one who has rejected them.*

Me: But your mom is the one who wants the relationship.

Primo: I know.

Me: So if she wants it and I don't, isn't the burden on her to email first? You know I would answer her emails.

Primo: She thinks you should start.

Me: I don't want a relationship with your mother.

Primo: But she doesn't have any friends.

Me: That's not my fault and that's not my problem.




* If you do not know why I have rejected Sly and Doris, start reading the archives from the very beginning.

In which Primo gets exasperated with Doris and Sly

Primo: Why do my parents have to be so difficult?

Me: I dunno.

Primo: Jack [his brother] told them that Michael and Maria [Jack and Stephanie's kids] don't want Sly and Doris helping them with their college applications because of all their [Sly and Doris'] negativity.

Me: Yeah? What did your mom and dad say that?

Primo: They don't believe it.

Me: So what's the reason that Michael and Maria aren't asking for help? Have they thought about that?

Primo: And you don't like being around them. But in their eyes, it's all because something is wrong with you and something is wrong with Michael and Maria.

Me: They're not good at identifying the "X" in an equation, are they?

Primo: [big sigh] If I could just stick my finger in your bellybutton, things would be all better.

Me: Go ahead.

Primo: Really?

Me: If it would really solve the problems with your parents, I'll make the sacrifice.

Primo: I wish. It won't. Never mind.

Me: You have another 48 years.

In which Doris sends us an anniversary present that isn't half bad but don't worry she's still mad at me

I repeat: I am usually grateful for the thought behind any present I get. I don't want to sound like an ingrate. But. With Sly and Doris, there is present escalation - they send us something and they expect something expensive in return.

I would like us to reach detente and disarmament. No presents! None! Please don't expect us to spend $100 on each gift-giving event for you! I am fine with your not sending me a sweatshirt with flowers painted on it. Really.

That said, Doris got it right for the anniversary present she did not need to send. Well, sort of. Witness.

Primo: What's that?

Me: Your mom sent it.

Primo: What is it?

Me: A lemon tree.

Primo: Is that good?

Me: Sure.

Me: I mean, yes.

Me: I mean, if we can keep it alive over the winter. Look at the care instructions.

Primo: What do you mean?

Me: It's a tropical plant.

Primo: It's supposed to be indoors?

Me: Yes. And we really don't have anywhere in the house that will be warm enough and get enough sun.

Primo: I guess it can't stay outside.

Me: Nope.

Me: So I hope it survives winter.

Primo: But you like it enough that you'll write a thank you note?*

Me: Yes. Even if I didn't like it, I would write a note. I was raised right.

A note will not be enough to placate Doris, who responded to Primo's email yesterday suggesting dates for him to visit by noting how "bitter" she is that I continue to reject a relationship with her.

Me: What overtures does your mom say I am rejecting?

Primo: I dunno.

Me: Does she call me? No. Does she email me? No.

What she does is when my sister in law Stephanie mentions that she spoke to me is ask if Stephanie and I speak often (no - three times a year, with emails in between, plus facebook) and then tell Stephanie that she is always "reaching out" to me but I am not receptive.

Me: What would an ideal relationship with me look like to your mom?

Primo: I don't know.

Me: Is there anything I could do to make her and your dad like me?

Primo: Probably not.

Me: Did they like Isabel [Primo's first wife]?

Primo: Nope.

Me: And they trash talk their other daughters in law.

Primo: Yep.

Me: So I might as well please myself.




* Why is it that I am the one who is supposed to write the note even though they are his parents? Not that Primo cares, but how much do you want to bet that if he wrote the note, Doris would complain that I had not said anything?

In which Doris sends us an anniversary card and threatens to send us a present

I know. I should not complain about anyone sending us presents. It is tacky, tacky, tacky to bitch about receiving gifts. Except if you have read this blog from the very beginning, you know there is a price to be paid for what we get; that is, we are expected to reciprocate with presents that are equally expensive. This might not be so bad if the presents we received were not so cheap and ugly and tasteless, but Doris does not send us anything we would ever want.

Yesterday, Primo showed me the anniversary card his mother had sent. It was one of those fulsomely sentimental cards that I abhor, but tomato, tomahto, etc. I got Primo a card that showed two penguins on front and said "Happy anniversary to us" on the inside. Except of course the penguins were (between Primo and me) a reference to that Monty Python skit and the message I wrote was that he still had to wait 48 years to mess with my bellybutton. Sweetly sentimental I am not.

He showed me the card. I glanced at it and acknowledged that it was indeed nice of his mother to send it.

"Why don't I put this here on the kitchen counter with the card you gave me so you can see it all the time?" Primo suggested.

"Oh honey, no. It needs to be in your office so you can have the pleasure!" I answered.

"Maybe on your dresser?" he asked.

"Sweetness, you really deserve to have a constant reminder of your parents' affection next to you! I can't be selfish and keep it all to myself!"

I won.

The card disappeared into his office upstairs, never to be seen again.

He spoke to his parents yesterday because he didn't call on Sunday, his usual We'll Feel Abandoned if You Don't Talk to Us Every Week call.

On the card, Doris had written than she was not sending us an anniversary gift because she had not been inspired and I must agree that the pressed board Chinese nesting tables with the hummingbirds and hibiscus painted on them that she sent us last year were indeed inspired. Satan is at work, even today.

But when Primo spoke to her yesterday, she said that she had found something after all and we would be getting something soon.

So.

What can top Chinese pressed board nesting tables with hummingbirds and hibiscus, a framed photo of Sly and Doris, and a cast iron cat?

We will find out soon.

In which I tell Primo I have no interest in talking to his mother on the phone

It's our anniversary. Two years. Still not at the finger in the bellybutton stage. Primo has to wait until our 50th anniversary for that, although he had a chance a few months ago when I had told him I would go out to the bar with him but I really didn't want to go (I never want to go out to a loud bar where people are drinking), so I offered a finger in the bellybutton in exchange for not having to go out.

He didn't take it.

Too bad.

Now he has to wait 48 more years.

The subject of his parents came up. Just what I want to think about on our anniversary when we are still in our PJs at 11 a.m. and eating this chocolate-ricotta cheese-chocolate cookie dessert for breakfast before Primo makes omelettes with the chorizo-cheese-pepper thingy leftovers from supper at a Mexican restaurant last night.

It came up because I pointed out an article in the Sunday USA Weekend magazine, which sets the standard for responsible journalism. All the accurate, important news.

The article was about how to stay healthy and the last piece of advice was to keep a positive attitude, which is something Sly and Doris know nothing of, as they seek opportunities to whine and be miserable.

My great aunt watched her first husband crash his plane into the ground in front of her and their two daughters. She re-married and had four more kids and lived a happy life. Not a bitter woman. Another great-aunt lost her husband to leukemia when he was 37. He left her with eight children, one of whom died of cancer two years later. Not a bitter woman.

Point is that you decide how you are going to react to things and if you want to be miserable, you can be miserable. If you want to be happy, you can be happy.

ANYHOW.

I showed the story to Primo, who pointed out that his parents were different, that it wasn't their fault, that they weren't responsible and they had no choice but to miserable. Yes, he was channeling his mom and dad.

Then he noted that if his dad dies before his mom does that Doris will probably want to live with us and he will feel responsible for her.

I reminded him that his wedding present to me was the promise that they would NEVER live with us. NEVER.

Well, close to us, then, he said. There is an assisted living place two blocks from us.

Uh huh. If Doris wants to be in assisted living near us, whatever. That does not mean we bring her over to our house frequently or that we(=I) take her to the doctor or shopping.

"I don't think you know how nice my mom is," Primo said.

OK. Maybe I don't, as I have not seen evidence of that.

I still don't want her living in my house, taking my bedroom because she can't take stairs, telling me over and over how she can't help anymore and how bad she feels about that and could we move the TV into the living room (from the basement) and how Primo is her ONLY JOY.

"I don't even want my mom living with us and we both like and love my mom," I pointed out. "I don't want anyone but us living in this house."

Primo sighed. "I guess I need to call." [His mandatory weekly phone call or else they feel abandoned.]

I shrugged. "If that's what you want to do on your anniversary - submit to the parental guilt complex."

"They'll want to wish us a happy anniversary," he said.

Oh sure. Because they were so thrilled with his decision to marry me.

"Whatever."

"What if my mom wants to tell you happy anniversary herself?" he asked.

"Tell her I'm out."

"I don't want to lie to my mother."

"Fine. When you call, I'll go outside and then you'll be telling the truth."

"You don't even want to talk to my mom for a second?"

"No. I don't. It's my anniversary. They already made my wedding stressful. I don't have to let them ruin my anniversary."

"My mom says she keeps reaching out to you," he said.

Yes, she also tells that to my sister in law Stephanie - that she reaches out to me all the time and I reject her.

I suppose you could count giving us a framed photograph of themselves as reaching out. Or sending me an email after I wrote a sympathy note after a family death and then complaining that my response to her email was too short.

"Just be nice to my parents," Primo sighs. "It will make life easier for me."

"Fine," I tell him. "If I am driving and I see your dad in the crosswalk, I'll stop the car until he gets to the sidewalk."

"Not what I meant," Primo says.

In which my college boyfriend tells me he loves me and I don't know what to say back because he got me out of bed (I was skipping statistics)

I have changed R.M.'s name to Calvin because it is easier to type.

I went back to school after Christmas break. I had a boyfriend. I guess. I had won my bet. I had gotten him to kiss me. Was that enough? Or did I want to keep seeing Calvin?

I must have, because we did indeed date.

"Dating" meant going to the movies at the Chemistry lecture hall on Saturday nights for a dollar. Or going dancing with a group of friends, most of whom couldn't have cared less about the liquor we were not legal to buy - we were at the Winchester Club to two step and polka.

Primo thinks country western dancing is dumb, but that is because Primo thinks he cannot dance and has never tried to two step. Primo might have had a better shot at getting laid in college if he had spent more time dancing than drinking. And if he hadn't been obsessed with a crazy (seriously) girl who used him. Just saying.

He will learn to dance this winter, though, when we can't play tennis any more. He promised. We dropped in on the polka class at a festival and he did just fine, as I knew he would, because he is a natural athlete with a good sense of rhythm. The teaching at the salsa classes we took last year was not so good. Polka Society teachers, though, are about 80 years old, patient and encouraging. One teacher helped Primo get the knack of it and told him, "Youse are generally doing pretty good today," which made Primo say that maybe dancing wasn't so bad after all.

His dancing with me is my Christmas present from two years ago. Last year, his present was that I do not have to visit his mom and dad with him, although how will I ever get enough material for a good tell-all nasty out-law memoir if I don't spend more time with them? Am I willing to make the sacrifice to get that bestseller and the condo on Key Biscayne, just five miles down the road from Palacio de Jugos with its lechon, arepas and batidos de guayaba?

Yes. I think I am. If I can get more drugs. Did you know I had a migraine for 12 straight days last year in anticipation of the visit and during the visit itself? I need painkillers and preferably something that will let me sleepwalk through the experience so instead of getting mad and arguing with his dad, I just smile beatifically and say, "That's fantastic [how you were never held accountable for your performance and held the taxpayers of your state hostage to your union/tenured demands]!"

By the middle of sophomore year, we could all get into bars without fake IDs because we were finally 19, not the 18 we had been the year before when we had to borrow IDs from upperclassmen. Karen, who was 5'1" and brunette, had borrowed an ID from Bea, who was 5'10" and blonde. The bouncer just looked at it and grunted. And took Karen's two dollars.

Still, the upperclassmen hadn't always wanted to lend their driver's licenses to us, so during our freshman year, my friends Anita, Heather, Rene and I were forced to go to the flea market held every Saturday to get fake IDs. Someone knew someone who sold IDs way in the back of the market, past the bright cotton Oaxaca dresses, the serapes, the counterfeit Long and Silky shampoo, the tamales and the used auto parts spread out on a blanket on the ground because when I need a part for my car, the flea market is the first place I think of.

Our fake IDs did not look remotely like legitimate driver's licenses, what with their greenish cast, but they had the right birthdates on them, as in, making us each ten believable years older.

It's not like the bars cared, anyhow.

Calvin and I went to movies and danced and ate at the gyro place and at the empanada place right across the street* and took long walks around campus in the evening, which you can do all year because there is NO SNOW and talked about whatever two horny college sophomores talk about when they are not necking, which was our favorite activity and which we usually did in the physics lab or on top of the geology building, as both of us had roommates who did not leave the room enough.

He was usually late to pick me up, which annoyed me to no end. I hate it when people are late and I especially hate it when it is Saturday night and the reason they are late is because they were helping Jim or Scott or Bob with the physics homework.

It's Saturday night.

Tell them to wait.

The kissing made up for it, though. For a guy who had never kissed a girl before, except one little kiss from Candace Allegra C., Calvin's big high school crush, who, I am sad to say, is showing the effects of never having used sunblock on her face her entire life and I know this how? Because I am a googlestalker with way too much time on her hands and I remember names.

Wear sunblock and a hat. This is what I am telling you. Do you want to look like an old lady when you are only 46? No I didn't think so. Heather's mom tried to warn us when we were in college and would sit on the sundeck but did we listen to her? No I did not and I regret it now.

Also, take the stairs as much as you can when you are young before your butt starts to fall. Better to keep that from happening in the first place than to try to fight gravity once it's too late. You can thank me later.

We had been dating for a couple of months and things were going swimmingly. I had some status now as a girl with a boyfriend. Not that it was so hard to get male attention at Small Private School: the male students outnumbered the female students two to one. Still. I had a boyfriend. I wasn't thinking any further than the next weekend.

A few months into the semester, I was sleeping late and skipping class, which was my wont, which goes a long way to explaining my college GPA vs my grad school GPA. Did you know that if you prepare for class, go to class, sit in the front row, and ask questions when you don't understand something that you do a lot better on tests than if you 1. don't do the readings and 2. don't attend class?

I had a huge misunderstanding of what a roll was. I thought it was a class so easy that you didn't even need to attend to get an A.

Wrong.

It was a class where it was easy to get an A if you prepared, attended and asked questions.

Who knew?

I thought I was so smart taking probability and statistics for academic majors (as opposed to P&S for science and engineering majors). I'd already taken calculus and differential equations. Shouldn't P&S have been a piece of cake?

Well sure.

If I had gone to class. And when I took P&S in grad school, I did very well. I had learned my lesson.

But as a college sophomore who had just changed her major from electrical engineering with a concentration in biomedical engineering so I could go to med school and then design bionics to English, I was not so clueful.

Hence, the skipping class.

That morning, I heard a knock on my door, which annoyed me as it awoke me at the crack of dawn hour of 9:15.

It was Calvin.

Now that I think about it, why wasn't he in class? He never skipped. People borrowed his notes. They went to him for homework help.

He had something to tell me, he blurted out.

Not until I've had a shower, I told him.

I made him wait while I bathed and wondered what on earth he could be so nervous about. Was he going to break up with me? Would I be upset if he did?

I emerged from the bathroom, dressed, I suppose, because we were not at That Stage. We were still at the hand-holding, kissing, and touching only above the neck stage. Yes, it is completely possible for college students to be virginal. We were of the No Sex Before Marriage group, remember?

And he told me he was in love with me.

Well.

Nobody had ever said that to me before. Nobody who wasn't a relative.

I had no idea what to say to him.

So I told him I had to get to class.

As soon as I could, I called my mom and dad. What am I supposed to tell this guy? I demanded.

They laughed. Whatever I wanted to, they told me.

I thought about it and a few days later, as we took a late-evening walk through the quad, I told him I loved him, too. Then we talked about getting married because that is the logical progression for two college sophomores in love, one of whom plans to get a PhD and would not be ready to support a family for many years.








* Note to self: get a dozen empanadas - cream cheese and blueberry, pizza, banana and dulce de leche - when Primo and I go to our 25 year reunion next month.

In which I stalk my college boyfriend before we start dating so he will want to date me because every man wants an obsessed woman

When I left you, I was on a "date" with Jake, my physics lab partner, and had just met Calvin, who later became my boyfriend, then not my boyfriend when I met his hot friend Seth who had the fabulous abs, then my boyfriend again when I realized Seth had no interest whatsoever in me, then my fiance' and then not my fiance,' but only after my mom had reserved the church and I had bought the dress.

I took one look at Calvin and thought, Well now he's a hottie, isn't he? only I didn't think the word "hottie" because it was not yet in use in the early '80s. "Stud" and "studmuffin" were the terms of art back then. "Hunk" was also used, although "hunkalicious" would not find popularity until 2009, way too late to use for Calvin.

But they all applied.

He was hot.

Even more appealing to me than his smoldering dark good looks and cute smile was the fact that he was completely, totally uninterested in me. No vibe whatsoever.

Nothing I like better than a challenge.

I'd had only a date or two my freshman year of college, if you could even call them dates. A date implies interest on the part of both parties, not an interested guy and a girl who's too startled at being asked out to know how to say, "no." It implies that the girl know when a guy tells her that he has an extra ticket to the Tom Petty concert and does she want to go that he is really asking her on a date, not trying to keep the ticket from going to waste, because if that's all he wanted, he could have asked his roommate. But some girls will just go because they've never been to a rock concert before (really!) and then be shocked, shocked when the guy tries to hold their (her?) hand because when has she ever shown any interest in this guy?

See also, "I go to a play with my roommate's brother's roommate and then he walks me back to my room and won't leave so I sit with my roommates to watch TV and pull out my knitting, then go to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror with the cute guys who walk past our room and invite anyone who wants to go with them."

I needed a strategy to make Calvin mine.

Part of it was to lose 25 pounds.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know it's what's inside that matters, but 18 year old men who can choose from an entire cafeteria of girls will choose the ones they find most visually appealing and select for personality later. I needed to catch his eye before he would even talk to me.

Over the summer, I de-chubbed. What a pain in the neck. Eating less, exercising more. I hate it all.

But when I returned to school that fall, there was less of me to love and I had a better haircut.

Then my roommates, who were in on the plan with me, and I began to include Calvin in our group activities. We were already friends with some of his friends, so it wasn't too hard.

He was a hard nut to crack. Study, study, study. He was majoring in electrical engineering and physics and had appointed himself the homework helper to the world. He didn't have much free time.

Yet I persisted. I would visit him and his roommates - just saying hi! Just making myself obnoxious!

Over Christmas break, I saw my chance. My family lived in San Antonio. So did his. I proposed that we get together and do something while we were home. Probably too surprised to say no, he agreed.

My friends bet me that I couldn't get him to kiss me. He was too shy, they said. He wasn't interested in girls. Or in me. Fine. Show me the money.

What did we do? I can't remember. Maybe we went to a movie. I do remember that he picked me up. (He had his own car. He was an Only.)

When he dropped me off at the end of the evening, he walked me to the door. Took my hand. Kissed it.

Oh no, I told him. Not there. Here. And I pointed to my lips.

He gave me an awkward peck.

I was disappointed. Really? That was it?

You can do better than that! I exclaimed.

He tried again.

Practice did make perfect.

In which I meet my college boyfriend, who later became my fiance' but then I changed my mind about getting married and he married my roommate instead

Let me be clear about one thing from the outset: my college boyfriend, Calvin, is a great guy. My decision not to marry him had nothing to do with his being a jerk (he wasn't a jerk - I dated him for three years - even I don't put up with jerkness for that long) and everything to do with my being only 22 years old at the time. Twenty two is very young to marry. It's also young to make career decisions, but what can you do?

My freshman year of college, beginning of the second semester, it snowed. In Big Southern City. This happens once every gajillion years or so. Big Southern City is usually quite humid (= Hell is the staging ground for Big Southern City) but on the snow day, the air got really dry. My eyes got dry. That was back in the day when I wore hard contact lenses. Dry eyes + hard contacts = scratched eyes, which meant a trip to the ER (had I known then what I know now, I never would have wasted medical resources like that, but it felt as if someone was pouring acid in my eyes and I was 18 and didn't know what else to do). They rinsed my eyes and told me to keep patches on them for a few days.

My roommates kindly drew me a wardrobe of eyes to wear over the patches and escorted me to the commons for meals and to my classes. I didn't, however, go to my first physics lab (I was an engineering major before I changed to the oh so practical English), which was when everyone picked their lab partners. I was partnerless when I showed up for the second class. So was Jake, who had twisted his ankle playing basketball. He hobbled and I squinted into class.

It was destiny.

We were great lab partners because we would calculate what our results should be (density of water? rate of gravity? easy!) and set up the experiment to get the results we wanted, which meant it took us half the time it did the other students.

Suckers.

Our labbie might not have approved, but bless his Korean graduate student heart, we couldn't understand a word he said, so even if he had been telling us to tear it all down and start over, we didn't know.

This method didn't hurt Jake too much. He got a PhD in chemistry from CalTech, which makes me think his technique wasn't so far off.

Naturally, I developed a crush on Jake because he was funny and smart, which is the lethal combination that always gets me.

One day, as we walked back from lab to our dorms, Jake asked me, "Do you want to go to [this dorm dinner]?"

I paused. What did he mean? Was he asking me on a date or was this an in-theory question, like, "Would you like to be two inches taller and 20 pounds lighter but with bigger bosoms?"

Well duh.

Who wouldn't?

I answered cautiously. "With you?"

Wouldn't you be concerned? What if I had answered, "Yes!" and he had said, "Well I hope someone asks you."

Then I would have felt dumb.

"Yes, with me!" he said impatiently.

Well yes then!

I was so excited. Maybe my feelings were reciprocated.

They weren't. Jake just wanted a date for the event. I don't even remember how I figured out he was not at all interested in me but it didn't matter, because his roommate, Calvin, was also at this event and without a date.

And really cute.

And really smart.

I looked at him and thought, "That's the man I'm going to marry."

And I almost did.

But it took some work to get to that point.

More on the Calvin, who had almost never kissed a girl, story next time.

In which I work for a crazy boss

I know, I know. Everyone has a crazy boss at some point and I should consider myself lucky that this boss, Crazy Cathy, was only a short-term boss in a temporary employment situation. I was considering going into the Peace Corps and didn't have a whole lot vested with CC, but it was still a pain in the neck.

I was in Austin and had finished my MBA. Unlike my wiser fellow students, I had made no effort whatsoever to find gainful employment before graduation. I was aloof, sure that I would escape the corporate rat marathon that everyone else seemed so eager to run.

Ha. Stupid me. I forgot the part about how if you want to make a decent living, you have to work for your money. As in, they don't pay you the big bucks because it's fun to go to the office every day; they pay you because it's hard and you have to deal with idiots. Not all of us can be major league ball players or actresses. We don't have the talent to be athletes or the photogenicity to be on film. That leaves corporate cubicle dronedom, unless of course you are a trust fund brat and inherited wealth is a whole separate category that I won't address here as I have no experience with it, except that it wasn't until I got to college that I first encountered people who were from another socio-economic strata from mine. Most families on military bases are about the same income level and even if someone has wealth from another source, you wouldn't know because base housing is assigned by need and rank, not by wealth. One of my college classmates was getting some fancy car, though, and his dad was having it custom made. Actually, even being around students whose parents were paying their tuition and giving them spending money for beer was a novelty.

But I digress.

He who wants to eat must work and eating is my favorite hobby, which means work is a necessary evil.

Still, I didn't want to go back to another big company because I had just left a big company. I had this vision of working for a small company where life would be all rainbows and unicorns. So I waited until after I had graduated, then spent the rest of my savings on a ten-week traipse through Europe, Turkey and Israel, before I commenced my job search.

Surprise!

Nobody was hiring in the summer of 1992. At least, they weren't hiring me.

I started networking, as rumor has it that is how one finds a job.

I contacted former clients from when I had worked for the insurance company before grad school. One of them, Crazy Cathy, owned a small company with her husband. When I asked her to keep me in mind if anyone needed to hire someone such as I, she asked if I would do some work for her. Her human resources director had quit and she needed to hire a replacement. Would I go through the resumes and screen the candidates?

Sure. Piece of cake.

But there was more.

Each candidate in whom she might be interested had to be tested. If the person passed the test, CC would interview him. I graded the test as the candidate waited and knew right away if he would proceed further.

But CC wouldn't let me tell people that they were out.

I had to leave them hanging, which as anyone who has ever looked for a job knows, is a horrible feeling.

I myself had to take the test. I missed one question out of 20 or so. What do you call the person who runs a factory or an apartment building? Apparently, the answer was "superintendent," but considering I had never lived in New York* and every person I have ever heard of running a factory is called a plant manager or the like, superintendent was not the word that sprang to mind. CC said I had one of the highest scores she had ever seen. Whatever.

Once a candidate had passed the first test, he had to take a second one - a personality profile called the Birkman test. This test is not supposed to be used as a hiring tool, but that did not stop CC. She fancied herself a psychologist.

Here's the rest of it: the first test was an intelligence test.

In the state of Texas and I know this because I called the Department of Labor and a friend who used to be an HR director for Kraft and who had worked in Texas, it is illegal to give an intelligence test as part of the hiring process. Or, probably, it is illegal to consider the results of an intelligence test in hiring someone unless you can prove that intelligence measured in that way is a necessary part of the job.

I was quite uncomfortable with doing something illegal. I thought maybe CC just didn't know, so I mentioned my call to her. She was furious. How dare I! How DARE I?!

Yet I continued to work there. CC, who showed up a few hours a week, would call for me while I was away from my desk (OMG! I went to the ladies' room sometimes!) and would be livid when I returned her call. Where was I? Why hadn't I been at my desk?

She paid me to feed their cats while they were out of town, which was just fine except she charged those hours to the company instead of paying me out of her personal funds. Tax fraud. And - they paid their employees below-market salaries because they (claimed they) had profit sharing. Profits that were artificially diminished because she was charging her personal expenses to the company.

None of this was the last straw, though. It wasn't until the head finance guy had me go through all the customer files to identify California customers and their 1990 purchases so the company could remit sales tax to California that I lost it. It wasn't pulling the 1990 purchases - it was after I had spent three days going through every single customer file to make a photocopy of any California customer purchases, the finance guy said, "Now do the same thing for 1991."

"But why didn't you just ask me to do both of them at the same time?" I sputtered, incredulous.

He shrugged. "You're being paid by the hour, aren't you?"

"I'm not being paid to be bored and inefficient," I shot at him.

Then I burst into tears. "I used to make $75,000 a year and I had my own secretary!" I sobbed as I left his office, furious. Nothing more humiliating than crying at work, in front of a jerk, over something so stupid. He was right. I was being paid by the hour. I should have welcomed the extra work, no matter how excruciatingly dull it was.

Three hours later, the finance guy showed up at my desk. "We won't be needing your services any more," he announced. He waited for me to get my things and walked me out. Because you know, I was going to trash the place. I couldn't believe I had been fired from such a corrupt place. I should have reported them to the IRS and the Department of Labor. Jerks.





* Which was why the taxicab medallion example made no sense to me in Econ 102, and yes I should have raised my hand and asked what the heck a medallion was and why it had anything to do with supply and demand, but I was a timid thing when I was in college and my professor was intimidating.