In which Missy G says she'll be my friend but only if I don't tell anyone at school

We moved to Lubbock when I was in fifth grade, in the middle of the school year. For the first time in my life, we weren't in base housing (except the year my dad was in Vietnam and the rest of us lived in an apartment 35 miles away from my grandparents) and for the first time in my life, except for the first two months of kindergarten, I wasn't in a base school. The house my mom and dad bought was across the street from Bowie Elementary School, so that's where my brother, sister and I were sent to school.

[Of course you know who Jim Bowie was! The guy who fought at the Alamo and whom the knife is named after! Didn't you have Texas history in 7th grade?]

There is nothing like being the new weird kid in the class in the middle of the school year in a school where kids aren't in and out all the time. On base schools, there are always new kids. New alliances form and disband, as they do anywhere, but nobody has the advantage of having been at the school since kindergarten. Everyone is new.

But I was the only new one in the fifth grade at Bowie. There were two girls of note in my class: Jennifer C., with her cool aviator-frame glasses, her long brown wavy hair and her yellow gingham double-knit polyester pantsuit, and Sandy M., who was an early developer, which is not such a great thing for a fifth-grade girl to be.

Jennifer was the arbiter of cool.

I was not cool.

Not that anyone in the class was really cool, unless you think that a music class that consisted of the teacher handing out a mimeo with lyrics so we could sing along with Karen Carpenter and her brother once the teacher touched the needle to the record was cool.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe every fifth grader really wanted to know all the words to Yesterday Once More, We've Only Just Begun, and Rainy Days and Mondays by heart.

Yes, I still know those songs.

It's just what you want your ten year old to sing, isn't it?

Talking to myself and feeling old
Sometimes I'd like to quit
Nothing ever seems to fit
Hangin around, nothing to do but frown
Rainy days and Mondays always get me down

What I've got they used to call the blues
Nothing is really wrong
Feeling like I don't belong
Walking around some kind of lonely clown
Rainy days and Mondays always get me down

Depression, not fitting in. This song is the fifth-grade anthem.

I did not make any friends those few months. I did, however, get glasses, as the school nurse, doing a routine vision screening, identified my myopia. I didn't know I couldn't see the board. I mean, I knew I couldn't read it from my desk, but I had no idea that wasn't normal. Despite my vision problems, I still skipped a grade and always read with the class ahead of me. It didn't hurt me academically. I could see up close.

I couldn't see up close fast, though. The highlight of my school athletic career was at Bowie when I hit a softball that was pitched to me. The problem was that I hit it after it had passed my bat, so I hit it into my mouth.

It hurt.

Yes I was always picked last for any team. Why do you ask?

My brother made friends. Lynn O lived next door with his sister Lisa and brother Lanny. His mom and dad were very nice. Mr O was a morning radio show host and would play Malaguena for my mother. Mrs O had her pretensions - she acted fancy and name dropped a lot [My mother would roll her eyes and mutter, "Yeah, I know your uncle is a congressman. You already told me. Like 400 times.] - but she let me come over and play their piano whenever I wanted. That made up for the time that she gave my mom a bunch of Lisa's outgrown clothes for me and then asked to have them back a few weeks later because she wanted to have a garage sale. I didn't care: Lisa had reached the age where she needed to be wearing deodorant but nobody had supplied her with such, if you know what I mean.

My sister always makes friends. People flock to her.

But I was weird. Kinda funny looking. Well, not really, but I thought I was.

The next school year, my parents put us in the Catholic school that was about a mile from us. It's not there any more - there's a golf course in its place. The three of us rode our bikes to school through the cotton fields, which wasn't as great as it might sound because there are frequent windstorms in Lubbock and wind + dirt = duststorm. That dirt gets everywhere. We would ride the long way through Lubbock Christian College to avoid the dirt, but that didn't always help.

Missy was in my class, one of the other four girls. There were six boys. We had our own Girl Scout troop and met after school in the cafeteria. One of the girl's mothers, who was Mexican, gave us a lesson in making flour tortillas from scratch. The secret is lard. Sorry if that bothers you, but it's true. Lard is also the secret to pie crust. It won't kill you. My grandfather ate bacon grease on his toast and he lived to 82. It was the smoking that killed him. Not the pig fat.

Missy lived only three blocks from me and also rode her bike to school. We would ride together, our plaid skirts pushed up to accommodate the crossbar and our pants underneath our uniforms to keep us warm. Lubbock might be in Texas, but that doesn't mean it's warm in the winter. It's in the high plains. Blizzards, etc.

I have to tell you a Lubbock joke. When I was in the Peace Corps in Chile, another volunteer, who was from New York, was planning to get a PhD and was applying to various programs, including Texas Tech (which is in Lubbock). This volunteer liked his beer.

You know Lubbock is dry, right? I asked him.

He looked at me, puzzled. Yeah, I know it doesn't rain a lot there. So what?

I laughed. He did not know this dry of which I spoke.

Back to Missy. We rode our bikes to school together. We spent afternoons at her house. We were in Girl Scouts together. We learned American Sign Language from our brothers' Cub Scout handbooks together so we could communicate across the classroom without the teacher knowing. (I had my glasses by now so it worked.)

Until we got caught, we stole pecans together from the lawn of the old lady in the big house with the huge pecan trees on Slide Road. The old lady saw our bikes leaning against her tree, saw us picking up pecans and stuffing them in our pockets, and came out to scold us.

Are you Baptist? she asked. [Maybe she asked if we were saved. I can't remember. It's the same difference to some people.]

No, we answered. We go to St Elizabeth's. We're Catholic.

Of course we were heathens. We did not say "No ma'am." NO MANNERS.

She shook her head and sighed. Oh bless your [pagan, anti-Christ] hearts, she told us. I'll pray for you.

I thought Missy and I were friends.

But again, I was not a cool kid. In St Elizabeth's sixth-grade class, Steve S. and Steve R. were the ones who decided who was in and who was not. I don't know why Steve R. should have been a cool decider - he was about as nerdy as they come, with his nerd glasses repaired with tape and his skinny, sixth-grade body. But he was Steve S's best friend and Steve S. was a good looking blond kid from a rich family who lived on Slide Road near the fancy pecan lady who was going to pray for us.

Missy valued their opinion and esteem.

So one afternoon, she laid it out for me: I'll be friends with you, she said, but you can't tell anyone at school.

The right answer would have been, Go to hell. Either we're friends or we're not.

But this was way before the self-esteem movement. It was back when kids handled their own problems without involving the adults. It was back when most kids had a strong intuitive grasp of realpolitik.

The answer was obvious.

I could either have self respect. Or I could have a friend.

I shrugged and said, OK.

Unfortunately, our friendship lasted only until the end of the year. Once we started junior high, she went to the Catholic junior high and I was back in public school. But more about that later.

In which I stand a guy up for a good reason but he doesn't believe me

Austin, late 80s. I was at a restaurant after work, holding a table for eight, waiting for my friends to show up. I do not remember the name of the restaurant, but I can tell you exactly where it was: at MoPac and 2222, just west of the grocery store (Safeway, I think) and just north of a 50s ranch house with a stone exterior and wood floors that I considered buying for $50,000. I didn't, which was maybe idiocy, because that house would probably sell for $300,000 today simply because of the location. But I had seen one housing bubble already in Texas and did not trust it wouldn't happen again.

Yes, the current housing bubble was no surprise to me or to anyone who lived in Texas at that time. How can something like this happen? people have moaned. Housing prices have never declined before!

Oh yes they have you idiots. You just weren't paying attention. I have a friend who stayed living in her house with her ex-husband for a few years after their divorce because they couldn't afford to sell it. It's a good thing it was a relatively amicable divorce.

Back to the restaurant. I was at the MoPac/2222 location.

But guess what?

The restaurant also had a Hwy 183 location near the big Whole Foods.

That's where all my friends were waiting.

I was at MoPac/2222. They were at 183.

This was back in the day before cellphones, so I couldn't call to triangulate. I just sat waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

All alone at a table for eight.

I felt like an idiot. To save face, I pulled my grocery list out of my purse and started doodling, noting that I needed eggs and milk and that I needed to change the kitty litter.

After what seemed like hours but was probably a few minutes, the waiter came over and handed me a note.

May I buy you a drink? the note said.

What? What was this? This sort of thing didn't happen in real life, at least not in my real life. I looked around the restaurant, which, fortunately, was not full, or I would have felt really bad about holding a table for eight, and saw a guy looking back. He propped his wrist on the table and waved a few fingers at me in the West Texas lone pickup on the highway fashion.

I looked back over my shoulder.

He was not looking or waving behind me.

I gave him a tentative wave in return.

He smiled, then walked over to my table.

What are you writing? he asked. Are you taking notes for a book?

Had this happened today, I would have answered that I was writing down stuff for my blog, but back then, blogs didn't exist and I didn't have such a glamorous answer. No, I told him. Just my grocery and to-do list.

We chatted. I explained that I was waiting for my friends but they were no-shows and what was up with that? That was about when I figured out that they had gone to the other location. For dumb.

He was a window designer - what a cool job! - for one of the big department stores downtown. I have gone to the google to try to help me remember which one: Was it Scarborough's? Was it Joske's? Joske's was pretty fancy in my eyes, but it didn't take much to get fancier than Sears and Penney's, which were my family's mainstays for bought clothes when I was a kid.

As a young working adult, I bought my suits at Joseph Banks, but only because I did not know there were other stores that sold women's business clothes. Maybe there weren't back then. We women were kind of stuck with the boring navy suit and the cotton blouse with the stupid stupid bow tie, thank you Mr Dress for Success in Ugly Clothes.

He asked if I wanted to have lunch someday. Sure, I said.

Wow. A complete stranger, asking me on a date. How weird was that? Usually, when I was out, the men would flock to my (married) friends. I was the sidekick - the one who got the sidekick guy, if there was one. But my (married) friends were expert flirters who had no intention of ever taking anything further than dancing and a few drinks. And OK, maybe some snogging, which I wondered about. Aren't you married? Should you be kissing other men if you're married? But I kept my mouth shut, as I did not think my comments would change the situation.

He got my number and I left.

He called a few days later. We made a date.

The day we were supposed to meet, I found out about a funeral I needed to attend. The wife of an important client had died. I wasn't so close to the widower, who was the owner of the company, but I did know the controller, who handled all the insurance, quite well. We had become friends. When Rod Stewart came to town, I got four tickets, then called Controller to ask if he wanted to attend the concert because that way, I could expense it as entertainment.

There was a long pause, then Controller said, Gold digger, I am a married man.

I laughed. It hadn't occurred to me that he would interpret my invitation like that.

No, I told him. No! You, your wife, my date and me.

He was relieved.

Shortly after his boss' wife died, Controller, who was in his early 30s with a newborn daughter, learned he had cancer. He was dead in four months. I had tried early in our relationship to get him to increase the group life insurance - $5,000 - that the company gave to its employees. Even back then $5,000 was woefully low. The standard was at least one times annual earnings and was a very inexpensive benefit to give.

But Controller demurred, saying that the owner of the company thought that $5,000 was enough - it would bury someone.

After Controller was dead, I learned that he had not bought life insurance on his own and that his wife and baby had been left with a mere $5,000. Enough to bury him but not enough to begin to take care of his family. I felt sick that I had not pushed him harder.

Depressed now? OK back to the story.

I had to attend this funeral. I called Window Decorator Guy to cancel and couldn't reach him. I called several times, leaving a message with the receptionist each time. I don't know if he got my message. Either he didn't and he waited at the restaurant for me or he did and thought I was making up having to go to a funeral.

I called him a few times after that, but he never returned my calls.

A couple of weeks later, I was at the HEB on Far West Blvd, where I had stopped after going running (back then, I really sort of ran as opposed to the brisk ambling I do now) around Town Lake. I was sweaty and oh so spiffy in my old "!Espana!" t-shirt and running shorts. All I needed was kitty litter, so I didn't have a cart. But the litter was heavy. I hoisted it onto my shoulder.

There I was, walking to the register through the pet supplies aisle, and who did I see?

Window Designer Guy.

Looking quite dandy in his pressed khakis, starched button-down blue and white striped shirt, and yellow sweater tied jauntily around his shoulders.

We stopped. Exchanged awkward hellos. He didn't offer to take me out to lunch again, probably because

Me: sweaty, old t-shirt, 25 pounds of kitty litter on my shoulder

Him: dapper, clean, starched

Awkward goodbyes. I really hadn't stood him up, but he probably looked at me in the store and thought, Whew! Dodged a bullet there!

In which I have my first kiss and discover love is fleeting

My dad was in the air force, so we moved a lot. Both my mom and dad are from a small town in Wisconsin (they met at the bar at the bowling alley, which is not as sordid as it sounds as this is a very very small town where everyone knew who everyone was, even if they didn't know each other personally). Between moves, we kids would spend a lot of the summer in Dorchester, playing with our cousins and other kids in town.

The summer I was 12, we spent some time in Dorchester.

The main thing my brother, sister and I did to kill time after walking to the small grocery store to buy Frosty Cream Soda, which was not, as far as we knew, available in Lubbock, Texas, and which was a great complement to the Cap'n Crunch that my grandmother, on her small fixed retired dairy farmer income, bought for us (sugared cereals and soda being unavailable chez nous) was go to the swimming pond in the park.

The park was four blocks away, across the train tracks where the wild raspberries grew. There was a lifeguard, a pool house, and a raft in the middle of the pond. It cost a quarter to get in and my grandmother would give us the money to go. My siblings, my cousins and I would spend hours there. Then my cousin Angie, who is only nine days older than I am and my best cousin (out of 26 first cousins), would wash our hair in the pool house with Suave Strawberry Essence shampoo, which I suppose is not an important detail except even now, the smell of strawberry shampoo reminds me of summer.

Sadly, the pond has since been filled in. The town must have decided they couldn't afford the liability of a potential drowning.

But when I was 12 and when the pond was still open, there was a guy.

Stan M.

He lived on the farm right next to the cemetery, on the south side of town, across from the lumberyard.

Stan was hot.

Not that I used the word "hot" when I was 12. He was cuuuute!

He was as cute as a 12 year old farm boy can be. Tanned with dark curly hair and a bit muscular because farm boys at that time were expected to help with baling hay.

I didn't think anyone could be any cuter.

He would come to the swimming hole and flirt with me, as much as a 12 year old boy can flirt, which usually consists of splashing water on the object of desire, pushing her head under, and many other ways of expressing affection that are probably illegal on playgrounds today. I know the doubleknit polyester navy blue two-piece swimsuit with the anchor applique on the high-necked halter top that my mom had made for me was probably driving him wild. Nothing like a very modest bathing suit on an underdeveloped, plump seventh grader to inflame the passions.

I don't know how we made the transition from splashing each other to kissing, but one day, we walked back to his house together. We got as far as the creek on the north side of the cemetery. He wanted to kiss me, but I didn't want anyone to see because I don't know why. Which was stupid because we were on a gravel road by a cemetery on the outskirts of a town that didn't - still doesn't - even have a stoplight, so it's not like there was a lot of - or any - traffic.

I insisted we walk off the road and down to the creek. Not like anyone would see us there, standing next to the tiny bridge that crossed the tiny stream.

He stepped toward me. I stepped back into the cattails, then stopped. How could he kiss me if I was moving?

He stepped toward me again, kissed me and I thought,

Is this it? Is that all? Is that what a kiss feels like?

I had recently embarked on an ambitious project to read every trash romance novel ever written, including all the Harlequin romances and Sweet Savage Love, which has the typical plot of a defenseless woman forced to fend for herself because of being orphaned or sold to settle her father's debts, who encounters an alpha male - cowboy, cop, firefighter - who despises her upon first sight as much as she despises him. Yet they are thrown together by circumstances beyond their control. Their mutual attraction overwhelms them and they sleep together, but then come to their senses and vow that will never happen again, by golly.

In the meantime, they fall in love with each other but neither wants to admit that love because each is sure the other still despises him/her. Fortunately, Something Happens and They Admit Their Love and Live Happily Ever After.

There are usually some sex scenes, which interested me a lot when I was a teenager but now I skip because I am married to hottie Primo and can have wxyz whenever I want and sex scenes never advance the plot. Zey are boring to me now.

So before Stan kissed me, I had very high expectations for kissing, which is an argument for not teaching kids to read because imagine how much less disappointment in the world there would be if nobody had ever had her expectations raised from reading Sweet Savage Love. (Ha. Imagine what my first time of wxyz was like if I thought the earth would move with a mere kiss!)

Disappointed, I stepped back again, this time into the creek, which was OK because I was wearing flip flops but still was not the sophisticated exit I had wanted to make. I mumbled something about needing to get back to my granma's for supper and fled.

The prince turned into a frog. With one kiss, all the romance was gone. All the cuteness was gone. How could it all vanish so quickly?

We left a few days later, so I didn't have to avoid him for very long. I saw him again the next summer and wondered what had happened. He had been so cute! And now he was so short! What had I been thinking?

I would like to say I learned an important lesson with that kiss, but if you have read any of the other stories on this blog, you know that's a big fat lie. All I learned was you have to kiss a lot before you find someone who rocks your world. And even that is not enough.

In which I stalk a boy in high school and reject another

Chickadees, I have not been writing much lately. Fortunately, the Sly and Doris drama has diminished and I hence have less material than usual.

So I am forced once again to reach way back into a past that I really don't remember that well and tell you some pretty much true stories, a skeleton of facts embellished with what may or may not be true details to make things more interesting.

1. In which I stalk a boy

I was on the swim team in high school. Ha. Don't get the wrong idea. All you had to do to be on the team was to show up to practice. We didn't have a lot of competition, as we were the only American high school within 50 miles. We swam against the American high school on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal, against the American junior high school, and against Canal Zone Junior College. Or maybe just the other high school. I can't remember. It's been a long time. But we had more than one swim meet a year, so we must have gone against the junior high and the junior college.

None of these details matter. What matters is that there was this guy, Ray, who was also on the swim team and who lived a few blocks from me.

I thought he was a hot hot hottie.

This was before the Swim Team Boyfriend Who Turned Out to Be Gay showed up.

But until STBWTOTBG made his entrance, Ray was it for me.

I lusted after him on the school bus. I lusted after him in the halls. I lusted after him at swim practice.

He had no interest - zip, zero, nada - in me.

That didn't stop me.

I was liberated. I was cool. I called him and asked him to the movies.

He was so surprised he didn't know how to say no.

I was so excited that I probably put on makeup, although looking back on my high school photos, tenth grade was a decent year and I was looking pretty good as long as I wasn't wearing my glasses, which had that brown so cool tint on the top that actually didn't look cool at all but made me look very very tired.

My skin was so nice when I was in high school (yeah, those days are gone) that a few teachers actually stopped me in the hall to tell me how gorgeous my complexion was. They did the same for my hair, which was artificially blonde and shiny from all the chlorine and sun.

Yet I did not appreciate having lovely skin and hair at the time, just as I did not appreciate having a smooth neck and eyes that did not get puffy after just two pickles. I did not appreciate being able to walk in high heels without pain.

OK, the high heels came later because in high school, I could not walk in high heels at all. My mom got heels for me for my high school graduation, which I attended under duress and still wish I hadn't attended because we moved before my senior year of high school and I was one of two new seniors in a class of 648. Can you say crummy crummy senior year?

I had to practice walking in those shoes, which had heels of perhaps 1.5", to do it right. I later moved to 3" heels when I was working and never had a problem. But now? I had to surrender my almost new BCBG black slingbacks that I found at the Junior League consignment shop for just $20 after Primo and I went to a play downtown and I was hobbling after two blocks. After the play, Primo went to get the car so I wouldn't have to walk. Primo is an angel.

I did not appreciate any of the aspects of my body's youth. How I wish I had those aspects back.

I had my cool green jumpsuit that I had made myself from the crinkle cloth I found at the BX for $2.95 a yard and with a D-ring fastener on the green crinkle cloth fabric belt.

Or maybe I wore my Sears overalls that I ordered from the catalogue and paid for with my babysitting money as my mother refused to subsidize a clothing item that she used to have to wear to work in the barn when she was a kid.

Or maybe it was the white painter pants with the cool hammer holder running from the pocket to the seam because you never knew as a 10th grader when you might meet an errant nail.

Oh yes. Looking good.

Ray came to my house because my house was on the way to the movie theater. It didn't make sense for me to go to his house and then double back. Plus in retrospect he probably didn't want his parents to know what was going on.

We walked to the movies but I noticed he didn't seem very excited. My big clue was that I was walking on the sidewalk and he was walking on the grass. Almost on the curb. Almost in the street. As in, he wanted to be as far from me as possible.

He used the same seating strategy: leaning far far away from me. At least he didn't leave an empty seat between the two of us, as so many of the young GIs were wont to go lest their sexuality be questioned. Plus the seats were kind of small and young GIs like to sprawl, so alternating seats gave them more leg room.

I got the hint. I did not ask him out again and he did not ask me out. He later went to Oral Roberts U, which made me realize that we had no future together anyhow as the beliefs of the kids who go to ORU don't really mesh with the beliefs of the kids who go to CCD.

2. In which I reject a boy and I am mean about it and I am still sorry

Drew N. was in my chemistry class. He was a little bit obnoxious, although I realize now that most high school boys are a little bit obnoxious. My friend Sue (name changed to protect the guilty, the guilty now having three boys of her own and the guilty probably thinking she would punch any girl who treated her boys meanly) and I were chemistry lab partners.

We were also partners in mocking the classmates we didn't like. This category of course included Drew because he was obnoxious. Our favorite thing to do was to sing our lyrics to the song, "Close to You," under our breath whenever Drew bugged us. Our lyrics went something like,

Why do worms suddenly appear?

Every time you are near?

Could it be

They want to be

Close to you?

There were undoubtedly more outrageously clever and cutting lyrics but I can't remember them now.

Point is, I never did anything to Drew to indicate that I might be interested in him. I didn't talk to him unless I had to. I sure didn't flirt with him. I didn't know how to flirt. I went straight for the jugular: "Hey Swim Team Hottie who has shown no interest in me. Do you want to go to the movies on Saturday?" Finesse was not my style. Blunt force. That's where it's at with me.

Yet one day as we were walking from the lab back to the classroom, Drew cornered me alone in the hall.

"Do you want to go to the ROTC ball with me?" he asked.

What? Where was this coming from? NO I DID NOT WANT TO GO TO THAT DANCE WITH HIM!*

I stammered and hemmed and hawed and said something dumb like I really didn't get into all that military stuff which was a BIG FAT LIE because HELLO! My father was IN THE AIR FORCE! And I lived on an AIR FORCE BASE!

Sue walked up. She had overheard. She started to laugh, which is a reaction I can completely understand because we thought Drew was the most obnoxious loser in the world, but still. We weren't ever mean to his face. Just behind his back, which is the right way to be mean.

"You think she would go to a dance with YOU?" Sue asked.

Drew, humiliated, scurried away.

He never asked me out again. Sue and I continued to sing about him. And 32 years later, I still think about that and think we could have been a little nicer to him.

* This one event gives lie to my frequent assertion that I was not asked to a single high school dance. Technically, I was asked to one. One dance. By someone I did not want to dance with.

In which I am called a gold digging castrating Catholic ho who won't get a job

Actually, my friends, I cannot write about what I put in the title. Husband request. Just use your imaginations and take comfort in the fact that I have taken copious notes and will write about the event as soon as I can.

In the meantime, I leave you with this.

Primo: Why can't they [Sly and Doris] understand that I'm happy?

Me: You're not happy. You just think you are.

Primo: That's right! I'm too stupid to know that I'm not happy!

Me: Which makes their head spin. How can someone as smart as you are and who is [a holder of the proper political opinions] be so stupid as to be tricked by somebody as stupid and mean as I am?

In which Primo admits that "some people" = "his parents"

Primo: Some people think you're mean because of some of what you write about me on your [other, public] blog.

Me: Who thinks that?

My friend Ilene, who reads my public blog: Yeah, who thinks that?

Primo: Some people.

Me: Who? I want names.

Ilene: Yeah. Who?

Primo: You know.

Me: You mean your mom and dad?

Ilene: You mean people who already don't like her?

Primo: I guess that's it.

Ilene: So the people who already don't like her don't like some of the things she puts on her blog.

Primo: Well. Yeah.

Me: Like I care.

In which I give myself a black eye and almost everyone at work won't look at me or say anything

I wrote this story several years ago. What I left out is that when I went to work on Monday, still with a black eye, almost nobody said anything. My first thought when I see someone I know with a huge black eye is to do what my boss did, which is to ask, "What the heck happened to you?"

But the liberated, swaggering, field-hockey scholarship female VP of my department, who never met clogs or ugly shoes she did not like, averted her eyes when she saw me at the coffee station. We chatted for a few minutes, probably about how she had spent the weekend cleaning her house even though she had a stay at home husband and two teenage daughters - but the maid had quit! what was she supposed to do? - and not once did she say, "Wow! That's quite a shiner! How does the other guy look?"

Nope. She looked at the floor, behind me, over my head, everywhere but at my HUGE BLACK EYE while she was talking to me.

Even if she thought that a boyfriend had beat me up, shouldn't she have said, "You know, you can get help. You don't have to stay in an abusive relationship?" [Not quite sure where to put that question mark. The whole sentence is a question but the latter phrase is a statement.]

Now the story:

Friday night, I wake up to use the bathroom. The next thing I know, I am lying on the floor by the window. The first thought that flashes through my mind disgusts me because it is such a cliché, but I think, "Where am I?"

Really. Can't I be more original than that?

I am dizzy and nauseated and my head hurts and my hip hurts. As I pull myself up, I realize that I must have fallen, my left cheekbone striking the windowsill as I fell. I must have landed on my left hip. My neck must have snapped when my head hit, because those muscles hurt. I could have put my eye out!

I make it back into bed and do not sleep well the rest of the night. The next morning, I have a red patch on my cheek and a little swelling, but it doesn't look so bad. My hip hurts, but not badly enough to be an excuse not to run. I run six miles.

When I get home, I notice that my eye is starting to turn lavender. As the day wears on, my eye and my cheek get puffier and more colorful. I hold a bag of frozen cranberries to my cheek in hopes of preventing further discoloration, but to no avail. I keep my sunglasses on when I go to the grocery store and the library. I don't want anyone to think my nonexistent boyfriend beat me up. I would never take physical abuse. Just emotional.

I wonder what happened. I don't remember falling. Did I pass out and then fall? Did I just slip? If I had slipped, wouldn't I have felt myself fall and stopped it?

I must have passed out. But why? Maybe I have a brain tumor. It could be a tumor!

Hmm. If it's a brain tumor, I could have one of those non-disfiguring terminal Hollywood diseases. In the movies, any time anyone gets a terminal disease, she just becomes more beautiful and luminous as she dies, inspiring everyone with her bravery. No one ever looks bad in the movies, no matter what. They obviously don't know what chemo is really like.

Anyhow. What if I have a brain tumor and am going to die? Maybe I could get Ted [not Primo's half-brother Ted but a different Ted, whom I should re-name and maybe I did, but now I can't remember] back. He would hear the news (how? I need to figure this part out) and realize that he did indeed love me and we didn't have much time. He would rush to my side, beg my forgiveness and ask to remain with me until the end.

I would torture him for a little while, of course, but not too long. He deserves some punishment, after all. But then I would relent and take him back and we would live happily ever after.

Until I died six months later.

This is where the fantasy needs some work.

When I go to church on Sunday, my eye is still colorful. I tell everyone I got in a fight. That afternoon, I go to some open houses. After ten minutes with one realtor, who keeps looking at me sideways, she looks at my eye and says, "My ex used to beat me, too."

"I fell!" I tell her.

"It looks like you fell into someone's fist!" she replies.

"I promise, I fell," I say.

"Oh, honey," she sighs. "My ex-husband used to beat me. I know. I know."

"I don't even have a boyfriend!" I protest, but she is unswayed and proceeds to tell me the story of her second marriage and her drug-abusing, wife-beating, philandering surgeon husband. The first husband opened a strip joint nine years into their marriage.

"After that second divorce -- which I got nine months after I got married, which is really embarrassing -- I decided I wanted nothing to do with men for a long, long time," she finishes.

I insist that is not what happens but she doesn't care.

In which Doris joins facebook

Are any of you guys on facebook?

I am.

I waste way too much time there. I post almost every day and sometimes more than once a day. I don't get too personal - I posted this exchange there once and took it down almost immediately because TMI. Here, though, it is relatively anonymous. Those of you who know me in real life can just pretend I am a complete stranger if it makes you squeamish to read this.

Primo: You're just going to have sex with me because you feel sorry for me. You really don't feel like it right now.

Me: Yep. This is pity sex.

Primo: That's fine with me.

See? A little personal. But it did not last long - maybe five minutes. The post, I mean.

I don't write about politics. I try to save my trash talk about Primo's parents for here, although I did chronicle the entire Christmas of Ought Nine disaster on my FB wall. On my mother's advice, I removed it. Good thing my mom doesn't read this blog because she would learn more about me than she ever wanted to know and more than I ever wanted her to know. Fortunately, my family has boundaries and we respect each other's privacy and don't go where we're not invited, unlike some others I could name but won't.

But I still write about my life and I don't want Doris to be part of my life.

Maybe that's mean.

Maybe I'm mean.

But you don't get to complain to my husband that I should be over that threatening not to come to our wedding and don't marry me by now if you have never apologized to me. Heck, you've never even mentioned it.

And you don't get to be my friend.

Not that I spend a lot of time holding a grudge or nurturing anger against Sly and Doris. It's more that I just don't want their presence in my everyday life.

So imagine my distress when Primo told me today that his mother was on facebook and she had friended him.

"What am I going to do if she tries to friend me?" I asked.

"I don't know," Primo sighed. "I have to accept her. She's my mother."

Which is true. I would never ignore my mom's friend request on FB. I might not tell her about my double secret probation blog just to maintain some discretion and privacy in our relationship, but I would never not be her FB friend.

"If she asks, I'm going to tell her no," I told him.

And I would.

But then I posed the question to my FB friends: What do you do when your husband's mother goes on facebook?

And that's when I learned about the BLOCK function.

Oh block how I love thee.

If I block Doris, she will not even know I exist on FB. She will not see me in Primo's profile. She will not see anything I write on Primo's wall. She won't see any comments I make on Primo's posts. Not that I ever comment on his posts because all he writes about is politics and sheesh - I argue enough with him in person. I don't need to argue about politics on FB. With anyone.

Now all we have to worry about is if she asks Primo if I am on FB. I am telling him to lie. He is all "the end justifies the means" (that's what his political arguments always reduce to), so this should not bother him.

In which Sly asks Primo if we will take one of their cats

Primo: My dad says that Puff (cat #1) is terrorizing Snow (cat #2) and would we maybe take Snow.

Me: No way.

Primo: I know. We have two great cats. We are not taking my parents' cats.

Me: What did he say when you said no?

Primo: He laughed. I think he was just joking.

Me: Yeah. Right. Joking. Hey, he does understand that if they die before the cats do, we are not taking the cats, right?

Primo: I don't know.

Me: Maybe he should know that.

Primo: I guess I should talk to him about it.

Me: I dunno. It's really not your problem. Except what is their plan for the cats?

Primo: They don't have one.

Me: So it's in our will [actually, in the extra instructions I have given to my sister] that our cats should go back to the cat rescue place with a $3,000 donation, but they don't have a plan? They're 50 years closer to death than we are but it hasn't occurred to them that they might outlive their pets?

Primo: Yep.

Me: So now it is our problem because we'll be stuck finding a place for the cats when they die. Great.

Primo: I'll say something to them.

In which Sly and Doris deign to go to Stephanie's house for Christmas

Primo: My parents have let themselves be talked into having Christmas at Stephanie's.

Me: What do you mean, "talked into?"

Primo: They're going to Stephanie's for Christmas.

Me: They didn't want to spend Christmas day with their grandchildren?

Primo: I guess not.

Me: So they think they are doing Stephanie a favor* by going to her house for Christmas?

Primo: Apparently. They think they are doing the kids a favor.

Me: Because the kids really want to be with them?**

Primo: Oh yeah.

* After years of whining about having to host Christmas at their house and not wanting to do it because it's too much trouble, which it can be, as we who have hosted a dinner party at our house know. But they don't want to go to Stephanie's, either, because that is also a huge huge hassle. You know. To drive 15 minutes to someone else's house for a meal. Oh the humanity.

** The kids' dad, Jack, told Sly and Doris that the kids don't like spending time with them because they are so critical. [See: Sly criticizes Maria for saying "exTRACT" instead of "EXtract," even though 1. she did say "EXtract" and 2. everyone would have understood her even if she had said "exTRACT" because who makes pizelles with lemon exTRACT?]

This was after Sly and Doris asked Jack why the kids seem so reluctant to come over to the house and why they don't want to accept Sly and Doris' frequent corrections on their choices of grammar, clothes, grammar, jobs, grammar, college applications, grammar, food.

Jack had just had dental surgery and was not in compos mentis when he blurted out the truth. Sly and Doris were livid and sent several emails to Jack telling him he was wrong. They also involved everyone else in the family, because that is their way. They still have not gotten the real answer about the kids. As in, it can't possibly be that the kids don't like being around them. It has to be something else. Has to.

In which I find out three years later that Ted was an even bigger jerk than I thought

You didn't think the Ted story was over, did you? Oh no! There is more.

Fast forward to a few years later. Two or three. I can't remember. I am organizing yet another alumni party. I do this once a year. The alumni office sends the invitations; I collect the RSVPs. Yes, I know that "RSVP" isn't really a word, but you guys know what I mean.

As I cannot exactly tell the alumni office not to invite Ted, he gets an invitation.

And he emails his response to me.

His email address has changed from Ted@tedsdomain.com to Ted@tedandsueswedding.com.

What is the next logical step? What would any normal scorned woman do?

This scorned woman goes to tedandsueswedding.com, which turns out to be - as one might expect - the website for Ted's marriage to Sue.

Who's Sue?

Oh just a woman he mentioned to me many times.

Whom he saw frequently when he made eight-hour drives to attend church events. Where Sue just happened to be.

Who was "just a friend."

Which should have made me suspicious because Ted and I were "just friends" and as we saw, Ted had a rather elastic definition of "friend."

In the section about how they met and became engaged blah blah blah was the fascinating news that they had met in 1998 and started dating in the fall of 2000.

Which is the same time when he and I were "just friends."

You can do the math.

Yes yes yes yes.

He was dating Sue at the same time he was telling me we were NOT DATING but maybe in the future he and I could have a relationship, that there was "potential."

A bullet dodged, I think.

In which Ted calls me eight months after ditching me

It’s a Friday in August. I come home from work, humming a John Denver song (to myself -- I don’t want to be ticketed by the hip police), looking forward to my "run" in the morning and my afternoon with Mary and her daughter and two days of sleeping late and sitting on my front porch with a good book.

My answering machine light is blinking. I listen as I put away the dishes in the drying rack. The recording is bad - cheap answering machine - and I have a hard time making out the words. It is the voice I recognize first.

It’s Ted. After nine months.

He says, “Hi, it’s Ted. This is probably unexpected for you. [You think?] It’s unexpected for me as well. Anyway, I noticed the bank putting up a ‘for sale’ sign at 123 Main Street. I know you have been looking for a house in this area. You could probably get a good deal if the bank is selling it. Hope you’re doing well.”

I press ‘play’ over and over. I can’t believe what I am hearing. What is going on? Why is he calling?

At work, I interrogate my male friends about the meaning of the call. Leigh thinks maybe it is just what it appears to be -- a call about a house.

My men friends, however, scoff. “He doesn’t care what kind of house you get or if you get a good deal,” Jerry says. “He wants to see you again.”

Don echoes the sentiment. “That’s so lame,” he says. “He wants to see you again. Tell him to go to hell.”

Lenore says to send him an email that I have already bought a house. Jerry disagrees, saying that I need to leave a phone message so Ted can hear the tone of my voice and know that I am receptive.

Three days later, I leave him a message at him. “Thanks for your call about the house, but I bought a house in May. It’s at 1644 Oak. Come by for the grand tour sometime,” I say.

Days go by and I hear nothing. Whatever, I think, to the world, but inside I am disappointed. [Despite all the evidence to his jerkiness - how pathetic is that?]

In the mean time, I run by the house he told me about. It is right across the street from his grandmother’s house, a few blocks from mine.

Six days later -- Saturday -- at 7:00 in the evening, he calls. “Sorry it took me so long to call back,” he says. “I didn’t get your message until late last night when I went by my mom and dad’s. I’ve moved into my grandmother’s house.”

Even though I know full where the house is, I play dumb. “Where is it?” I ask.

“Right across from the house I told you about,” he tells me.

My heart flutters. He wants me to buy the house by where he is living! But I am cool, calm.

We chat, although I am chatting on eggshells. I keep waiting for him to say something about how he was such an idiot and such a jerk and can I forgive him and will I give him a second chance. [Not that I should!]

But he doesn’t. We talk for two hours about random stuff. Thinking of things to talk about has never been an issue for us.

Finally, he says he has to go. “Let me give you the phone number here so you can reach me,” he offers.

I am silent for a few seconds. Finally, I say, “If you want to talk to me, you can call me.”

“I thought that’s what I just did,” he says.

“Last January, you made it pretty clear that you never wanted to speak to me again,” I say.

“I never said I didn’t want to speak to you again,” he answers.

“Whatever,” I say. “I would love to talk to you. I would love to see you. I think it would be really good for us to talk. But I am not going to call you. If you want to talk to me, you will have to call me.”

See how I finally got some sense? Will you lose more respect for me if I tell you that I was still disappointed that he didn't call again?

In which Ted and I sleep together and it ends in disaster

The only way I can write this post (heck, this blog) is that I am positive my mother does not read this blog. There are things I just don't want her to know and that I think she would rather not know. I have never told her about this blog (both because of my own interest in maintaining some dignity with her and because the deal with Primo was that if I wrote the truth about his mom and dad, I couldn't let anyone he was related to read this) and considering it is mostly strangers who read these stories, I can't imagine anyone else would have, either.

This is the kind of stuff you tell the person sitting next to you on the plane, not mortifying stories you share with people you will see again. That said, I open a book as soon as I sit down on a plane because I usually get the people with boring tales. No! I don't want to listen to you talk about your hobby of making decorative items with a crochet hook and the cardboard innards from the toilet paper roll! I am not that nice! If you are dull, leave me alone!

Back to Ted. And the Big Ending. Well, the penultimate Big Ending.

Despite the "just friends" pronouncement, a few weeks later, Ted came to my house for supper. I had been out of town for a week and I had returned to this message from him: "Welcome back. I hope you had a great time. I look forward to hearing all about it." He lowered his voice and said, "I was going to leave a lewd message, but didn't want your coworkers to overhear."

I called and asked if he wanted to come over to cook dinner the next night. I warned him that this was to be a platonic evening -- he had been pushing his own boundaries and I was tired of being the police. After all, he was the one who wanted this stupid "just friends" thing, not me.

We flirted on the phone. I told him I needed to go, that I was meeting somebody at the wine bar. "Be careful not to get too many irons in the fire," he told me. "You might get burned."

I told him I would be happy just to see a fire.

"There are some fires you can't see," he assured me. [Oh brother. I can't believe I bought this crap.]

The first thing he did when he arrived was kiss me. I was happy -- perhaps he had finally overcome the "friends" thing and was ready to admit there was more between us than platonic feelings. We made ravioli and drank wine and talked and laughed. When we were not rolling out the pasta dough or boiling the ravioli, we kissed.

I was not sure where the boundaries were. He kissed me first. As he was rolling out pasta dough, I kissed the back of his neck. I got no response and complained about it.

"That's because you're playing nice," he commented.

OK. I decided to play not so nice. The next time I kissed him, I got the response I wanted. He started it. He gave me permission. That's how I look at it.

I lit candles. He looked at me and said, "You are beautiful by candlelight."

He paused, then continued. "Of course, why would you be any different by candlelight? You are beautiful all the time."

But we were NOT DATING.

I was ecstatic. I sensed a shift in attitude here -- a willingness to acknowledge the attraction that has been drawing us together. I was also stupid. Why should I trust a come here come here come here! go away go away go away! man?

We ate supper.

We walked into my bedroom.

I told him I didn't want to sleep with him and never hear from him again.

He told me not to worry, we weren't going to sleep together.

Well it takes a stronger person than I to be half naked and necking with a guy not to go all the way. Especially when I wanted that anyhow.

He maintained nothing was going to happen, but he was certainly willing to play around and to remove key parts of his clothing.

So we did it.

He said some really romantic things that I cannot bring myself to repeat here, but if I ever write a memoir, I will print because then it will be for money.

And he left, saying he couldn't stay the night because he didn't have anyplace to put his contacts.

I waited for the post-coital phone call of, "Last night was great when can I see you again?" but it never arrived.

I steeled myself not to call him. Let him call me.

Two weeks passed without a phone call. TWO WEEKS.

I broke down and called him. Left a message. The next day, I got home from work to find a message from him.

The essence of it was that I had lured him to my house under false premises and with bad intent and that without trust, there can be no relationship.

[This might be a good time to point out that the reason he left the seminary on the other side of the state was because he was kicked out for having an affair. Yes, he was still married at the time. No, he did not tell me about this. How did I find out? A friend who had known his parents for years told me. "He leaves women in far worse condition than he found them. Nothing is ever his fault." Where was the trust with this, huh?]

I was stunned. The blood drained from my face. He was accusing me of having my way with him without his consent. Sure, there were silk scarves involved that night, but seriously? THIS?

I called him and left four long messages protesting my innocence and asking him to call. I explained that I had not planned for us to sleep together but that I wasn't sorry it had happened and that I had never wanted the stupid just friends thing anyhow.

He didn't call back. I wrote him a great letter telling him I really didn’t think he thought I was dishonest and that the real issue here was the intimacy and that it scared him.

Oh yes. Way too many self-help books. Not enough "Learn to recognize manipulation" and "Don't let yourself be an idiot" books.

I said that we connected on all levels -- emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and physical -- and that that evening was the best time I had had in ten years. I asked why he wouldn't want that all the time.

On the back of the envelope, I wrote indignantly "If I were guilty of premeditation, don't you think I would have had on fancier underwear?"

He never responded and I was left reeling.

All I could think was, "If we hadn't slept together, I would still get to talk to him. It is my fault!"

In which Ted and I go to the movies and neck BUT WE'RE NOT DATING!

Ted left me a message he had gotten some really good chocolate that he needed to share with me. I left him a message that he should bring it over to my house, if he wasn't too scared to be around me. I told him that the main reason I exercise is so that I can eat chocolate. His message back to me was this: "To me, you are sexy with or without the gym, with or without chocolate. You are the one who mentioned exercising, not me."

But he never brought me the chocolate. And we still were NOT DATING.

He called four times in three days and I was not at my desk for any of the calls. I didn't return the calls because I was a little annoyed with him. I decided to call him back on Wednesday, but when I got home, an ice storm had knocked out all the power lines. We didn't speak again until Friday. I told him I wanted to call him on Wednesday but couldn't and that because I didn't have light to read by, I just went to bed.

He said, "Too bad you couldn't reach me. There's going to bed and then there's going to bed."

I didn't respond. I couldn't figure out why he is talking like this if he was the one who wanted us to be 'just friends' for now. [Now I understand completely. He is a manipulative jerk.]

I mentioned that I was taking off work early and going to a movie. He said that he could meet me there. My heart raced. I hadn't seen him in three weeks. We agreed to meet at the theater.

When I got there, he was on the phone. When he was done, he walked over to me, stopping just inches away from me. He looked into my eyes, smiled and said, "You are indeed captivating." [It's like he got his dialogue from a Harlequin Romance.]

When we were in our seats, he asked if I want a mint. I nodded yes, and he took one, placed it between his lips, leaned over, and kissed me, passing the mint to me. It was a dizzying, swirling kiss, full of promise. We spent the entire movie kissing. He whispered, "You are so beautiful and smart and funny and sexy." [Harlequin.]

But we were NOT DATING.

When the movie ended, we put our intertwined limbs back in their public places and waited for the theater to empty. As soon as everyone else was gone, we kissed again until the attendant entered to clean. We walked out reluctantly, stopping at every corner and hidden space to embrace. At my car, he hugged and kissed me, but I was too cold to enjoy it, so we moved into the car and kissed some more until the windows steamed up. I finally, reluctantly had to leave as I had made other plans for the rest of the evening.

When I got home, I found a message on my machine telling me what a wonderful time he had and how he was not going to be able to stop thinking about me.

But we were NOT DATING.

In which Ted tells me he is attracted to me BUT WE'RE NOT DATING!

Ted called me at work. "A bunch of us are going out to dinner. One of the women who is going is the older one with the crush on me."

"She has good taste," I said.

"I've tried to get across the idea that I'm not interested in her, but she's unconvinced."

"What does this have to do with me?" I asked.

"Maybe if you're there, she'll give up."

I laughed. "Sorry. I have other plans for tonight. You're on your own."

Later, I left him a message. "I've thought about it. Having me there would make her even more determined. Some women are into competition. It's not enough to win the guy -- you have to take him from someone else."

When I got home, I found a message from him. "I disagree. If she could see how very attracted we are to each other -- how hot we make each other -- she would realize that her efforts are futile."

But remember - he told me we could not have a dating relationship.