High School Confidential: part 2

I don't know what I was thinking when I was in high school. I think I must have been a complete idiot to not see something like that coming. I guess when you're young and stupid you do crazy things.

If anyone has seen the movie "Napoleon Dynamite" you'll recall there was a scene where Napoleon & his buddy Pedro, want to ask these girls out for a school dance, but they have to ask the girls in a creative way. Pedro, decides to ask his girl out by baking a cake and writing on the cake "will you go to the dance with me, signed Pedro" or something to that effect. They place the cake outside the door of where this girl lives and then they ring the doorbell and run off. So now Napoleon is trying to think of a creative way to ask the girl he wants to go with......Pedro suggests that since he has drawing skills, perhaps he should draw a picture of her. Napoleon thinks this is an excellent idea, and proceeds to sketch out a pencil drawing of the girl.

I speak from experience when I say that although this seems like a good idea, it can be just the beginning of a long trek down the road of complete horrorific humiliation.

Whenever I had a crush on a girl that I really liked, I would draw a picture of them....pencil sketch, charcoal drawing or whatever.....sometimes I would show the girl, sometimes I wouldn't. On one particular pencil sketch that I did, the mother of the girl I drew the portrait of offered me fifty dollars for the piece. There are pieces of my artwork that I sometimes hid the names of girls that I liked in them. I would write thier names in such a way to combine with the actual artwork that you would never even know it was there....a sort of "secret message" in a way. Sneaky, aren't I?

Linda was the off-beat looking, sort of pretty, swimming pool bleach blonde with the dark bushy eyebrows. God knows why I thought she was attractive, she was no beauty queen. She wasn't in any of my classes, and none of my friends personally knew her at all. I guess she must have been one of those girls that I noticed either walking the halls or sitting in the school lunchroom.

The yearly Christmas dance was soon approaching and I decided to begin my misguided artistic magic to possibly persuade this paint peeling, pageant beauty to accompany me.

At this point in the story my memory seems to fade, unsure of the exact details, I will try to piece together as clearly as possible what took place.

Who knows what the hell I was thinking...but I actually thought it would be a good idea and a good ice breaker to draw a nice pencil sketch of her, yeah...I could do that! ( somewhere along the way, I had obtained a school picture of her and I drew the sketch from looking at that photo). I decided that I would present the finished drawing to her and then proceed to ask her to the christmas dance. It sounded perfectly logical to me...boy likes girl, boy draws picture of girl, boy gets date.

Fast forward to a few days later.

The drawing is finished and I spot her sitting in the lunchroom with one of her friends. I slowly begin my walk towards her when I notice that I'm starting to get tunnel vision. My mind was playing tricks with me and if it was possible for me to walk any slower, I think I would have went back in time. All of a sudden I find myself talking to her. "Can I sit here?" " Is this seat taken?" " Do you mind if I slit my wrists? ".... I'm not sure exactly what it was that I said, but it was something along those lines. After she and her friend exchange "WTF?" looks with each other, I have a seat.

I say nothing.

I pull out the drawing.

I show it to her...........

She wants to know who it is.

"WHAT?! WHO IS IT? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!! JEFF, YOU FUCKING IDIOT! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!! HAVE YOU GONE COMPLETELY MAD? SHE DOESN"T EVEN KNOW WHO IT IS!! GET UP AND WALK AWAY YOU LOSER!" ( all of this runs through my head, my own conscience is screaming at me )

I mumble something totally stupid but I thought I said something like " the picture was of her, green eggs and ham, and she could keep it, would you could you if you were in a box?" Did I just say what? I quickly got up from the table, completely forgetting to ask her to the christmas dance, and ran off with my tail between my legs.

There is nothing quite as sobering as complete humiliation.

If that wasn't mortifying enough for me, a few weeks later I muster up the courage to call every name in the phone book with her last name & ask if she was there. I finally find the right number and then proceed to again prove to myself that I was a complete moron & loser.

"Hi, you don't know me but I'm a complete freak and I'd like to take you to the christmas dance and embarrass you in front of all of your friends and the entire school." ....I'm POSITIVE that's what she heard me say.....so she told me she already had a date for the christmas dance....but what I heard was "I'm going with Dan, he's really cool and his dad's rich & he's not a loser like you."

I'm really glad that I didn't end up going to the christmas dance with her. She was totally wrong for me. I was the wild & crazy guy and she was the preppy & proper girl....... years later when I look at her photo, I wonder why I was even interested. She definitely was ugly, no doubt about it. I did meet someone else a few weeks later and asked her to the christmas dance, and that girl turned out to be a wonderful life long friend that I still talk to, even to this day.

You have to go through things such as making a complete ass of yourself to sort of learn your way into life. Trial by fire, it's brutal, but you come out stronger and wiser. I learned something on that day..."never crawl out on a limb for a measley crumb".....but hey, everyone knows when you're young and stupid, you do crazy things.