SOS - A wartime story

Welcome to Soap Opera Sunday... I'll be your host for the month of October. If you're new, the "rules" are here. Link up your story at the end of this post... the more the merrier!


This month's theme for Soap Opera Sunday is Long Distance Relationships.

I'm going to skip ahead in my Saga of Boys to one of my very last boyfriends...

When I was in college I spent two summers working in a national park with a ministry team. The second summer I was there I met a boy named Brad. At that time I had a boyfriend from college so we were just friends. We had a few things in common and we got along pretty well. He was goofy and made me laugh.

At the end of the summer I went back to college for my senior year. I ended my relationship with my boyfriend for personal reasons (but that will be another saga) and a few weeks later started communicating with Brad over the internet.

He was half the country away, going through his senior year, and DJing for his college radio station, which I could listen to on my computer. At one point he dedicated a song to me, his buddy from the summer.

Fast forward to the end of February (it's the year 2003). The US is getting ready to invade Iraq and Brad is in the National Guard reserves. His unit gets called up and he is getting ready to head out for some training in North Carolina (even farther away from me) before they are deployed.

I go to a production of A Piece of My Heart at school. It's a very powerful play about women in Vietnam in various roles (nurse, candy striper, and GSO performer girl being the ones that I remember). I come out of there just devastated.

It's almost 11pm my time and he's 2 hours later, but I call him anyway, just sobbing because I'm so afraid for him and what will happen. He calms me down and I eventually go to sleep, but I don't get over this feeling.

I believe this was the first time we talked on the phone and after that we start having weekly conversations.

Shortly thereafter Brad is shipped off to North Carolina where he's told their departure is imminent, as soon as they're issued their desert uniforms. Basically he's on pins and needles knowing they could be deployed with only a day or two's notice.

I remember that we had a little craft project we were doing one evening, weaving Easter baskets* for some local children. During the middle of the evening someone walked in and told us that we had just invaded Iraq. My heart dropped because I knew it was just a matter of time before he would be shipped over there. This is one of those moments I will remember forever...


*underwater basket weaving anyone? :)

SOS - The Story of Dan

For the intro to this story go here (or just scroll down).

After I inserted my foot in my mouth and pretty much let Dan know that I was interested in him I tried to back off.

Somewhere along the line I found out that his "nickname" was Mickey. I think he may have actually told me this himself. So being the cool junior high girl that I was I called him on Christmas Day. Only when I called I asked for Mickey. And then I said "Merry Christmas" and hung up.

He never asked if it was me so I have no idea if he ever figured it out...

Towards the end of that year I convinced one of my girlfriends to ask him out for me. She was sweet, and super intelligent, and was "one of the guys" so I figured she was a good one to ask him.

So when our class went to the library she went up to him and asked if he would go out with me. He said no, there's someone else I have in mind. When she asked who? he said "you".

That pretty much showed where his affections lay and after that I never tried to be anything remotely resembling romantic with him again. It seemed he was way out of my league anyway. He was a good basketball player and a decent football player. I think his spring sport was golf. But he hung out with the "cool" crowd of which I was decidedly not a part. (I was one of those "runners" if finishing dead last in ever cross country meet can be called "running"! But I did it for 4 years...)

We continued to be acquaintances through high school (not hard to do in a school where your class is less than 100), but I don't think we ever had any classes together.

I saw him a couple years later and he was attending a police academy, but the school had some issues so he never finished.

This year was my 10 year high school reunion and I was so hoping he would show up. He didn't, although a good friend of his told me he was supposed to be there.

I did a little internet searching (the unusual name makes it pretty easy) and found a few simple references to him so I know he's still in the state, actually following in his father's footsteps and has a good job that I'm sure he enjoys.

His friend told me he has a little boy although he didn't mention a wife/girl so I half wonder if he was ashamed to come to our reunion because of where he's at in life. Sad.

I guess you might say I've carried a torch for him all these years and I was hoping to get a chance to talk to him once more...

This post is part of Soap Opera Sunday hosted by The Extraordinary Ordinary.

SOS - The Saga of Boys

I have decided that it might be a worthwhile endeavor to chronicle my life in relation to boys. Thus begins a Soap Opera Saga that might go on indefinitely. I hope you'll join me...

When I was in the 7th grade we moved. From one small town to one slightly larger small town. We moved on Friday the 13th of November, 1992. An auspicious day to move I think, but it turned out to be a good thing in the long run.

Before this move I had no serious contact with boys. Oh, sure, there were only 2 of us in my age Sunday School class at church and the other one is a boy, but he was just a boy, and rarely even a friend.

But when we moved a whole new world of boys appeared. Boys I hadn't grown up with and known since the 2nd grade (when I switched from home school to public school). Boys who didn't live in quite as much of a backwards hick town as the one we came from!

Being the new girl part way through a school year in a small town during the middle school years... not so fun. Especially when at your old school big hair was ALL the rage and at your new school everyone has their hair pulled back flat in a clip. I bought some clips real fast!

There were a few people who were pretty cool to me as the new girl, one of them being a guy named Dan*. He was nice and I thought he was pretty cute - for a guy with color tinting glasses in the early 90's! He had also recently been dumped by a girl because he came back from hunting with dried deer blood under his fingernails. Oh the drama of middle school romance! (my dad was a hunter so it didn't bother me)

One night he called me up and asked if I wanted to come to the high school basketball game with him. I, being completely clueless, simply blurted out that I wasn't allowed to date yet. He, awkwardly, informed me that it was just a group of friends going. Blew it!

Of course my mother had overheard from the other room and wanted to know who I was talking to. Interrogation!

I have a feeling that this one instance colored the way he saw me for years to come...


*Most of the time I will simply use real names in stories of the past. You'll understand why later :) However this guy's name is so unique and uncommon that I have used a different name for him.

This post submitted for Soap Opera Sunday hosted by The Extraordinary Ordinary.

SOS - Can I Die Now?

Don't worry, I'm not getting all suicidal on you. This is a Soap Opera Sunday post...

High school was not a real fun time for me. Honestly I have no idea why, but I wasn't popular and I was probably too smart for my own good. I think somewhere along the way I started being less outgoing because it was just less painful that way. (unfortunately, yes, it still seems people act that way)

This story takes place during my sophomore year...

The church I went to was roughly affiliated with a Boys Ranch. A Christian place for boys who had for one reason or another been separated from their families and were supposed to be getting their lives back together. (yeah, one of my best friends is married to one of these guys and we won't even say how crazy I think he is - makes my blood boil thinking about - but that's a story for another day)

These boys all lived in family groups with group parents who rotated out every week. So every week they showed up at the parents' church, which on odd weeks happened to be mine.

This is how I became acquainted with Ryan.

Ryan had a huge crush on me.

Ryan also had no people skills and very little common sense. He would say whatever came to mind with no thought to the consequences. He was a self-proclaimed "Jesus Freak" who went around telling people that he had slept with girls and all sorts of other things that fell under the category of TMI.

Let's just say that every Sunday Ryan was going to be at my church I would try my hardest to wedge myself into a pew with a group of friends so that there was absolutely no room left over... otherwise I'd be sitting by Ryan. This is not to say that sometimes he didn't try to sit by me even when I was already touching thighs with the people on either side of me!

Ryan was also in my sophomore history class. With my track coach as the teacher. Track coaches, I have learned, are sometimes not the greatest teachers. This teacher, on occasion, didn't really want to conduct class. He had a school photo of himself that he had cut out the head and thumb tacked to the end of a pencil. He called it Slappy. He would also sometimes make the filmstrips "jump" or "ride" across the screen for better effects on still pictures. He was that great of a teacher... (he was also proud of the fact that he got his hair cut with a FlowBee!)

But I'm getting off track. (ha, I crack myself up, I'm so witty!)

So one day "everyone" in class decided that they didn't really want to have history class and were going to try to get the teacher off track. He was pretty agreeable to the situation and so we tried to ask him all the random questions about himself we could. But there is a limit to what you will ask and what a teacher will tell you about himself (at least he had limits...)

He said, "Well, I guess we'll just have to go back to history". Everyone protested and someone came up with the 'great idea" of asking one of the students questions about himself.

And who did they pick?

You guessed it.

Ryan.

Ryan gets to sit up in front, on the teacher's stool behind the podium. He is thrilled (almost) beyond words that his fellow classmates want to interview him.

(A little side note here. I believe it's roughly October and by this point in the school year Ryan has asked literally every girl in the school if they will go to Homecoming with him. He doesn't have a date.)

So by this time in history class I am most likely halfway immersed in whatever book I'm reading. (I am a bookworm to end all and routinely read a book a day while in high school - maybe that's why I wasn't so popular?)

However, I instantly snap to attention when someone asks him, "If you could go out with any girl in the school, who would it be?"

I know, before he even opens his mouth, that he is going to say my name. And I wished with all my might that a hole would magically appear under my desk so I could disappear.

Unfortunately that did not happen, he looked right at me with this sappy grin, and said my name.

Cue all heads in the classroom swiveling in my direction and snickers emanating from all the "cool" boys.

I wanted to die!

Shall we say, I didn't live that one down for quite awhile?

For more drama you can go to The Extraordinary Ordinary and read other people's Soap Operas.

Wanting Life

I am miserable. I know it's my own fault, but yet I can't seem to do anything about it.

Sometimes I really don't understand why my husband is still trying, the psychotic bitch that I am. I make his life more miserable than mine.

In the dark and the quiet the only thing that makes me want to stay is knowing that my son would be lost without me. I am his world.

But what will happen when he's not so cute in a few more years and trying my patience. Will I still want to be here for him?

And then I wonder what the fuck I'm thinking, trying to get pregnant again. How will I handle myself with a toddler and an infant when I can hardly keep it together with one?

I know what my problem is. I haven't really wanted anything to do with God since I was in college. Maybe that's too strong. It's just that I haven't felt like I got anything out of the relationship so it's slowly just gone away. Now I know I should read my Bible and I try to pray, but there is absolutely no desire there. I hate how guilty it makes me feel, but I never do anything about it.

And yet whenever anyone asks me how I'm doing I say fine. Not good anymore, just fine, or maybe okay. But no one ever asks again, no really, how are you? They don't really want to know. And I don't trust them enough to tell them what's really going on.

I don't trust anyone. Only the anonymous internets (what is wrong with that picture?). How screwed up is it that I can't even talk to my husband about this, let alone my best friends. I feel guilty that I even feel this way. I have a good life. I stay home and don't really have to worry about anything. Oh, I "worry" about money, but we will never be hungry or without a roof over our heads. The only pal on my horizon is my father with Parkinson's. Just the thought of that makes me cry. But we still have time with him and he loves me/us.

See? I've got it good. So why can't I be "happy"? Not in a perpetually perky way because that is so not me, but at least content with where I am? Why do I feel like a fake and a fraud and that no one knows who I really am? Why can't I trust anyone enough to tell them what's going on inside me? It's like I want to, but my mouth won't open and let me say a word. Somehow I'm afraid of something...

Why doesn't God help me? He certainly knows what I'm thinking. He knows that I want to do the right thing and be in a relationship with him. Because right now "wanting" to do the right thing is about all I've got going. I don't actually want something that I've only occassionally and vaguely felt in the past. Maybe that's the problem. He knows I'm not serious enough. Yet can't he make me serious about it?

Whatever. That's all philosophy and all I know is that I hate my life, I hate myself, and I'm destorying my family in the process.

I don't want my husband's platitudes (or anyone else's) I just want someone to make it all stop. Tell me what I have to do. Listen without trying to fix it or tell me that I'm really a good person and I should quit listening to the mean people around me.

I don't want to take drugs because, I forgot, I tried that once in college and the psychologist or whatever he was treated me like an idiot. I know the problem is between me and God, but I feel powerless to do anything about it on my end and He certainly isn't doing anything on his end.

This is where I'm compelled to write that, hey, I even have a tattoo on my back of a dove that's supposed to represent peace. His peace. And that I have to give up control for me to get it. Got that in Costa Rica when I was freaking out being in a new place and I got "peace" about it. Or maybe I just got used to the new place.

I'm not even in a new place right now. My son is 17 months old for crying out loud. Nothing "new" in my life that hasn't been there for a year and a half already.

But I'm not content. I'm like the total opposite of content. I don't even know what content is.

I don't know what I want either, but whatever it is, it's not what I have now.

The 5th Wheel

It's fair time around here, but I won't be going this year (we're sick). I have always loved going to the county fair. We had a pretty decent one up until a few years ago when people decided to quit entering stuff...

But this story takes place when I was somewhere between 19 and 21. I was single. Two of my good girlfriends from high school were respectively married, and either married or in a serious relationship (which depends on if I was 19 or 21!).

We all decided it would be fun to go to the fair. I was so hyped up about this that I neglected to realize that I would be...

The 5th wheel.

That's right, I didn't think to invite another girlfriend, or even a guy friend (of which I had many, thanks to our imbalanced youth group).

It was all fun and games through the eating and the walking in the animal barns, until we got to the carnival section.

Anyone ever been to the fair/carnival? Those rides are designed for 2.

Guess where that left me?

Alone.

And then it was getting dark (and romantic, in a carnival atmosphere-ish way) and so the two couples were strolling along holding hands while I was left to bring up the rear.

I trailed a few feet behind and made a solemn vow that I would never go to the fair by myself with couples again.

And that I would do my best to never put any of my friends in this position.

Lessons can be learned from painful situations! ;)

This post written for Soap Opera Sunday hosted by The Extraordinary Ordinary.

Elitism

I live in an elitist town.

What does this mean? It means I will never measure up. I will never be good enough to be in the "hip mom" circle.

Most of the time, I'm okay with that. I know I'm educated and my child(ren?) will grow up to hopefully be educated, caring people.

I don't care that I'm not the most fashionable mom at the park. I spend my money on things that bring pleasure to me, like books and photography equipment.

But sometimes, it really hurts.

Like tonight.

I went to an open house for a new toy lending library. I was hoping to get some business exposure (I have a home party business selling toys) since I figured that anyone willing to shell out $100 a year to borrow a few toys would be willing to buy some of these good quality educational toys.

Everyone at the open house was wearing a cute little dress and looked like they had just come from having high tea. I was wearing a decent shirt (no baby snot) and casual pants.

I tried to smile and act like it didn't matter that no one was talking to me.

The "owner" introduced herself and I was able to talk to her for a few minutes about our business possibilities since we had spoken on the phone.

Then one of the "committee" members came up and was introduced. And proceeded to monopolize me right out of the conversation by speaking only to the owner and facing her. Hello, I can read that body language a mile away. It says, "you're not welcome here".

I was so hoping to break into this circle for my business, but I guess I'd have to be "one of them" to do that. And that's not going to happen while I slouch around in my flip-flops, taking pictures of everything and not caring that I have dirt on my butt.