500 Words A Day--Day 10

How Facebook F’d Me Up

Yesterday I ended up having a bit of a walk down memory lane that got into my head so much I spent most of my day today just thinking about it. And I have Facebook to blame for it.

It started out innocently enough: one of my “friends” had some pictures posted from one of his vacations with him and his fraternity brothers. I have the word friends in quotes because this is a guy I went to high school with who I literally haven’t talked to since probably 1995. He was dating one of my girlfriend’s sorority sisters back then so we kind of went in the same circles but we always seemed to be at different events and whatnot. He was always super cool to me in high school (he definitely ran with the more popular crowd) so I never thought twice about adding him as a friend when he requested it.

So when I saw he had pictures of his trip up, I went ahead and checked them out. Kind of a way to peek into someone else’s life for a second or two. As I was checking his photos out, a picture popped up from the profile of the girl I had a major crush on in high school. Not just a major crush, but a MAJOR CRUSH. Like I wrote songs for and about this girl, I wrote poetry about her, I even wrote a movie loosely based on my experiences with (or, more accurately, without) her, etc. This was the girl that defined what my high school experience was.

So I see these pictures of her and her family (she is married with four kids now) and it is a full-blown mind fuck for me. I can’t even convey exactly how important this girl was in my development as a human person type being, and this is literally a girl I NEVER talked to in four years of school. Actually I take that back, I never talked to her in more than five years of school. She was literally the first girl I ever saw in Flagstaff as she was there at Flagstaff Junior High the day I signed up for school in 8th grade.

She was a cheerleader, a track star, the school photographer, daughter of a famous surgeon, in AP everything, etc. She had the best set of legs I have EVER seen on a woman, hands down. And she never said a fucking word to me in school and I never said a word to her. Yet somehow I have found a way to base my entire high school experience on the fact that just seeing her in the halls would absolutely make my day in a way that I don’t think I have ever experienced since then even with girls I have been in actual love with.

It’s borderline pathetic, to be honest. It may be across the border, actually.

Anyway, as I’m looking through the pictures of this woman’s life I slowly come to the realization that I have NOTHING that would even come close to satisfying her on any level except a physical one. As much “pain” as I was in with the unrequited love in high school it took this long to dawn on me that I had absolutely nothing of interest to her. That probably explains why we never said a word to each other. Girls don’t want poets, they want guys who can provide for them, ESPECIALLY girls who have doctors for fathers (I learned this one the hard way by dating a girl with a dentist for a father for close to three years—once again, when it came down to it, I had NOTHING to give her but myself and that wasn’t enough. I did, however, write some of my best stuff ever after we broke up, so I guess I can thank her for that).

What she did for me was define which girls I would find attractive for the rest of my life, though. I know part of this is just a manifestation of an Oedipus complex, but I know that the women who I have been REALLY attracted to have all been smart, driven, athletic, successful and they all have a really good set of wheels connecting their hips to their shoes.

I remember the first time my mom saw her. We were at a video store (remember those?) and my crush walked in. I just about lost my mind. I pointed her out to my mom and she just said, “That’s the girl you like? She doesn’t look very special to me.” Of course my response was, “Mom, you don’t UNDERSTAND!”

Truth is, though, she was right. That girl is just like every other girl who doesn’t talk to me now . . . only she still has a killer set of wheels. I wish her the best from afar, which is exactly how I wished her anything when we were in high school together. And both of our worlds will keep spinning just fine, just like they always have.

B!