Gina and Mike (22 page)

Brad

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Dick! That’s what Brad was. I guess I should feel honored that he referred to me as nice looking. Even if someone had offered me a hundred bucks to go out with him, I wouldn’t have. The guy was a jerk with a capital J.

He thought that his GQ-ish looks entitled him to whatever girl he wanted. And, of course, most girls oohed and aahed over his defined pecs and bulging biceps. And his tight ass. Not me. I wasn’t the least bit interested, which pissed him off, I think.

He was one of the guys who used Julie and when he got tired of her, discarded her like a sweaty workout towel.

I hope he’s fat and out of shape. And ugly. Serves him right. He broke so many hearts and never once said sorry. Screw you, Brad. (That felt good.)

Karen (Yearbook post)

Gina,

You’re a real crazy girl but an awful lot of fun to be around. You can brighten anybody’s life with your smiling face. I wish you the best of luck in all your future attempts.

Love, Karen

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Karen got pregnant our senior year and had her daughter the summer after we graduated. She married the guy, who was older, but it didn’t last long. Maybe a year.

Karen was a good athlete. No matter what sport she tried she was good at it. Basketball. Softball. Tennis. You name it and she could play it – and play it well. I always thought she’d go to college to become a gym teacher. She did go to college, eventually. She worked during the day and went to school at night. She and her daughter, Sarah, lived with her parents, who helped out a lot.

It took Karen many years, but she finally earned a business degree. I guess after that she kept on going because Mom sent me a newspaper clipping announcing that she had earned her MBA.

One Christmas break, Mom and I ran into Karen at the mall. She was obviously pregnant. She introduced me to her significant other, a beautiful woman with long, silky black hair and an hour-glass figure I would die for. I must have looked surprised because Karen leaned over and whispered. “Yeah, I know, it surprises everyone. Isn’t she gorgeous?”  And then she looked at Mia and smiled.

Karen patted her stomach. “And, as you can see, we’re having a baby.”

Without me asking, Karen explained that she and Mia wanted to have a child together. Karen said that since she loved being pregnant, they decided she would carry the child. But the egg was Mia’s, fertilized with donor sperm. 

“So this one should look like Mia,” said Karen, casting Mia another look.

“Do you know what you’re having?” Mom asked.

“A boy,” Karen said. “We wanted a boy since we already have a daughter.”

It was definitely more information than Mom or I needed to know, but it made me smile. I had forgotten how open Karen was.

I learned that Karen met Mia while studying for her MBA and that they had been together ever since. Mia seemed nice and Karen seemed happier than I ever remember her being.

Tom (Yearbook post)

Gina,

To a real nice girl I got to know in chem and calc class. Never forget all the bad luck you had with test tubes during unknowns. Good luck with all you do in life and with that special someone.

AFA, Tom

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I hated unknowns in chemistry. The teacher would give us a substance and we’d have to run tests to determine what it was. It was a real pain in the ass. The worse thing about chem, though, was the goggles we had to wear. Talk about feeling like a complete dork. The goggles always left marks on my face, which seemed to last for hours afterward. And they messed up my makeup, which when you’re seventeen and vain is a really big deal.

Tom, on the other hand, loved chemistry. Sometimes, when the teacher wasn’t looking, he’d swap test tubes with me, figure out my unknown, and give it back to me.  He always had my back in chem.

He went to college to be a pharmacist and works in my hometown. Mom sees him when she picks up her cholesterol medicine at the drug store, and she said he always asks about me. He’s not married, but Mom says she sees him walking his golden retriever in the park by the elementary school where she walks with her best friend, Judy.

Bob (Yearbook post)

Gina,

To a nice girl with a great personality. Never forget our wild homeroom. Good luck always,

Bob

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Bob came to school high every morning. He reeked of weed. I asked him once why he got high before school.  He said it made him feel better.

Bob was my friend. We never did anything together and he wasn’t in any of my classes, but he was the type of guy who would be the first to help you if you had a problem. He wasn’t book smart, but he was street smart. And he was good with cars. One look at the grease embedded in his nails and the black stains on his fingers told you he spent most of his time under the hood of a car.

I ran into Bob a few years after school at the grocery store. He didn’t smell like weed and he had a little boy with him.

“This is Luke,” he said. “He’s three.”

So Bob became a dad. He told me he had his own garage. He didn’t care for the business part of things, but his girlfriend took care of that. He seemed happy, and I was happy for him.

I remember some of my friends asking me why I talked to a pothead. To them, Bob was from the other side of the tracks, not good enough to associate with. But I liked Bob. And, to be honest, I think that if I had ever gotten into trouble or needed help, Bob would have helped me quicker than many of them would have.

It’s true what they say about not judging a book by its cover. Sometimes the cover is tattered or maybe it’s missing altogether. That doesn’t mean what you find inside isn’t worth your time. What a shame that people couldn’t look beyond the cover to discover the Bob I had. I wonder now if they realize how foolish they had been. Maybe it would have made a difference in his life. I know it would have in theirs.

Ray (Yearbook post)

Gina,

To a nice girl I got to know better in the last year. Good luck at all your future attempts.

Ray

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Ray didn’t have many friends. He was a little backward. When you spoke to him face to face, he would never look you in the eyes. He always looked at the floor. That absolutely drove me insane. I hate when people don’t look at me when I talk to them. But I understood that Ray was a little different so I tried to cut him some slack.

Ray was a gifted artist. I sat beside him in history class and he spent the entire period drawing. Mostly, he drew comic strips but he also sketched stuff he saw in class – like the wilting geranium in the clay pot sitting on the windowsill.

I tried to peek once to get a better view, but he covered his work with his arm. He didn’t like sharing his drawings. Probably didn’t want people to make fun of his work. That’s why he was mortified one day when The Palmer-nator (aka Mrs. Palmer) caught him drawing in class.

The Palmer-nator walked back to Ray’s desk before he had a chance to stash his work. She grabbed it and held it up for everyone to see. It was a sketch of her. Ray slid as far down in his seat as he could. It was the last time he drew in her class. I always thought that Ray drew because it was his way of expressing himself. I wonder if he still draws.

Diane (Yearbook post)

Gina,

To a funny, hilarious, and extremely rib-killing person. No matter where you are you bring a smile to everyone’s face. You also bring tears to their eyes!! I’ll never forget the time you told us about having to fart during your violin recital!

Diane

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So for the rest of my life Diane is going to remember me as the-girl-who-had-to-fart-during-her-violin-recital.  Yeah, well, it did happen. I tried to cover it up by playing louder, but it didn’t matter. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my junior high life. Here I was playing the theme from Romeo and Juliet, a piece that I had practiced for months, and farted right in the middle of it. Thank gawd no one said a word. In fact, they acted like they never heard it, which I’m sure they did.

Diane played the tuba, and if you ever saw her 4-foot, 7-inch self carrying that brass beast you’d laugh. Picture Toto hauling the Tin Man. I remember how her parents tried to talk her into playing another instrument, something smaller, like a flute or clarinet, but she refused. Good thing, too, because the tuba took her far.

She got a music scholarship and after earning her teaching degree replaced the band director at our high school. I heard Mr. Mummert was going to retire earlier but really wanted Diane to get the job and waited until she graduated to give her a chance. She did her student teaching under him and was really excited about teaching in the school that she graduated from.

Diane married a trumpet player. One of my good friends, Cookie, who attended their wedding, told me it was music themed. A small tuba and trumpet topped the cake. Each table was named after a favorite song.  The place cards looked like concert tickets with the guests’ names on them and sheet music was scattered on the tables. Each guest also received a music notes keychain.

I quit the violin when I got to high school. There were so many other things I wanted to try. I still have it, though. Every once in awhile, I get it out. The A string is missing and the bow needs to be re-haired. My cake of rosin is worn down the middle from years of rubbing it up and down my bow.

I wish I would have stuck with it. Why is it that when we give up something it’s so hard to get it back?

Peter (Yearbook post)

Gina,

To a really nice girl I met in homeroom. Take care.

Peter

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I’m just going to say it. Peter creeped me out.  It seemed like he was always watching me. I’d catch him staring at me in homeroom or in the hallway. His locker was down from mine.

When he asked to sign my yearbook, I didn’t want to be a snob and say no. But I was glad he didn’t write much.

No one has ever made me feel so uncomfortable.  I was never afraid of Peter. It’s not like I thought he would hurt me.  His stares were more of a longing – like he wanted to be with me in a way I would never want to be with him.  Infatuation, I guess. A secret admirer, only he wasn’t as secret as he thought.

I told Mike about the staring once, and he wanted to set Peter straight. I told him to let it go. It wasn’t that big of a deal. But I think he had a talk with Peter anyway because the last month of our senior year, I didn’t catch Peter staring quite so much.

Cookie (Yearbook post)

Gina,

You’re a crazy, crazy girl and we shared so many laughs together this year. I’ll miss ya next year. Thanks for always sharing your orange gum and never forget all of the wild times at Jeremy’s house! I’m sure you’ll be a success and I’ll try to keep in touch.

Love, Cookie

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Funny that Amy – we called her Cookie – thought I was crazy. She was the crazy one. What I liked most about her is that she blazed her own path. Some days, she’d come to school dressed in the wackiest stuff, liked multicolored striped socks with a hounds tooth skirt and stripped shirt. It would look totally ridiculous on me, but on Cookie, it looked perfect.

I admired her for her spirit, and I always wished I could be more like her. Cookie never worried about what others thought of her. She was comfortable in her skin. And confident. Some of my girlfriends made fun of Cookie.  But I think deep inside they wished they could be more like her.

It didn’t surprise me when Mom sent me a newspaper clipping about a local school district banning some books for sexually explicit content and offensive language and violence. Leading the opposition to the ban was Cookie.

“Where does the censorship end?” she was quoted as saying in the newspaper article.

That was Cookie. Always standing up for what she believed in, even if was the unpopular thing to do.

Mom asked me how Amy got the nickname Cookie. It started in first grade. She always brought her lunch and every day it included Oreo cookies.  So we started to call her Cookie.

Some days, if she wasn’t really hungry, she'd auction off her cookies. I learned to always have a nickel or two in my pocket just in case.

Cookie’s the one who taught me how to eat Oreos to get the most out of them. She’d pull the cookie apart, scrap the crème off with her two front teeth and then eat the chocolate wafers. I asked her once why she didn’t lick off the icing. She said it made her tongue tired, especially if they were double-stuffed.

Robby, who always sat with us at lunch, ate his cookie whole. He liked to taste everything together. She told him she thought that was lame. That eating Oreos wasn’t something to be rushed, but enjoyed.

Funny the things you remember. I hadn’t thought about our Oreo eating in decades.

Margaret (Yearbook post)

Gina,

To one of my dearest friends that I love very much. Always think of me as a friend and remember that I’m here if you need me. Never forget all the good times we had. Good luck in everything you do, and take care of Mike. When I look at you, I realize that you are aggressive and you’ll go far. Remember me always,

Luv ya, Maggie

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I never thought of myself as aggressive, but I guess I am. I wonder if that’s a bad thing. Maybe yes and maybe no. Guess it depends on the situation. I think it’s worked well for me most of my life, but there was at least one time when being too aggressive cost me a friend.