Poot and Cubby

So, Jennifer and Joline want to know how I met Jason (and no, Jo it was not in rehab as you feared). Here is the first part of the story:

May 1995. A Thursday after school. An 11th grader who’d been fat all her life (and had the low self-esteem to prove it) entered the public library to kill some time before her Weight Watchers meeting. I had almost reached my goal weight. Lost over 50 pounds, but for some reason had not considered losing my needy, somewhat affected, now long-distance boyfriend, Shane. Sure he was “nice”. He also lacked personality, was a suicidal wreck at times, and with his curly hair that looked and felt like steel wool and his hard-lined face, he was not exactly what you’d consider a great catch. But I had grown up with him. He was there. And I feared he was one of the few outcasts that was capable of loving me. When I think about this all now, it makes me shudder with embarrassment.

I resented his lack of backbone. His inability to speak up, when, for example, an asshole friend of his drove nearly 200 km/hr down a country highway, playing chicken with oncoming cars. I was in tears in the backseat. Seatbeltless. Willing myself not to die in such a cliché way, while Shane sat there in silence, afraid of being seen as a wimp if he spoke up.

When Shane moved 3 hours away to go to school, I grieved. Reflecting back, it was not the grief of losing someone I loved, but the fear of going through daily life alone. The fear of having to rely on the few friends I hadn’t cut out of my life to be the grown-up with a real live boyfriend. As we tried to maintain the relationship through phone calls and weekend visits, I began to outgrow him, even though it was he who was four years my senior. Still, I stayed. Certain no one else would want me. Certain I was no one without a partner. This is one of the many times I wish that Adult Me could travel back in time and bitch-slap clueless, Younger Me and tell her to get her shit together.

Anyway, back at the library. As I settled in to work on the Math I really would never use in real life , despite my teacher’s assertions to the contrary,I noticed a tall, cute guy at one of the tables. I tried not to stare. Behind Cute Guy, sat a girl I had known forever. This girl noticed me checking out Cute Guy and mouthed, “He’s hot!”

And he was. I had never been attracted to the conventional muscle-bound, chiseled cheek, athletic boys who reeked of testosterone. Too many of these guys had dated friends of mine and let it be known that I would always be the “fat, ugly” girlfriend. I preferred tall, thin, preferably brown-haired guys who had an inexplicable look of kindness and intelligence behind their eyes. Artsy types. Guys I could befriend, not just date. This mystery man had all of these qualities.

The first thing I noticed about him was that he was wearing a Dinosaur Jr. t-shirt. This signaled many things. That he too was a follower of alternative music. At the time I listened to pretty much anything that you couldn’t hear on the Top-40 radio station. I dressed like a skateboarder, choosing second-hand granny dresses and polyester pants over the designer brands all the preppy kids wore. The irony was not lost on me that I too was a member of a defined group, no better or worse than the preppy kids I professed to loathe. Also ironic, was the fact that my awkward, uncoordinated body was completely incapable of staying upright on a skateboard. I hoped that immersing myself with my drama friends would cover up any contradictions in my carefully sculpted public persona as an outcast. I feared dying a horrible sub-culture social death if I were to ever be outed as a “poser”.

The very fact that Mystery Man dressed similar to me and had even heard of Dinosaur Jr. clearly meant that he had a lot of the same views on life as I did (I know this is a leap – forgive me, I was not yet 17). Also promising was the fact that he was even in the library. Clearly this meant he was literate and enjoyed reading. I would find out later that he was indeed literate, but wasn’t exactly a book-lover at the time. His presence at the library could be explained by the fact that he was off work due to minor surgery and was bored out of his mind.

I’m not sure if he really noticed me in the library, but we did not make eye-contact or speak that first day. As I drove out of the parking lot, alternately regretting not talking to him, and feeling guilty for wanting to talk to him even though I was dating someone else, he walked out of the library doors. On a whim, I smiled and waved. He looked behind him, certain that the strange girl in the kick-ass mini-van was waving at someone else. Seeing the wave was intended for him, Library Boy (as I began to call him), smiled back, confused.

Jay would later tell me that he was unsure why someone as young as me was driving a mini-van. I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to him that it was my parents’ and I wasn’t leading the life of an adulterous soccer mom who’d had multiple plastic surgeries so she could hunt young men at the library.

Won’t you join me next Sunday for the continuation?  I promise more embarrassing teenage angst, and to tell you about the first words I said to the husband.  Riveting stuff…

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Soap Opera Sunday is the brainchild of Twas Brillig and Walking Kateastrophe.
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