hottie? or nottie...

we've all had embarrassing moments. times when we tooted in a quiet room or had a boob pop out at the water park. everyone does it.

and we've all had times when we felt good about ourselves. a great hair day or a thoughtful compliment from someone.

but have we all had a day that included both? maybe. let me tell you about mine.

many years ago, in the land before husband, i went to a friend's house to hang out. my friend was a couple years younger than me, so she was still in high school, but i was finished by then. her family was all there, including an uncle who i'd never met before. he wasn't so much older than me - maybe ten years - and i thought he was rather cute.

we decided to watch a movie. i was sort of flirting with the uncle who was returning to favor and i was feeling rather pleased with myself that a guy that much older was paying a little bit of attention to me. at the end of the movie, as the credits rolled, a really great song came on. i stood up off the floor where i'd been lounging and proceeded to bust a move. no one else in the room was dancing. just me.

i was pretty sure that i was getting checked out from the rear view, so i made sure to shake my butt extra frisky-like to be sure that it was adequately appreciated by the uncle.

suddenly i was grabbed by the arm and dragged out of the room by my friend. she hauled me to the bathroom without a word, pushed me in and closed the door. i hesitated for a moment, not sure what the heck was going on or why she'd interrupted my fabulously sexy dance solo.

she was only gone for about 30 seconds, but when she returned, she handed me a pair of jeans. i was perplexed. then she turned me around and had me look at my rear in the mirror. there, all over the butt of my jeans was the biggest, most obvious period stain i've ever had. not a dainty little dime-sized spot, but more like i'd been shot in the rump with a bazooka.

i cleaned up, put on my friend's pants and then tried to find a way to escape out of the house without being seen. i didn't want to even open the door because i knew i'd have to walk past the people who'd seen my period dance. my face was purple from the mortification. my pants were wadded in my armpit. my ego was damaged beyond repair.

eventually i had to slink out and face the people. they were very nice and no one said anything about my mishap. the uncle even walked me to my car. he stood in the road and smooched me under the street light.

my ego was slightly patched up after the kiss, but i never heard from him again. it was probably a pity kiss, but i was grateful for it.

my heart still pounds and my cheeks still burn when i remember that bloody night.

bugaboo

when i was single and about 20, i had a guy friend who was cute. actually, i had a lot of guy friends who were cute, but this story is only about one of them. we didn't know each other well, but we had several mutual friends and often hung out in the same group of people. he was nicer than most of the guys i knew and never seemed like he was trying to be cool or impress anyone with his "game".

we kind of checked each other out for a while and eventually he asked me out. i was glad that he did and happily said yes. i think we went out for dinner or a movie and then afterwards, we went to a little ice cream shop. we were having fun, but i wasn't feeling like there was a romantic connection between us. it felt like going out with a friend or maybe my cousin.

while we were eating ice cream and laughing, i noticed that he was looking at my boobs. then he wasn't laughing or smiling anymore. he was staring very intently at my deep cleavage and didn't seem to be listening to what i was saying. i stopped talking & just stared at him, wondering what was going on.

then he reached out his hand & started slowly reaching toward me. and not just reaching toward me, but reaching toward my chest. this was completely out of character for him, especially since we were on a first date & sitting in a public shop surrounded by families. i just watched him, almost mesmerized by the oddity of it.

then he suddenly SLAPPED me, right on the top of my left boob! my jaw dropped, my eyes popped and i was speechless. that's when he looked up at my face & noticed the shock and he started stammering. he finally managed to explain that there had been a bug crawling down my shirt from my collarbone, heading into the crack of my boobs and he'd managed to slap it away before it made contact with skin.

he turned red in the face and i burst out laughing because of how crazy it had all been for a minute there. we didn't have a second date, but stayed friends, and i still like to tell his wife that story sometimes.

beers and tears - a warning tale of imbibery

when i was 20, i was dating a guy (let's call him mike) who was in the army & he was living on a base about 5 hours from my house. we visited each other when we were able to and it was both exciting and tedious, due to the geographic distance between us. i would drive down to the base once or twice a month to visit him & that was always a very strange thing for naive little me because i  usually couldn't afford a hotel, so i stayed in the barracks with him when i was there.


before i started dating him, i'd pictured barracks to be like the ones you see in movies where there's one big, open room broken up by rows of bunk beds. these barracks were nothing like that. it was more like a college dorm and in each room there would be two or three guys sharing a bedroom and a filthy bathroom. mike only had one roommate, but he had one of the only vcr's in the building, so it was a hot spot for the other guys to hang out, watch movies and drink beer.

one friday, after working all day, i'd driven the 5 hrs to go see mike. i pulled off a couple exits before his stop to fix myself up a little bit, excited to see my man and wanting to look and smell good when i got there. i arrived on base, parked, and carried my overnight bag up the three flights of concrete steps to his room and knocked on his door. my heart was pounding, partly due to running up the steps and partly in anticipation of seeing the guy i'd been missing so much.

there was no answer. i knocked louder. nothing. it was about 10 at night and i was starting to feel anxious because i didn't know what to do. i was in a place where i only barely knew a few guys, i had no cell phone because they weren't invented yet, and i didn't know how to get in touch with my boyfriend. then i started to get mad. i'd driven 5 hours to see him, i was tired and hungry and he didn't even care enough to be there when i arrived. he was expecting me, but he'd just gone somewhere else.

i stood there in that outdoor hallway for a few minutes trying to figure out what to do. i was close to tears and at a loss for what to do next when 2 soldiers walked through and saw me standing there. they were friends of mike who i'd met a couple times before and they stopped to talk to me. when i told them what was going on, they invited me to their room where i could wait for mike to return. i was tremendously relieved, so i followed them back down a set of stairs and into their room.

i had never drank alcohol before, but when one of them offered me a beer, i was just mad enough to take it gladly & chug it right down. mike knew i didn't drink and he liked that about me, so i thought it would serve him right when he got back if he found me a little bit tipsy & hanging out with his friends. one drink turned into 4 and somewhere in that process, i lost my memory and all sense of things that might trouble me. i remember that we were sitting on their couch watching animal planet and there was lots of laughing. beyond that, i remember nothing until there was a loud, sudden pounding on their door.

i recognized mike's voice yelling through the door to open up because he knew i was in there. it was as if i woke up then and i was thrilled that he was there & couldn't really remember where i was or what was going on, only that i was glad that my man had come for me. i sprung clumsily up off the couch and was about to open the door to greet him when i heard the two guys i'd been sitting with hissing for me to button up my shirt and not to tell him anything. i couldn't tell him anything because i didn't remember anything, but i was happy to button up my shirt because, huh, how did that get open?

i flung open the door and greeted mike with open arms and a great big, beery kiss. then i noticed that he was wearing an eye patch and he didn't seem happy to see me at all. he glared at his friends, then he scooped up me and my bag and carried me up the stairs to his room. he plunked me down on his bed & asked me what happened and why i was in that room with those guys.

that's when i remembered to be mad. i was in there cuz he hadn't been around when i'd arrived a couple hours before and i'd had to go somewhere. i didn't want to just sit on the hallway floor waiting for him all night. and by the way, why was he wearing an eye patch?

he pulled the patch off, un-taped a bandage and showed me his eye. it was swollen and purple and there was a zig zag of stitching through the eyelid. he'd been in a car accident and not wearing his seat belt, so his face he gone through the windshield, cutting his eyelid in two in the process. he was in the emergency room getting his face stitched up when i'd arrived and there was no way for him to contact me.

then, he got back to the barracks and found me drunk and apparently fooling around with his friends. he started crying then and i watched in horror, not just because i'd never seen my soldier man cry, but because he was crying tears of blood that streamed down his face and into his shirt.

it was a very traumatic night for me and it was a long time before i tried to drink again, but i've never been able to drink beer since because it immediately brings to my mind those terrible tears of blood.

espresso please, and make it a double

you know what i wish? i wish i liked coffee. the people who love it seem to be so dedicated and loyal to their coffee. it's as if they slurp joy from a cup in a way that i just can't comprehend. when i was growing up, my mom drank tea & my dad drank coffee, so i grew up thinking that coffee was for the manly men and women should be dainty and delicate with their honey-laced tea. it wasn't until i was in junior high that i realized that women could drink coffee too and it didn't mark them as masculine.

shortly after i gave up on college, i started thinking that maybe i'd try the coffee bit. the people who loved it seemed more mature somehow, since coffee is forbidden to children due to it's supposed growth-stunting powers. i tried sips from the cups of others once in a while, but it tasted bad, so i didn't understand what all the fuss was about.

it wasn't until i was on a first date with a man who was the gymnastics coach to the kids that i nannied that i ever entered a coffee shop. he'd apparently been checking me out for a while (he admitted later that he & the other coaches all called me "busty nanny") and when we ran into each other in public one day, he asked me out. our first date was to include a trip to starbucks & then a walk around a park. sounded okay to me and i was pretty sure i could figure out something to order.

we walked into starbucks and i looked up at the board with all the menu options. i was overwhelmed by choices for things that i didn't understand. i wanted to appear cool and sophisticated and didn't want to admit that i'd never had a cup of coffee in my life and didn't even know how to order something since the choices didn't appear to be in english. someone in front of me got a cute little cup of something and i thought, since i don't think i like coffee, i'll just get myself a tiny little cup like that, so i won't have to suffer through very much of it. i ordered what i thought the other customer had, "i'll take an expresso, please." i didn't realize there was no x in it at the time. the barista asked if i'd like to make it a double. i hemmed & hawed for a moment, not sure what the right answer was, so my date stepped in & answered that yes, i'd like a double. what the heck, i figured, make it a double, whatever that means. if i'm going to do this, i might as well go all out.

we took our drinks & headed out the door for the adjacent park. my date asked if i drink espresso often & i admitted that, no, this was my first time. he raised his eyebrows and said, "oh, wow and you got a double! brave girl!" umm... i didn't understand because i'd thought i was making a very timid choice, what with it being such a tiny little drink and all.

i took a few sips and of course, hated it. i walked past several trash cans, wishing i could toss that dixie cup of toxic waste in and be done with it, but i didn't want to be rude. my date had, after all, paid about $5 bucks for the dumb thing. so i decided to do what i did in bars when i wanted to get my drink on, but hated the taste of alcohol. i turned that bad boy bottom up & slammed it. i turned my face turned away from the coach as i cringed & tried not to gag. okay, mission complete. i'd had my first cup of coffee. not something i wanted to do again any time soon, but it hadn't killed me, so i was rather pleased with myself. i sure was glad i'd chosen such a little one so i didn't have to choke down one of those big drinks.

we strolled around the park for a bit, making polite conversation. that's when the gurgles started. i tried to ignore them for as long as possible, but they only got louder & more insistent. i finally had to ask for directions to the nearest bathroom. at that point, there was no time for a leisurely meander back toward the facilities, so i left my dude in the dust & took off on espresso powered legs. my stomach was angry. very angry. it did not want to release me from its wicked grasp, so i was a prisoner for much longer than i would have liked.

i eventually got back out to my date, who by then was wondering if i'd snuck out a back way & taken a cab home. i didn't care to discuss the situation, so we resumed our walk, but it wasn't long before i was sprinting back again for another round. after i emerged for the second time i couldn't even look the coach in the eye, but i asked him to take me home. i told him i wasn't feeling well and maybe we could try again another day.

it wasn't until i met my husband, who is a coffee junkie, just a few months after that that i heard him say that coffee is a natural diuretic. i don't even remember the context of why he said that, but when he did, it all fell into place in my head & i realized what had happened that day in the park. i asked him about espresso and learned that it packs an extra punch, which is why it's served in such small quantities.

chris & i spent a lot of time in coffee shops while we were dating, playing checkers and listening to bands, but i made it a habit to never order coffee. i didn't care for a repeat performance, so it was steamers all the way for me.