Another memory story.
When I was a senior in high school, I spent a great deal of time “coupled” with a girl (named Julie, ironically, no relation to my wife) by virtue of the fact that her two best friends were dating my best friend and my best friend’s girlfriend’s male cousin. So we went places as a group of six, and being the two unattached people, we ended up sitting together riding together, etc.
There was no romance. Not really.
She asked me to the homecoming dance. I was actually going to ask someone else, but that didn’t end up happening, of course. We also went to the holiday dance together, and without either of us ever having the discussion we ended up prom dates.
Before prom, I decided to make an effort. So I took her on a few actual “just us” dates. We did some exploring of the area, and on one particular night I ate a terrible sandwich called a Fish-a-ma-Jig just to make her laugh. We got chased off the golf course by the after-hours janitor guy, and we got lit up by a cop for being on the swings past midnight in the park (different nights). We exchanged notes at school, mostly because we were bored. I think. I’m not sure.
I liked her a great deal as a person, but the whole attraction/romance thing wasn’t there. In fact the whole reason I didn’t clarify what our relationship was stemmed from the fact that there was a holy roller neoconservative girl who listened to Rush Limbaugh at lunch and tried to talk to me that everyone wanted to fix me up with, because you know the only thing that determines compatibility is being fat (which she and I both were). Yearbook Julie was a good shield from that.
So… side story. My best friend at the time and I were pretty corny. I once made someone cry because she didn’t realize he and I were rapping the lyrics of Regulator by Warren G across the room at each other with typing terms subbed in, and she thought “if don’t GWAM like I GWAM/Phill is gonna have to regulate” was an insult. We would strive to leave the stupidest note on the chalk board. Stuff like that.
One day, after school, the six of us went to the mall and then to the arcade. My bestie was the only one of our little posse that would go into the toy store with me (everyone else was too adult). We found these little Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys that were tiny chrome figures with marbles in their bellies. They had a button that shot the marble. I bought Leonardo, cuz blue. He got Donatello, because I took Leonardo. 😛
We played with those in class instead of paying attention to most of a unit on Romeo and Juliet, and one day, as we were attempting to shoot the marble at our teacher’s podium to try to get her attention, Yearbook Julie asked if she could take a shot. So I let her fire ol’ Leonardo a few times. She really seemed to enjoy it.
Now, back to the other story. I didn’t know this, but for some stupid reason (really stupid, as they’d break up later that month) my bestie proposed to his girlfriend the weekend before prom. She, I think, said yes, even though as I mentioned they broke up right before graduation because they wanted to go to different colleges. But she talked to her girlfriends about it, and they were all sort of worked up and crazy.
I found this out later.
That same weekend, Yearbook Julie and I were going on one of our little excursions. I’d mostly given up on us having anything beyond just a friendship. I’d been told by one of her friends that she was legitimately pissed off at me for not renting a tux for prom (I didn’t want to waste the money when I had a nice suit from speech meets and such) and that she was sort of angry about how her borrowed dress fit (she borrowed a dress from said friend, who was the co-captain of the cheerleading team, and apparently felt bad when she didn’t look as good in it as her friend had, though you can bet I didn’t say such or think so– this was her self-loathing moment). We were still good friends, though, and we were about to decide on colleges ourselves, so we knew that after spending almost every afternoon together for three-or-so years our time as a tag team was ending.
I like to make silly gestures to people so they know I’m paying attention. I remembered that Yearbook Julie had once talked about how bestie and I had our little in-jokes and stuff and she sometimes felt like she was never a part of what we did. And I remembered her enjoying a little marble launching mischief. So… I bought her a little TMNT launcher– the last one– Raphael.
I stuck it in my pocket. Why wouldn’t I?
We went to a mall in Cincinnati to hang out and just sort of relax. She seemed a little off the whole day, but we were teenagers and we were in an awkward time (and I was actually starting to have feelings for someone else and felt like oddly that was wrong even though I was in a not-relationship with Yearbook Julie). At one point we were riding bumper cars. I don’t remember how it came up, but something got us to talking about my bestie and his girlfriend. I chuckled and said something about maybe YJ should be in on one of our jokes.
I reached in my pocket. To get the TMNT toy.
She flipped out while my hand was there, put her hand on my shoulder, and she said “I don’t want to get married!”
When I talked to bestie’s girlfriend later, and she told me all of what she was going through, this would make YJ’s outburst make a little sense (apparently the three of them all thought the males were proposing as some sort of odd pre-graduation ritual). but in the moment, I was just super confused.
She was loud, too. A crowd of people turned and looked at us. I could see pity in the looks of some people.
Then I pulled out the little Raphael toy. And I extended my hand.
“I got you a turtle.”
I didn’t know what else to say. How in the world do you react when you’re sort of bored with being stuck with someone but they’ve been a good friend and beyond everyone thinking you’re dating when you’re not she’s a good conversationalist and it’s better than driving everywhere alone? I hadn’t even thought of asking her to go from hanging out to saying we were dating. I was astonished that she could possibly think what she thought. In the moment, high school Phill was just super confused and knew that the gesture I’d made, which was meant to be a “you’re my bro” moment, an invitation to be one of the guys, was now forever going to be remembered as the awkward moment where we realized two people of the opposite sex in the bible belt in the 90s with friends that were going to marry off couldn’t be friends. Not yet, anyway. So… I suggested we go another lap and gunned my car back onto the little indoor track. I needed out of that moment.
She and I never discussed how she got the sense that we might be at a point where that conversation would have happened. We went to prom, where I actually ended up dancing more with her little sister than her because she was too embarrassed to dance to fast music.
At after-prom she and I said what would be our last sort of “goodbyes”– she went to hang out with her girlfriends, no guys allowed, and I ended up sitting in the concession stand painting and chatting with the girl I’d end up dating for the next year-and-a-half. I think I told her this story. I can’t really remember. I know we ended up listening to Tom Petty and watching as a crazy rainstorm ran through, then I drove her home only to find a tree had fallen on her house, so I had to take her to her aunt’s. I met my dude friends for breakfast.
No one from our circle ever talked to me about the YJ over-reaction. So I don’t know what any of them thought. The two guys from that friends group married off during their time in college and stopped hanging out with Phill, the immature one. My bestie’s girlfriend at that time, who he didn’t marry, ended up being my closest friend for the time while I was living in limbo in Richmond figuring out college and my life. I never saw YJ again after we graduated, or her cheerleader friend.
It was super confusing to me, though, to spend all that time with those five other people only to lose two of them instantly, two of them to a slow fade, and the last one to her finally finding a guy to date and just forgetting I was around. All these years later it feels like that moment with YJ should be a scene in a Kevin Smith movie, and this part where I tell you that I haven’t seen any of them in two decades after we were the closest friends anyone could ever have in high school seems like it should be spoken in a low, almost whispered voice as Silent Bob exhales weed smoke at me and shakes his head.
Sometimes, when I think back on those days, I miss that Leonardo marble launcher.
You expected me to miss the girl, right?
She was a’ight.