Friendly Fire

So. What happens when you organize your high school reunion "some time ago" and you use MySpace to get back in touch with people? Well, you run into some folks you never thought you'd run into again. This, perhaps, needs a story.

Back in middle school, I was traumatized when I got uprooted from my safe little Andress/Charles school environment and was thrown in with the thugs at another high school that shall remain nameless. You think I kid, but I went from "suburbia" to the hood. Never mind what reps those schools NOW have, but I was terrified. So when I arrived in the new school, I was promptly befriended by a couple of girls.

And I was quickly noticed by about three guys.

For YEARS (and I do mean years) I had a fierce crush on two of them. This all even after this very traumatic story I'm about to tell you that is actually several stories in one.

When I first moved to the thug school, I already had a year of band under my belt. So when they wanted to put me in intro band, I wasn't havin' it. They put me in with the advanced folks and older kids and that is where my crush began.

You see, there was this trumpet player with green eyes...and this track star tuba player. I didn't know immediately that they were best friends, but that was how it shook out. No matter. I had both of them for my band class, and both for my comp sci (if you can HAVE a "comp sci" class at that age) as well. My bestest friend in the world at that time was in band with me.

I don't know HOW it started, but in band, as both guys sat on the back row and had their groups of friends that played along as boys will do, there came about a chant by which trumpet boy and his friends would chant "Bernadette and [insert tuba boy's name here]" to which tuba boy and his friends (one of which was his baritone playing cousin) would chant back "Bernadette and [insert trumpet boy's name here]". Yes. Yes they did. They did indeed do this throughout the middle of class.

And I totally was crushing on both of them.

In computer science class, the chanting and obnoxious comments got so bad that our teacher was convinced that she'd wake up one day (probably about now) and read in the paper that Bernadette and one of said boys had hauled off and gotten married and popped out some kids. Right.

But wait for it, it gets better.

Remember the girls that befriended me? Well, in the small world that is El Paso, TX, she was actually really good friends with some folks I went to school with back in the day on the other side of the tracks. Didn't know that at the time I don't think and pretty sure it would not have mattered. Hung with her, had good times. Till she was over at my place one day and we were being chatty happy girls on the phone. Trumpet boy's number was not at all hard to find in the phone book. Heck, he lived right up the street from me pretty much. New bestfriend took it upon herself to dial him up.

I. was. mortified.

I didn't know what to say or anything. And truth be told, I wasn't quiet yet sure if I liked him better than his best friend. I mean, I was smitten by the green eyes. No lie.

Anyhow. Back to mortified on the phone. Somewhere, somehow, NBFF ends up asking Gorgeous Green Eyes if he likes me. And I promptly hang up the phone.

The things we'll never know. Sigh.

I could barely drag myself to school on Monday. Thankfully, both trumpet and tuba boy were a year ahead of me so in my 8th grade year, I pretty much forgot about boys (Chris didn't count...we were both just total geeks) and instead took to embarrasing myself (and my mom, sorry mom) with backwards clothes in school pictures.

So...then I move up and trumpet boy and tuba boy have moved into things like football and basketball (not in that order for each boy). I become a bonafied groupie and come to find that tuba boy has yet ANOTHER cousin that is all that and a bag of chips. Big time in Texas football. But still, I can't shake these two cats. And by this time, I have a new best friend (and, quite honestly, I might be confusing these two best friends because quite frankly, people pull stunts like this on me ALL. THE. TIME.). I'm cruising through high school as fairly Ms. Popular. I mean, I'm a freshman on the dance team (which was even bigger than cheerleading at my school...varsity dance, in Tx...and me AND my mama lived to tell about it), I'm in marching band, and get this...the newest best friend, wrangled two freshman girls spots as managers of the boys varsity basketball team.

Hot. damn. REALLY. We didn't get to travel out of town with the team till my uncle (also a basketball coach...now so at the very high school I avoided attending like the plague) told us to put our foot down, but we got to travel locally with them and that didn't do me very good for my crush on Mr. Trumpet turned Basketball dude. In finding that I could do the basketball thing, I moved over to do some track stuff too to stalk, I mean, be closer to, I mean, just you know...with the Tuba turned track star dude.

No matter. Nothing EVER came of either of these guys. Track star actually moved to another school. Basketball dude graduated just in time for me to find a gray eyed hottie to crush on when I went through my younger boy phase (and the new BFF told the dude straight out "Stop touching, talking, stalking her because she will never EVER go out with you." that surely stopped that dead in the tracks).

All said and done, I've been back to El Paso a few times. Everytime each of these guys moved on or I moved away, just when I was getting over them, they'd pop up somewhere unexpected. In the grocery store. At some function. As a friggin' coach of my brother's team. So imagine my surprise when my high school bff emails me today about coming to town and tells me there's a message waiting for me on myspace.

Now. I'm grown and sexy. I don't really do myspace. Got a profile, but remember way at the start of this post when I was talking about my HS reunion? When Mr. Tuba boy popped out of nowhere on Myspace, I ran for the hills. No more drama. So when I go back on today to answer the message my HS BFF was telling me about (from someone totally unrelated) imagine my shock and horror to see not one, not two, but 26 messages. From over 14 months. Of folks who were all "remember me?"

Wow. WOW! So alllllll of that for a quick shout out.

Hey there alexpatrickivanpatrikstacycrystaleddiemariemonicaverorachelletishacharlenekylemelanieharmonymichelle&jeanette

wow. And I promise. I don't usually take 437 days to respond to my email or comments here. Promise.