Carthage

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November 04, 2002

Happy anniversary, Lad.

My helmet may be too loose, too old and basically unsafe, but it has great acoustics. I discovered that I can sing at the top of my lungs while we're riding up 680 and no one can hear me but me. I can sing, for example, "Anna Begins" over and over, putting the chorus in a different place every time and occasionally repeating the part about shaking and shuddering for days many times in a row when I can't remember what comes next. Nobody knows. Nobody can even see my mouth moving, except when my helmet slides down over my eyes so that the window is somewhere around my chin.

Last night we had a meeting of the musical. That's how I always say it and grammar be damned. It was the same old wonderful, with a lot of impassioned arguments about whether they had Draino in the 1920's and whether gummy worms could be substituted for footage of killer centipedes. (No and yes.)

Warning: the rest of this is probably going to slightly embarass most of you.

The Lad was there too of course. I love watching him move around a room. I like to see his spatial relationship to people and furniture when he walks and sits and flings me across a tiled floor like a manic swing dancer. I like the way he intensely concentrates on everything. I like that he will throw the ball for the dog until the dog is tired, not because he likes the dog (he hates the dog, and all drooling unhygenic mammals including toddlers and coma patients) but because he likes to beat the dog at its own game.

It's November now. We met in September, but it was around November that I started to notice there was something rather extraordinary sitting across the classroom from me, being a caustic smartass to everyone. We met in 1992, so that makes this our tenth anniversary of mutual esteem.

Comments are back now, by the way, for the nonce. Let's face it, I can't quit anytime. I need an intervention in a big way.

Posted by didofoot at November 4, 2002 09:20 AM

Comments

awwwww, ten years! how cute.(please say this like bubbles from the powerpuff girls. thanks)

you two are catching up to ian and i. we rock, so that's cool.

Posted by: tracy at November 4, 2002 09:30 AM

i just sat here for a couple of minutes desperately trying to think when i first met gene, (and by the way not embarrassing. mushy though very mushy), and i can't actually remember when i first met him. but the first time i remember was halloween and it was like 1988 and he was at the mookerjee's being really REALLY mean to the trick or treaters. and not only did we not mutually esteem one another we actually despised each other. well maybe he didn't despise me....i have no idea. so here's to our 13 years anniversary of rampant dislike evolving into tolerance and finally friendship.

why oh why did you write about the unsafe motorcycle again? hi eydie!

p.s. i love you comments i love you! (i think this makes me like gene and you like the dog cause i threw a poll at you until you brought back comments. that's what i think.)

Posted by: michele at November 4, 2002 09:31 AM

oh, i saw jacob this morning and said hello to him, but i shook his hand. he then laughed at my formality. i feel shame. but i didn't mean it in a weird way. i just wasn't sure if he knew who i was, is all.

Posted by: tracy at November 4, 2002 09:32 AM

welcome back, comments.

i remember the first time i saw you. it was a few months ago, bedecked as you were with some Italian phrase that i didn't understand then and still don't now.

it's as if when you said, "Speak to me, Princess," you were talking to me. (I'm still not convinced you weren't.)

i'm just glad you're back in my life, comments. don't change. i love you so.

Posted by: ian at November 4, 2002 10:09 AM

goddammit. i can NEVER catch up to you, millers. because you just keep having more and more anniversaries. my only hope is to put you in a time capsule where time does not exist...only there, suspended among the spangled memorabilia of the oughts, will your endless progession pause so that the lad and I can finally bypass you.

this comment is useless. and so am I.

Posted by: didofoot at November 4, 2002 10:28 AM

but at least it's useless in the sense that your checking it obsessively.

Posted by: michele at November 4, 2002 10:30 AM

hee hee. damned comments haunting you at every turn. i wonder if anyone has commented. how 'bout now? how 'bout now? how 'bout now? how 'bout now? how 'bout now? how 'bout now? how 'bout now? how 'bout now? how 'bout now? how 'bout now?

Oh, that's MY head. Sorry.

Posted by: tracy at November 4, 2002 10:46 AM

So just to make this all accurate, allow me to disinterest you with some dates. Feel free to ignore this comment to avoid sap an nostalgia.

I asked Kristen out March 7th of 94 at about 8:30pm
We had our first kiss in front of the Dome in Pleasant Hill on Friday March 11th of 94 just before her mom picked us up from the movie (Gaurding Tess).

Posted by: gene at November 4, 2002 10:52 AM

wow. you don't waste any time with the puckering up do you? 4 days. good lord. and after nicholas cage too. i'm surprised you were feeling romantically inclined. =)

p.s. did you have that written down? or was it actually memorized?

Posted by: michele at November 4, 2002 11:03 AM

Great! Now I'm crying with romantic glee and look like an idiot. Thanks a lot GENE!!!!

OH and.........awwwwwwwwwwww!

Posted by: tracy at November 4, 2002 11:04 AM

the best way to keep an addiction -- surround yourself by enablers.

happy anniversary.

Posted by: marc at November 4, 2002 11:25 AM

I record everything. The movie was so-so. The kiss was fantastic.

Posted by: gene at November 4, 2002 11:26 AM

I wasn't laughing AT you, Tracy! I was laughing WITH you. Because, whether you knew it or not, you were laughing, too.
Actually, I wasn't really laughing. I was just surprised because I didn't even meet you that formally when we were first introduced. But of COURSE I remember you! How could I not?

Posted by: Jacob at November 4, 2002 11:26 AM

I think we actually declared our mutual liking before march 7th by about three days. but then I had to break up with my boyfriend josh pellham, and then I made gene wait two days because I didn't want people to call me a slut. because that's how it went back then. oh, and now.

Posted by: didofoot at November 4, 2002 11:37 AM

Kristen and Gene.....sitt'n in a tree........

Jacob,
Yes, laughing nervously. Prolly because we have never really been formally introduced. Now that we have, you'll be receiving hugs from now on. Like it or not!!
Tracy

Posted by: tracy at November 4, 2002 11:43 AM

a whole two days....and i think that really did the trick too. oh wait...no it didn't. ah high school. good times. you know...most of the time no one else is calling you a slut except you. fyi for ya. =) and sigh josh...i liked josh...he was unobtrusive. which is exactly what i was looking for in your boyfriend back then. BACK THEN.

Posted by: michele at November 4, 2002 11:44 AM

he was not unobtrusive. he dragged me off behind the trailers EVERY DAY FOR A MONTH to make out.

oh, I guess that's unobtrusive. but surely you missed me. no group caricature is complete without the slut character.

Posted by: didofoot at November 4, 2002 11:48 AM

that's true, slutty slut.

Posted by: michele at November 4, 2002 01:27 PM

oh man. whore, what is it good for? apparently it is good for snaring me some lad action.

Posted by: didofoot at November 4, 2002 01:36 PM

kristen comments, i love you so. but excuse me, princess, i thought i was the resident pretend-slut.

Posted by: erica at November 4, 2002 04:16 PM

well I guess if you want to. I was more thinking about high school. but possibly we also need a slut, and I can hardly be whoring around with this boyfriend I'm wearing.

mind you, was I a virgin all through high school? oh yes I was. and still I was the slut, it's amazing.

Posted by: didofoot at November 4, 2002 04:23 PM

everyone else was the virgin all thru high school too, slutty slut.

Posted by: michele at November 4, 2002 06:37 PM

OK, Josh, according to legend, Sucked Your Face in Mrs. Welch's English Classroom, which makes him Obtrusive Indeed, in addition to being less bright, inspired, technically adept, kind-hearted, and gorgeous, than Gene. As are all of the Others. Thank you both for acting accordingly...and happy Day of Righting the Universe by dating within the deity classes.

Posted by: at November 4, 2002 08:00 PM

oops, that was me.
comments been gone so long i forgot how to work'em.

i am glad that i am on record as having been a virgin, but my residual pride at Doing It first is now bursting from me, as is the wonderful story (*involving kristen*, but not in the way you would like), which i'll tell on request, but not here! have you no decency?

Posted by: K to the motherfuckin' T at November 4, 2002 08:04 PM

no decency. not a whit. nor an iota.

please do tell.

Posted by: ian at November 5, 2002 08:33 AM

please do also remember that my mother reads this and censor yourself accordingly...

Posted by: didofoot at November 5, 2002 10:27 AM

you suck, censorfoot.

Posted by: ian at November 5, 2002 04:00 PM

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