For some reason I can't understand, things don't happen to me like they do to everybody else. I'm the one who, when everyone orders soup, gets the bowl with, say, someone's severed digit in it or something.
Dating then, has been intriguing for me, and has never "just happened" like it does to normal people.
As an example, we will slide back in time to my pre-knee-surgery days, when my Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings were spent in two-hour kung-fu classes held on top of the university parking garage.
My brother's friend, whom we shall call Ernesto (although that is certainly not his real name but I doubt he'd want me to reveal his true identity 11 years later), would bum a ride with me to class because he lived Far Away From Class, which is also where I lived. The ride took a total of 45 minutes each way.
Ernesto and I had secret crushes on each other, but could not possibly admit our love because my brother was his best friend. So we sat in the car in agonizing and awkward silence, dressed in our kung-fu outfits and contemplating the meaning of love.
At some point Ernesto must have decided that angsty, emo-like silences were not going to be enough to drive me mad with desire and he instead devised a fail-proof plan to impress me.
Ernesto had an unholy obsession with Jackie Chan.
He'd spent many a late and anti-social night practicing his mad kung-fu skills and stunts. A particular favorite of his included running straight at, and then up, a wall, pushing off, doing an aerial kick and maybe a flip (but that could be part of my warped memories) and then landing on his feet. It was super cool, yo.
Of course, we were on the top level of a parking garage and there were no walls, so Ernesto decided to try this trick on a light post.
At this point, you might be thinking, "Haha, that Ernesto, what a moron!" but really this was not such a bad idea in and of itself. The bad part was that there was a large, jagged shard of metal sticking out of the light post that caught on Ernesto's bicep, and somehow also between his fingers, on the way down and cut him all the way down to the bone.
And, as crying like a little girl while bleeding profusely is not a good way to make women fall madly for you, Ernesto decided to hide his shame. Carefully covering his bicep wound with his mangled hand, he edged over to my brother and asked if my brother had something to soak up and staunch the blood, like, say, a car-sized Sham-wow for example.
My brother looked in the trunk of the car, and pulled out his kwan-dao, a 6' tall bladed Chinese weapon, which was covered with a pouch my brother had expertly crafted out of a towel and some duct tape.
The next few moments happened in slow-motion, though probably only in my head. My kung-fu instructor walked in at the exact moment that my brother handed Ernesto the towel to staunch Ernesto's now gaping-maw of a wound, while my brother stood there with a bladed weapon made of over ten pounds ofgalvanized stainless steel in his hand. It looked like this:
My instructor put two and two together and figured that the previous scene must have gone a bit like this:
I, being a romantic sap, leaped to the defense of Ernesto's innocence and in a moment of romantic heroism and loyalty, offered to drive him to the local hospital in case stitches were necessary. Apparently, at that moment nothing was hotter than a wounded, mangled boy so trying to impress me that he'd shed his very own blood. My brother volunteered to come along, which was useful but kinda ruined this exquisitely romantic tableau.
The local hospital was in a cornfield, because actually the whole town was in a cornfield. But this hospital really, really was in a cornfield.
My brother, who apparently had not learned from Ernesto's mistakes, decided to try to get Ernesto's mind off his pain by doing some stunts in the waiting room.
When we finally got put into an exam room, Ernesto sat down on a chair, and my brother and I walked helpfully around the chair for a while till the nurse came in. Now, I am not making this up. The nurse was a middle-aged man with missing teeth and a skullet. For those of you who are not aware of what a skullet is, it's when you have a mullet, except middle age kind of took everything except the "party in the back."
Nurse Skullet started the conversation with some friendly banter with Ernesto.
At this point, my brother decided to add some levity to the moment by doing another handstand and he and I got kicked out of the exam room.
Ernesto got his stitches, and we went on to date for four years.
What a beautiful story.
Dating then, has been intriguing for me, and has never "just happened" like it does to normal people.
As an example, we will slide back in time to my pre-knee-surgery days, when my Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings were spent in two-hour kung-fu classes held on top of the university parking garage.
My brother's friend, whom we shall call Ernesto (although that is certainly not his real name but I doubt he'd want me to reveal his true identity 11 years later), would bum a ride with me to class because he lived Far Away From Class, which is also where I lived. The ride took a total of 45 minutes each way.
Ernesto and I had secret crushes on each other, but could not possibly admit our love because my brother was his best friend. So we sat in the car in agonizing and awkward silence, dressed in our kung-fu outfits and contemplating the meaning of love.
At some point Ernesto must have decided that angsty, emo-like silences were not going to be enough to drive me mad with desire and he instead devised a fail-proof plan to impress me.
Ernesto had an unholy obsession with Jackie Chan.
He'd spent many a late and anti-social night practicing his mad kung-fu skills and stunts. A particular favorite of his included running straight at, and then up, a wall, pushing off, doing an aerial kick and maybe a flip (but that could be part of my warped memories) and then landing on his feet. It was super cool, yo.
Of course, we were on the top level of a parking garage and there were no walls, so Ernesto decided to try this trick on a light post.
At this point, you might be thinking, "Haha, that Ernesto, what a moron!" but really this was not such a bad idea in and of itself. The bad part was that there was a large, jagged shard of metal sticking out of the light post that caught on Ernesto's bicep, and somehow also between his fingers, on the way down and cut him all the way down to the bone.
And, as crying like a little girl while bleeding profusely is not a good way to make women fall madly for you, Ernesto decided to hide his shame. Carefully covering his bicep wound with his mangled hand, he edged over to my brother and asked if my brother had something to soak up and staunch the blood, like, say, a car-sized Sham-wow for example.
My brother looked in the trunk of the car, and pulled out his kwan-dao, a 6' tall bladed Chinese weapon, which was covered with a pouch my brother had expertly crafted out of a towel and some duct tape.
The next few moments happened in slow-motion, though probably only in my head. My kung-fu instructor walked in at the exact moment that my brother handed Ernesto the towel to staunch Ernesto's now gaping-maw of a wound, while my brother stood there with a bladed weapon made of over ten pounds of
My instructor put two and two together and figured that the previous scene must have gone a bit like this:
I, being a romantic sap, leaped to the defense of Ernesto's innocence and in a moment of romantic heroism and loyalty, offered to drive him to the local hospital in case stitches were necessary. Apparently, at that moment nothing was hotter than a wounded, mangled boy so trying to impress me that he'd shed his very own blood. My brother volunteered to come along, which was useful but kinda ruined this exquisitely romantic tableau.
The local hospital was in a cornfield, because actually the whole town was in a cornfield. But this hospital really, really was in a cornfield.
My brother, who apparently had not learned from Ernesto's mistakes, decided to try to get Ernesto's mind off his pain by doing some stunts in the waiting room.
Nurse Skullet started the conversation with some friendly banter with Ernesto.
At this point, my brother decided to add some levity to the moment by doing another handstand and he and I got kicked out of the exam room.
Ernesto got his stitches, and we went on to date for four years.
What a beautiful story.
silly lady....EVERYONE knows that his Kwan-Doa is stainless steel...not galvanized steel....psh :-D thanks for reminding me of this lovely story...i forgot all about it.....
ReplyDeletePsh. Some of us are not, say, engineers and stuff. I have no idea what the difference is between galvanized and stainless steel. "Galvanized" sounded so good.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't marry him?
ReplyDelete;0) A relationship with such a bloody start is doomed to fail!
ReplyDelete