National Novel Writing Month- Day 01
Today is the first day of NaNoWriMo. Okay, it's technically the second day, but shut up! It is still Day 01 in my book!
I will be posting my progress in here for records and well, in case anyone is actually interested in reading about my boring, boring life.
A few words I'd like to say before continuing. I wrote this mostly unedited. It pained me to do so, but NaNoWriMo specifically said not to worry about editing and to just WRITE. So that's what I did. I apologize for horrible grammar and spelling errors (OpenOffice, for some reason, is not recognizing that some of the words below were misspelled. I have a bone to pick with someone in the near future).
Also, I am aware that my wordcount here is different than what I posted on facebook. Forgive me, but while I was pasting the text here, I deleted two filler words I didn't want anymore.
The stories that will unfold in the following pages will not be ones of fantasy, science fiction, or suspense. They will be filled with drama, and what better resource for that than from one’s own life? Reality is often stranger than fiction, and my love life is no exception. I’m too young to write an autobiography, but I feel that I have had more hardships when it comes to relationships than many people 30 years older than me. Friends have told me that my love life sounds like a soap opera, and so I thought, “Why not a novel?”
And though this is to be a work of non-fiction, I will not deny that, through the years, most of what I will describe to you is biased because that is simply what the human mind does, and yet, it is our interpretations of life that make our reality, and thus all of these accounts are true as experienced by me.
Typically, everyone starts off their love lives at a very young age with simple little girlhood crushes. Mine began when I was in pre-school. I cannot even remember the name of the little boy I terrorized that year, but every morning after my mother dropped me off, I would go up to him and give him a big, wet kiss on the cheek. He always proceeded to wipe his face and exclaim, “Yuck!” It was apparent even this early on that girls were way more mature than boys!
I went through most of my elementary school not having any crushes, though there was this one boy in third grade I flat-out lied to because I wanted to impress him. He reminded me of an extremely young Harrison Ford, and considering that, even to this day, Indiana Jones is my one and only hero, I deemed it completely necessary to lie to this young boy and say yes, I actually did go scuba diving once. He asked me what I liked most about it and since we were currently watching an educational video on the wonders of the sea, I made up something quite clever. I cannot remember what I said, but I hope it convinced him!
My first real crush was on a boy in my fifth grade class named Patrick. To this day, I am not sure why I liked him. Maybe it was because he made me laugh; he was the class clown, afterall. But he was also the class troublemaker. I suppose sitting next to him for half the year didn’t help my situation either. Unfortunately, my poor little 11-year old heart was crushed when I found out he liked Lorie, the class whore. Alright, I’m not inferring she slept around. For goodness sakes, we were only 11! But she wore these short-shorts all the time, and all the boys in our class were constantly chasing after her, trying to smack her butt. And though she constantly complained about this attention from the boys, when I asked why she didn’t just stop wearing the shorts, she replied sheepishly, “But I like to.” Thus why I have forever branded her as a WHORE. I found it more than ironic when I discovered that after finding her on Myspace a few years back, she turned out to be a lesbian.
Even though I have always been a fairly intelligent girl, I started off being attracted to really--how should I put it?--DUMB guys. As in, they barely passed their classes and mispelled every other word like five-year olds. In sixth grade, I fell head over heels for this tall, chunky kid, Jerry. He sat across from me in my art class. I cannot even remember what I even liked about him. All I remember is that he liked football.
A few days before the Valentine's Day dance at our middle school, Jerry had one of his friends pass me a note. I know how very cliche this sounds, but it read, "Will you go out with me?" and had the options to pick "yes," "no" or "maybe". I checked "yes" and gave it to him at the end of the day. We then made plans to go to the dance together. The night of the dance, I wore one of my best dresses and my mother's White Linen perfume. To this day, that perfume reminds me of this night. I was so nervous when I got there, and my stomach did flips when I saw him. Our school had set up a little photo shoot of sorts and you could pay a few dollars to get your photo taken. That is what we did, and I still have it locked away somewhere. After getting the Polaroid, we slow-danced for most of our time there. It was only until afterwards that I realized we must have looked like idiots swaying back and forth in one spot and never picking up our feet. Even so, I was on a cloud that night.
A little later, Jerry handed me a rock one morning before school and walked away. I was puzzled, but when I studied the rock, I noticed that it was shaped like a heart. Oh, how my own little heart soared! That rock is still in my possession; sadly, my dog got a hold of it many years ago, so it is no longer heart-shaped.
During our short relationship, he had only ever kissed me on the cheek once. At this point in my life, I desperately wanted to know what it felt like to be in love and to kiss someone, so I always wanted to kiss him on the lips but was too scared. I inevitably broke up with Jerry after about a month and a half of dating. I cannot even remember why, but what I do remember is that I became somewhat obsessed with him. I would always pick him out on the basketball court (he liked to play every morning), spot him in line for lunch every day and generally just stare longingly after him. I studied him so much that I could predict what shirt he would wear what day-not that it was very hard to do because he seemed to only own about seven shirts total. This went on for the remainder of sixth grade and most of seventh grade. It is very hard for me to admit this, but I pretty much became a stalker.
It was in eighth grade that i began dating another boy, Rob. I had originally met him the year before in my Sunday school class. We use to pass notes to each other after classes, and it was here I learned how bad of a speller he was. I let it slide, though, because I liked him. I think that was because he was funny and no other reason. I apparently started off with really low standards. For Christmas that year, Rob gave me a HUGE stuffed teddy bear. I had some pretty cruel friends because they began calling the stuffed animal “Rob Jr.” or “Roberta.” You have to understand that Rob was a very large boy, towering about six feet and weighing well over 200 pounds. My friends were poking fun at the fact that he gave me such a large bear that resembled him. Even my parents joked and began calling the bear this after bringing it home.
My middle school threw a lot of dances, so I eventually attended one with Rob. He seemed really embarrassed to be seen with me there because he was trying so hard to look tough for his friends, but our mutual friend Tina forced him to finally dance with me. Paralleling the last dance I went to with a date, we took a Polaroid to immortalize the moment.
This relationship was also short-lived. I received a letter from him, delivered from a friend, one afternoon after school, as I often did, but i noticed this one was written in my friend Tina's handwriting. The contents of the note told me that Rob no longer wanted to date me because I was not allowed to actually go out on dates with him [side note: I had tried to go on a date with him to the movies with my friends in tow, but my step father refused, claiming that my friends would sit elsewhere while Rob and I sat alone. Yes, that was my original intention true, but come on, dad!]. At first, I thought it was a joke because why would Rob not write the note himself? I confronted Tina, and she told me he did not want to hurt my feelings so that was why he asked her to write it for him. I would have appreciated a little more respect than that, but really, what could I truly expect from a 13 year old?
It was in my eighth grade year that my parents finally broke down and bought me a computer with the Internet. I became quite obsessed with entering chatrooms and talking to people from around the country. On one such occasion, I came across a 16-year old, Paul. Being a naive, gullible 14-year old, I thought he was charming. I fell for him pretty hard, as much as a stupid young girl could with a guy over the Internet. He lived in California (and I in Florida), so the three-hour time different was pretty rough. I spent many a night sneaking onto the computer at two in the morning in hopes to getting to talk to him. He said such sweet, passionate things that i had always dreamt of hearing a man say to me. I am often ashamed of this part of my life, but it is an experience I learned from and thus, it is important to me.
I spent the summer before beginning high school writing stories about him and me finally getting to meet each other when we were older. It pains me to write here that I became overly obsessed with the Internet and my only “true” friends were him and two other online friends I had met around the same time as Paul. I hardly ever slept because I would stay up until four in the morning sometimes talking to my online friends and waiting for Paul's screen name to appear on my buddy list.
I can say, in all honesty, that I cannot recollect how my “relationship” with Paul ended. There are memories of me having also talked to his brother, Richard and one of his cousins, but the suspcious thing was that they all misspelled the same words, so I was becoming convinced they were all the same person. I also remember Paul's real-life girlfriend signing onto his account to tell me to go away and stop bothering her “man.” All of this occurred some time in the middle of ninth grade. I am sure my diary from that time period could shed some light on the situation, but I would rather leave it unknown.
I will be posting my progress in here for records and well, in case anyone is actually interested in reading about my boring, boring life.
A few words I'd like to say before continuing. I wrote this mostly unedited. It pained me to do so, but NaNoWriMo specifically said not to worry about editing and to just WRITE. So that's what I did. I apologize for horrible grammar and spelling errors (OpenOffice, for some reason, is not recognizing that some of the words below were misspelled. I have a bone to pick with someone in the near future).
Also, I am aware that my wordcount here is different than what I posted on facebook. Forgive me, but while I was pasting the text here, I deleted two filler words I didn't want anymore.
The stories that will unfold in the following pages will not be ones of fantasy, science fiction, or suspense. They will be filled with drama, and what better resource for that than from one’s own life? Reality is often stranger than fiction, and my love life is no exception. I’m too young to write an autobiography, but I feel that I have had more hardships when it comes to relationships than many people 30 years older than me. Friends have told me that my love life sounds like a soap opera, and so I thought, “Why not a novel?”
And though this is to be a work of non-fiction, I will not deny that, through the years, most of what I will describe to you is biased because that is simply what the human mind does, and yet, it is our interpretations of life that make our reality, and thus all of these accounts are true as experienced by me.
Typically, everyone starts off their love lives at a very young age with simple little girlhood crushes. Mine began when I was in pre-school. I cannot even remember the name of the little boy I terrorized that year, but every morning after my mother dropped me off, I would go up to him and give him a big, wet kiss on the cheek. He always proceeded to wipe his face and exclaim, “Yuck!” It was apparent even this early on that girls were way more mature than boys!
I went through most of my elementary school not having any crushes, though there was this one boy in third grade I flat-out lied to because I wanted to impress him. He reminded me of an extremely young Harrison Ford, and considering that, even to this day, Indiana Jones is my one and only hero, I deemed it completely necessary to lie to this young boy and say yes, I actually did go scuba diving once. He asked me what I liked most about it and since we were currently watching an educational video on the wonders of the sea, I made up something quite clever. I cannot remember what I said, but I hope it convinced him!
My first real crush was on a boy in my fifth grade class named Patrick. To this day, I am not sure why I liked him. Maybe it was because he made me laugh; he was the class clown, afterall. But he was also the class troublemaker. I suppose sitting next to him for half the year didn’t help my situation either. Unfortunately, my poor little 11-year old heart was crushed when I found out he liked Lorie, the class whore. Alright, I’m not inferring she slept around. For goodness sakes, we were only 11! But she wore these short-shorts all the time, and all the boys in our class were constantly chasing after her, trying to smack her butt. And though she constantly complained about this attention from the boys, when I asked why she didn’t just stop wearing the shorts, she replied sheepishly, “But I like to.” Thus why I have forever branded her as a WHORE. I found it more than ironic when I discovered that after finding her on Myspace a few years back, she turned out to be a lesbian.
Even though I have always been a fairly intelligent girl, I started off being attracted to really--how should I put it?--DUMB guys. As in, they barely passed their classes and mispelled every other word like five-year olds. In sixth grade, I fell head over heels for this tall, chunky kid, Jerry. He sat across from me in my art class. I cannot even remember what I even liked about him. All I remember is that he liked football.
A few days before the Valentine's Day dance at our middle school, Jerry had one of his friends pass me a note. I know how very cliche this sounds, but it read, "Will you go out with me?" and had the options to pick "yes," "no" or "maybe". I checked "yes" and gave it to him at the end of the day. We then made plans to go to the dance together. The night of the dance, I wore one of my best dresses and my mother's White Linen perfume. To this day, that perfume reminds me of this night. I was so nervous when I got there, and my stomach did flips when I saw him. Our school had set up a little photo shoot of sorts and you could pay a few dollars to get your photo taken. That is what we did, and I still have it locked away somewhere. After getting the Polaroid, we slow-danced for most of our time there. It was only until afterwards that I realized we must have looked like idiots swaying back and forth in one spot and never picking up our feet. Even so, I was on a cloud that night.
A little later, Jerry handed me a rock one morning before school and walked away. I was puzzled, but when I studied the rock, I noticed that it was shaped like a heart. Oh, how my own little heart soared! That rock is still in my possession; sadly, my dog got a hold of it many years ago, so it is no longer heart-shaped.
During our short relationship, he had only ever kissed me on the cheek once. At this point in my life, I desperately wanted to know what it felt like to be in love and to kiss someone, so I always wanted to kiss him on the lips but was too scared. I inevitably broke up with Jerry after about a month and a half of dating. I cannot even remember why, but what I do remember is that I became somewhat obsessed with him. I would always pick him out on the basketball court (he liked to play every morning), spot him in line for lunch every day and generally just stare longingly after him. I studied him so much that I could predict what shirt he would wear what day-not that it was very hard to do because he seemed to only own about seven shirts total. This went on for the remainder of sixth grade and most of seventh grade. It is very hard for me to admit this, but I pretty much became a stalker.
It was in eighth grade that i began dating another boy, Rob. I had originally met him the year before in my Sunday school class. We use to pass notes to each other after classes, and it was here I learned how bad of a speller he was. I let it slide, though, because I liked him. I think that was because he was funny and no other reason. I apparently started off with really low standards. For Christmas that year, Rob gave me a HUGE stuffed teddy bear. I had some pretty cruel friends because they began calling the stuffed animal “Rob Jr.” or “Roberta.” You have to understand that Rob was a very large boy, towering about six feet and weighing well over 200 pounds. My friends were poking fun at the fact that he gave me such a large bear that resembled him. Even my parents joked and began calling the bear this after bringing it home.
My middle school threw a lot of dances, so I eventually attended one with Rob. He seemed really embarrassed to be seen with me there because he was trying so hard to look tough for his friends, but our mutual friend Tina forced him to finally dance with me. Paralleling the last dance I went to with a date, we took a Polaroid to immortalize the moment.
This relationship was also short-lived. I received a letter from him, delivered from a friend, one afternoon after school, as I often did, but i noticed this one was written in my friend Tina's handwriting. The contents of the note told me that Rob no longer wanted to date me because I was not allowed to actually go out on dates with him [side note: I had tried to go on a date with him to the movies with my friends in tow, but my step father refused, claiming that my friends would sit elsewhere while Rob and I sat alone. Yes, that was my original intention true, but come on, dad!]. At first, I thought it was a joke because why would Rob not write the note himself? I confronted Tina, and she told me he did not want to hurt my feelings so that was why he asked her to write it for him. I would have appreciated a little more respect than that, but really, what could I truly expect from a 13 year old?
It was in my eighth grade year that my parents finally broke down and bought me a computer with the Internet. I became quite obsessed with entering chatrooms and talking to people from around the country. On one such occasion, I came across a 16-year old, Paul. Being a naive, gullible 14-year old, I thought he was charming. I fell for him pretty hard, as much as a stupid young girl could with a guy over the Internet. He lived in California (and I in Florida), so the three-hour time different was pretty rough. I spent many a night sneaking onto the computer at two in the morning in hopes to getting to talk to him. He said such sweet, passionate things that i had always dreamt of hearing a man say to me. I am often ashamed of this part of my life, but it is an experience I learned from and thus, it is important to me.
I spent the summer before beginning high school writing stories about him and me finally getting to meet each other when we were older. It pains me to write here that I became overly obsessed with the Internet and my only “true” friends were him and two other online friends I had met around the same time as Paul. I hardly ever slept because I would stay up until four in the morning sometimes talking to my online friends and waiting for Paul's screen name to appear on my buddy list.
I can say, in all honesty, that I cannot recollect how my “relationship” with Paul ended. There are memories of me having also talked to his brother, Richard and one of his cousins, but the suspcious thing was that they all misspelled the same words, so I was becoming convinced they were all the same person. I also remember Paul's real-life girlfriend signing onto his account to tell me to go away and stop bothering her “man.” All of this occurred some time in the middle of ninth grade. I am sure my diary from that time period could shed some light on the situation, but I would rather leave it unknown.