Scheduling heartbreak

Looking at a calendar, I decided to break up with The Death Star after
work on Friday, November 4th . It was a bit further off than I would've
liked, but it was the first date that worked. I wanted to avoid ending
it on a weeknight because we'd both be far too physically and
emotionally drained for work the next day. A Friday night was ideal
because it gave The Death Star a full weekend to recover. I would've
selected the weekend of October 23rd , but I'd made plans that weekend
to travel to a Great Lakes game against the Corn Hawks with my old
friend Baloo. The weekend of the 30th was out because I'd acquired
tickets a while ago to see Star's favorite singer, Bernadette Peters, on
Tuesday, November 1st . That concert was as important to her as a Great
Lakes/Mordor State game. I'd feel awful devastating her a couple days
before it.

On our way to the Bernadette Peters concert, The Death Star mentioned
that I'd been distant lately. I told her that we'd talk about it later.
She tried to bring it up when we got back to her place afterwards, but I
knew that if we got into it, we'd break up that night. Not only was it a
weekday night, but dumping her after the concert might cause her to
associate Bernadette Peters with heartbreak. I pretended to be overtired
and suggested we go to bed and get into it another time.

The next day, I called The Death Star and asked if we could "talk" on
Friday. While the can we talk bit was necessary to avoid pulling an
Axis of Evil and catching her completely off-guard, the
pre-breakup-breakup was not a great alternative because she'd end up
worrying herself sick over the next couple days. Unfortunately, there
was no good way to ask, "Hey, can we schedule some time for me to
devastate you on Friday?" As expected, The Death Star broke down from
the very suggestion, begging me to at least sign up for relationship
counseling. I lied, claiming that I'd think it over.

On the day before the breakup, Xena called me shortly after I got home
from work. Apparently, The Death Star had been repeatedly calling her
cell, hoping that Xena could provide the necessary magic formula to
avoid losing me. Behind the scenes, Xena supported my decision, knowing
how bothersome I found The Death Star's anti-social grumbling. After
Xena relayed The Death Star's desperate messages about how much she
loved me and wanted to be with me, I encouraged Xena to remain friends
with The Death Star. She had a way of bringing out Star's old charm.

Debacle Does Yoga

Hoping that a balanced chi would not only extinguish the pain and
anxiety, but allow me to get a good night's sleep, I gave Yoga a shot.

Even though I was the only person who consistently lost his balance
attempting basic poses (especially when they involved standing on one
leg), after each class I felt as though there was an invisible cloak
wrapped around me, minimizing all my anxieties. However, by the time I
went to bed, my chi became destabilized and it was a tossup whether or
not I got a good night's sleep. When I told the instructor that I wasn't
getting better, having only managed a couple hours the night before, she
offered to give me a free private session after class.

Unlike the quacks I'd wasted my time on, these yoga people really wanted
me to get better!

Once everyone finished the end of class ritual -- drinking tea and
briefly discussing what was on our minds -- the instructor led me to a
tiny room with old wooden floors and an overpowering smell of incense.
She mentioned something about being a healer and had me lie down on a
mat in the center of the room. After telling me to close my eyes and
relax, she began twisting me about, shaking my limbs and torso. It
seemed bizarre at first, but before long a powerful vibration rippled
from the center of my chest through my outstretched fingers, drowning
out the anxiety and muscle pain.

I hadn't felt this good in months!

Following the massage, the instructor had me remain on the mat and she
gave me this Korean electronic device that was supposed to encourage my
brain to produce the wavelengths of a natural sleep cycle. I put on the
headphones and these grey plastic glasses that looked like a knockoff of
Cyclops' X-men costume. Once the instructor turned it on, red lights
flashed out of the corners of my eyes and there were these repetitive
buzzing sounds as though a whole beehive was drumming in unison.
Whatever that crazy device was doing, it must've worked, because I fell
asleep shortly after turning it on. Four hundred dollars later, I came
home with my very own Korean brain wave thingy. My insomnia troubles
were over!

A week later, the Korean sensory device was buried in my nightstand
drawer for good. There's no way that piece of junk actually helped. If
anything, the annoying flashing and buzzing noises kept me up longer.
I'd probably conked out during my appointment from a combination of
sleep debt and the relaxing massage. Unless the instructor was willing
to offer those massages regularly, I was done. When I told the
instructor I was dropping out, she said, "Before taking yoga, I had
similar problems to you. It's up to you if you want to get better. At
least consider a weekend seminar."

After researching the yoga studio, I found out that centers all over the
country had been accused of encouraging members to take out loans to pay
for expensive seminars and worthless brain wave devices. In fact, the
studio only added yoga to its name in the past few years to take
advantage of the national yoga craze.

You know you want to read more.... but wait until Debacle memoir is
published ... (soon?)

Could This Ever Work Out?

I considered writing a book during my sabbatical from dating about a love triangle between two male friends (one of them strikingly similar to our hero and the other a composite of Marty and Indiana Jones) and a girl they grew up with. Through a series of dramatic situations that would hopefully be amusing – “Marty Indiana Jones” would get the girl. “Debacle” would be able to get over his jealousy and remain friends with both of them. The book would close with the three of them walking off into the sunset together, “Debacle” feeling fulfilled because he’s lucky enough to have such good friends.

When I sat down to get started on it, I realized that I had accidentally plagiarized the love triangle from Keeping the Faith. Romantic comedies were my least favorite genre because they usually had unrealistic story lines and predictable characters. Why would I waste my time writing one?

I kicked-off my post-sabbatical search for potential ladies in The City of Wind by attending events in the Tribal community. At these functions, I began the painstaking process of meeting new people. While it’s exciting to be in a room full of unfamiliar friendly faces, making conversation is brutal. Everyone asks the same boring questions. Where are you from? What brought you to The City of Wind? Where do you live? I can’t blame them. What else is the new guy going to talk about?

At one such Friday night dinner, I met a girl named Gozer. With a skinny face, dark hair and sharp green eyes, this girl had little in common with the original Gozerian, except her first name.

I sat next to Gozer at dinner and she cracked me up, telling me about the time she’d locked herself out of her apartment. Unable to get in touch with her roommate, Gozer was somehow able to Spiderman her way up the side of the building. From her balcony, she entered her apartment by moving the air conditioner. The girls in her living room greeted her with a series of screams. That’s when Gozer figured out that she had accidently broken into her downstairs neighbors’ place.

Given how much we talked that night, I was concerned that Gozer was looking for more than just friendship. Even though I enjoyed her company, dating a Gozerian again would be a little weird. Besides, I got a bitter vibe from her. It could’ve been that I was reading too much into her casual cursing, but she was as crass as a middle school boy during a game of touch football. Needless to say, she didn’t seem like the sort of girl I’d want to bring home to show my parents.

Job Interviews

Just another of the million little debacles I faced.... this one on the way to a job interview, with a broken shoelace...

I stopped in the engineering library, hoping that maybe the information desk had some glue. On the way, I happened upon an open utility closet. While I searched for some form of adhesive, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was one of those times where I was probably going to make a bad situation worse. There was an old white tube with the label worn off lying on a shelf. Even though it had a pungent odor, I was about to give it a shot when I stumbled across some electrical tape. Perfect! It blended right into the lace.

The shoe held during the interview. I had successfully pulled off a MacGyver (even though getting out of a jam by fixing a shoelace with electrical tape would’ve made for a super lame episode)! After flying me out to The City of Wind for another round, the trading firm offered me a job! Our relieved hero accepted.

On July 12^th, 2004 I left The Ace Deuce to start work in The City of Wind.

My only friend in my new locale was Xena Warrior Princess. She still lived in the same apartment that She-ra, Iron Man and I had crashed in a few years ago. Not only was the rent reasonable, she had a view of the lake. It was an older apartment building, constructed back in the 1920s. As far as I could tell, it was well maintained. Once Xena assured me that she’d never heard of another car going up in flames in her neighborhood, I rented the studio apartment next door. Being good friends with my neighbor made me feel like I was back in the dorms!

Work itself wasn’t a difficult transition. I’d gotten used to sitting in a cubicle during my internship last summer. The strangest part of cubicle life is that you overhear conversations between co-workers as if you’re right next to them, but they have no idea who’s listening. You pick up some odd tidbits from time to time. At my internship I’d heard someone say, “Wireless internet is great. After the wife and kids go to bed, I can break out the KY and jerk off in the family room.”

Writing software is equivalent to solving a series of logic problems. I dislike spending nine hours a day in a sterile office, but (apart from being a professional athlete), earning a living tackling logic problems is about as good as it gets. As long as I had enough to do, the day flew by. However, if I ran out of tasks, I was expected to sit at my desk and surf the internet until closing time. Apparently this was standard business practice.

Not long after I started, my manager complimented me on my ability to get work done on time. The next day, he suggested I work longer hours. As opposed to heading out at 5PM, I’d look at Great Lakes football message boards for a half hour and go home at 5:30. He seemed satisfied.

While I got along with everyone in the office, there was one high-strung socially oblivious guy who tested my sanity. If I wasn’t careful, he’d draw me into meaningless conversations for hours at a time where he’d enumerate various apocalyptic scenarios in which some new project could bring down the firm. Once I started taking alternate routes to the bathroom, I was able to avoid him.

The only difficult adjustment I had to make to life in the big city was to the crowded rush hour bus rides to and from the office. When I got a seat, I happily passed the time reading a novel. However, when I was squished up against the other standing sardines, I became much more aware of people’s B.O. I would’ve expected people who work in office buildings to have better hygiene.

The worst rides were the ones where someone was screaming into their cell phone. When the din of a conversation made it impossible to concentrate on my book, I’d make eye contact with all the other annoyed passengers, silently sharing their agony.

The most exciting part of moving to The City of Wind was that it was Summer in the City – as The Lovin’ Spoonful song suggested, it was time to go out and find a girl.

During my last year of school, I’d taken a sabbatical from dating. Since seventh grade, I’d felt that I needed a girlfriend. That mentality had been a perpetual source of bad judgment. In order to be a better boyfriend down the road, I felt like I needed to take time off to become more comfortable with myself. Of course my sabbatical had an Awesome Girl Exit Clause – which I considered a few times, but never exercised.

Kosher Pizza?

Did it make sense to date non-Tribal girls?  Sometimes I wondered if that question made me sound like a brainwashed zealot.  While my parents made it no secret that they’d prefer me to stay within the Tribe, I wasn’t going to pick a girl just to win their approval.  Still, I had a lot of holidays to celebrate as it was and I’m not sure I wanted to be dragged along to any more.  Besides, it’d be nice to be with someone who also grew up lighting a menorah, eating matzah and had traditions I could incorporate into my own.  Was I limiting myself with that mentality?  Who’s to say I wouldn’t be happy with someone who wasn’t Tribal?  What if I ended up falling madly in love and having a bunch of kids with a non-Tribal girl and then we got divorced because she wanted to raise our children Zoroastrian?  At only 17 years old, was it ridiculous to waste all this mental energy worrying about religious differences?

If Goz was a member of the Tribe, my anxieties would be academic. While the long bleach blonde hair, fair skin and bright blue eyes didn’t give her a Tribal look, you could never tell for sure – our hero had similar recessive traits.

“What do you like on your pizza?” asked Goz.

Here goes.  “I’m good with most veggies, but I can’t have any meat because I keep kosher.”

She furrowed her brow.  “Keep what?”

So she wasn’t a member.  “Kosher.  I’m Tribal.”

“What’s Kosher?”

“Eating guidelines.  One of them is you can’t mix milk and meat.

“You didn’t order milk.”

“Any dairy product.  Plus the meat isn’t kosher – has to do with how the animal is killed and the meat is prepared.”

“Uh, okay,” said Goz, raising her eyebrow at me as though I’d just told her that I’d been born and raised on Neptune.

Once the vegetarian special arrived, I did my best to nibble away at my pizza, but it was slow going.  Goz kept her eyes on my plate, never letting her piece get smaller than mine.  After I maxed out at two slices, Goz shifted her gaze to the half-full pizza tray between us, but she didn’t eat another bite.

Throughout the evening, I broke uncomfortable silences by asking Goz about her favorite music, foods, books and movies.  By the end of the night, I was running out of “favorites” to ask her about.  While I’d hoped that my first date would give me an opportunity to get that elusive first kiss out of the way, the thought of it seemed so forced and unnatural that I didn’t give it any serious consideration when I dropped Goz off.

I'd figured that Goz had probably found me so boring and awkward during our uneventful night of small talk that I didn’t expect to hear from her again.  Maybe I would’ve been disappointed if it was earlier in the summer, but with both of us about to kick off college, we weren’t about to start up a serious relationship anyway.  I’d successfully gone out with a girl – a serious accomplishment that I could build upon with a new girl at The University of Great Lakes.

Apparently, I’d underestimated my standing with Goz.  Perhaps first dates are expected to be uneventful nights of small talk and I’d held my own.  Goz called me the next day and suggested we go riding at a horse farm near her house.
Riding a horse fit MegaHot’s uniqueness criteria.  Perhaps it would’ve matched her “special” requirement if I hadn’t almost neutered myself during a simple trot around the barn.

Catwoman

While the quest to find the girl of my dreams had extended into sophomore year of high school, Catwoman had been worth the wait.  There was much work ahead – as my crush was only a few minutes old.  Still, I was closer to walking off into the sunset with the love of my life than I’d ever been before.  Hopefully it wouldn’t be too long before I’d be spending these bus rides with an arm wrapped around her tiny shoulders, admiring my reflection in those chocolate eyes.  In the meantime, my boundaries were marked by a chunk of foam leaking out of a tear in the seat.

Early on into my sophomore campaign, I finally had an opportunity to unleash my enhanced suaveness.  Based on how well Catwoman had responded to my anecdote about Coach Wolverine, it appeared that my plan to win over the girl of my dreams with funny stories was no Bogartian fantasy.  Our hero couldn’t wait see her reaction to Chun Li’s tantrum about not being able to resurrect Tinkerbelle or Bruce Banner’s orchestra meltdown over a mom joke.  Since the ride to practice guaranteed us 10 minutes of alone time everyday, I’d be able to share those tales soon enough.  Once a barber tamed the overgrown Luke Skywalker-style mop on my head, I’d be unstoppable.

Game on!

physics exam

The night of the exam, I arrived half an hour early.  While I’d planned on poring through the book, trying to absorb one or two more nuggets before go time, my heart was beating so fast that the words were impossible to read.  I was as ready as I was going to get.

Just before the exams were handed out, I put away my book and notes and took out several mechanical pencils, a graphing calculator and my 3 by 5 inch note card containing every possible useful formula in the tiniest print I could legibly produce.

As soon as we were allowed to start, I flipped through the test packet, looking for an easy question to give me a confidence boost.  Our hero went through all 20 problems without finding a single gimme.  Four of the questions were so foreign that they might as well have been asking me about Sumerian philosophers.

As I struggled to figure out which formulas applied, I couldn’t help but curse myself for wasting a week on this crap.  Frequently the result displayed on my graphing calculator wasn’t anywhere close to any of the potential choices – sometimes by a factor of a hundred.  My only solace was that since the exam was multiple choice, none of my incorrect answers would be so outlandish that Dr. Wiley would feel the need to pin them to his fridge and laugh at my stupidity each day as he made breakfast.

Walking home from the exam, I faced a harsh reality.  Our hero wasn’t cut out to be an engineer – at least not at The University of Great Lakes.  At best, maybe I’d gotten lucky on a few questions and wound up in the D range, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up getting more than half of the problems wrong.  My only hope for a decent grade was if there was any truth to the old adage about ‘c’ being the most likely answer on a multiple-choice test.  On the four “Sumerian philosopher” questions, I’d circled ‘c’ and hoped for the best.

A week later, I received the bad news at the beginning of physics lecture: 65%.  The most disturbing part of my score was that it could’ve been a lot worse.  I’d been correct three of the four times I’d blindly picked ‘c’.

A lump formed in my throat.  While I’d expected that college would be tough, I never imagined that it’d be so relentless that I’d work my butt off and fail.  Our hero considered leaving the lecture, throwing my test in the trash and dropping physics.  Would I retake it again the following year?  Maybe I should drop out altogether and join the Peace Corps or live on a farm until I found something I was good at.

Before I had a chance to get up, Dr. Wiley turned on the slide projector.  On the screen was a picture of a bell-curve showing an average of 41.2%.  According to Dr. Wiley’s scale, my dismal 65% was an A.  He said that a number of people had sent him emails complaining about the difficulty of the exam.  It may have been tough, but it was clearly a fair test because the scores lined up with a normalized distribution.

How did a bell-curve make it okay to fail an exam?  What about learning the material?  I still sucked at it.  Did it not matter how well I understood the concepts, but rather how well I matched up against my peers?  All that separated me from the center of that curve was my faith in the letter ‘c’ – without its help, I would’ve gotten a 50%.

Once you accounted for the mean, I’d aced the exam.  Still, was I actually supposed to feel good about my score?  College was shaping up to be an awfully strange time.

How the book got started

My mom had signed me up for a summer orchestra program to get me out of her hair for a couple hours each morning. During one of the first classes, my epic lightsaber battle with Darth Vader was interrupted when a delicate voice whispered, “Hey… uh… excuse me.”

As I looked up, I couldn’t help but notice the fairy tale-like curls at the ends of her carefully brushed hair and the way her plain white t-shirt hugged her chest. I finally understood what it meant when someone called a girl cute.

“Umm…” she muttered, displaying an uncomfortable smile.

Oops, I’d been too busy taking in the moment I discovered girls. “Oh, sorry,” I said getting up. As she scooted past, I caught her hair’s sweet berry scent. Did she think I was acting weird? Had I been staring at her? If only I could rewind and start over…

When the girl returned to her seat, I noticed that Allison Arrington was written in black marker in the upper right-hand corner or her music folder. As names go, Allison’s fine for a girl, but kind of boring for a fantasy. I mean, when I take on Jabba the Hutt, I have Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Chewbacca at my side. The adventure would seem kind of lame if we saved the day rescuing “Allison.” It made a lot more sense if I thought of her as... Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman gave me a reason to look forward to orchestra. I did my best to make a good impression, going the rest of the summer without being scolded for talking in class. However, I never said another word to Wonder Woman. What was I supposed to talk her about?

When summer orchestra ended, I knew that there was a good chance I’d never see Wonder Woman again. We didn’t go to the same middle school; otherwise I would’ve recognized her from sixth grade orchestra. All was lost – unless she transferred schools. If that happened, Wonder Woman would have to talk to me on the first day of class because I’d be the only other violin she recognized! I spent the waning days of summer preparing myself for that possibility. However, when September rolled around, Wonder Woman was nowhere to be seen.

I pledged to never again let a girl slip away.

Life would be a lot easier if I met my soul mate while I was still 12 years old.