Men’s Room Etiquette

I’m not a big doom and gloomer. I don’t spend my days trolling the internet for further signs of the apocalypse, or collapse of western civilization. As a culture I think that we have a tendency to be a little self centered. We get so wrapped up in ourselves that we assume the past was some idyllic Eden from which our iniquities have exiled us. Well, I’m enough of a history geek to know that’s not true. And when it comes to the decline of western civilization, well, let’s just say that there’s a reason pr0stitution is called the world’s oldest profession. In my opinion, mankind crawled up out of the primordial ooze a few million years ago, looked around, shrugged, and crawled right back in. We’ve been there ever since.

That said, there is something that I feel we need to discuss. It’s a topic that has been weighing on my mind for some time, and well, I think I need to clear the air. Because frankly, I am beginning to worry that the pillars upon which our great civilization rest, are beginning to crumble. It has come to my attention that somewhere during the course of my lifetime people have seemed to forget the rules of bathroom etiquette. And by “people” I mean men, because I am not exactly in the habit of hanging out in women’s rooms. At least not since the restraining order.

For that matter I am not exactly in the habit of hanging out in men’s rooms either. That sort of deviant behavior is best left to pop stars and members of congress.

No, what I am going to share is wisdom gleaned from years of business travel with a small bladder. Or an enlarged prostrate. The jury is still out on that one. So without further ado, here are:

The 20 Prospect Golden Rules of Men’s Room Etiquette:

1. Just because the stall has a resemblance to a phone booth does not mean it is one. Hang up. Unless you’re talking to a perv, chances are that the person at the other end of the line would hurl if they knew what you were doing.
2. Conversation is not appreciated. I did not come here to make friends, and if you did, I am obviously in the wrong kind of bar.
3. Eye contact. See #2
4. Do not talk on the cell phone while standing at the urinal, unless something has become stuck in the plumbing and you are dialing 9-1-1 to summon the jaws of life.
5. If there are more than 2 urinals, and one of them is occupied, do not choose the one right next to the occupant. Seriously. That creeps people out.
6. Same goes for stalls, you perv.
7. You are not Fonzie, and this is not your office.
8. Do not blow your nose in the sink. You are no longer living in rural China. This is why civilization invented tissues… and sleeves.
9. Put the toilet seat up before you pee. Did your mother teach you nothing? Jeez…
10. Pants around your waist, not your knees. Or ankles. Unless I am in the wrong kind of bar. In which case, please excuse me. I’m not that comfortable with my sexuality.

Thank you. This concludes our public service announcement. Now back to the regularly scheduled programming.

He’s got legs.. he knows how to use them…

I’ve always been painfully shy, insecure, and deeply afraid of rejection. So naturally I started a blog to share my most personal and embarrassing stories with the world. Luckily, “the world” is typically composed of all 7 of my regular readers, plus my in-laws. (Hi Pops! Thanks for stopping by!) So nothing I say here is usually very shocking to most of the people that read it. In fact, I think one of life’s great truisms is that we tend to view the events of our lives as being far more important than other’s do. I doubt that anything I have revealed during the course of the last year has shocked anyone. Let’s face it. I am about as average, normal, and boring as a mentally unbalanced person can be.

That’s why the internet blog is the quintessential outlet for navel gazing. We can blab on at length about mundane, unimportant details that no one else cares about, and still get the thrill of being “edgy” like Lenny Bruce for “laying it all out there.” It is hard to believe that I have been blogging for over a year, but as the good and patient Mrs. 20 Prospect can attest, I never do anything halfway. No, when I decide to learn how to swim I jump into the deep end. So naturally, starting a blog quickly went from being a hobby to being a time consuming obsession, much like my foray into the world of cycling.

My cycling obsession began in the mid 90’s. One of my good friends had gotten big into cycling after college. He moved to Connecticut where he started riding, and then racing mountain bikes. Soon, he had moved into road biking and joined a cycling club where he began road racing. During a visit to Connecticut in 1993, I bought my first mountain bike after renting one for the weekend, and riding with him in the woods around Torrington. I mailed the bike back out west, and it became one of my prize possessions, along with my backpack and my skis, as I travelled around the country. Once I settled in Minnesota, I began searching out the local trails, and soon convinced my good friends Dan’l and Chris to drive up to the Chequamegon National Forest in Wisconsin to camp and ride the trails there. Before long I was riding weekly with a group of guys from work.

Riding the same ten miles of trail week after week, got old pretty fast. That’s when I decided I needed a focus, so I set my sights on racing. I did a few local mountain bike races in the Twin Cities and got my butt handed to me by several 90 lb. women. My manhood and self esteem was hurt, but I was determined to improve. So I joined a local cycling club, and started training hard. Over the winter I bought a road bike, and subscribed to Cyclesport, and the next spring I began logging some intense miles. In cold, 40 degree weather I would head out clad in lycra from head to toe, as the March winds tore at my exposed flesh. By summer, I was putting in 50 mile rides. That’s when I decided to stop mountain biking, and instead get focused on road biking. So I switched clubs, and enrolled in a racing class with the SPBRC.

There I was, a 30 something guy in a class with a bunch of guys in their 20’s, learning the finer points of riding etiquette. Road biking is full of subtle little details that distinguish the serious cyclist from the “Fred”. Sunglass frames are always worn over the outside of your helmet straps. The labels on your tires always face the drive chain, and are aligned with the presta valve. There are all sorts of does and don’t when riding in a paceline with others, but the biggest distinguisher between the recreational cyclist and the diehard, is their legs.

Real cyclists shave their legs.

The reasons for this are sketchy, with obscure claims about sanitation when cleaning out road rash, but the real reason can be summed up this way. All the cool kids do it. In Europe, the center of the cycling world, the true professionals all shave their legs. For this reason, cyclists the world over lather up in the shower, and break out the Lady Bics.

Riding with the club on Saturday mornings, we’d head out in a group of 40-50, all clad in matching jerseys, riding in perfect sync as we pedaled past the hipsters hanging out in the coffee shops, and headed out of town. Smooth legs glistened with beads of sweat as we climbed the hills of St. Paul in the slanting morning sun. Then there was me, looking, and feeling like Magilla Gorilla. No one said a word. They didn’t have to. I could see it in their eyes.

“Newby”

Now I’m a fairly competitive person. It wasn’t enough that I could hang with them on the climbs, or take my pulls at the front. I wanted them to respect me, and view me as one of their own. So with my first race approaching, and Mrs. 20 Prospect visiting her cousin in Sheboygan, I sat down on the edge of the bathtub one Friday night, with soap, shaving cream, and a new blade on my razor.

OK, I confess, I’d had a few beers before hand, to steady my nerves.

Then tentatively, I place the blade against the front of my thigh, and drew it back across my rippling quad muscles.

Then I screamed like a schoolgirl.

Keep in mind that my swarthy, Central and Eastern European ancestors were endowed with thick, curly, black hair. This genetic trait served them well as they hunted Stags in the Black Forest, and across the snowy Carpathian mountains. But here in the 20th century, it doesn’t really serve much purpose as I sit behind a desk. Except to keep my legs warm on those cold winter mornings. (It’s kinda like having built in leg warmers.)

Once the initial shock and pain subsided, I looked down, and there across my hirsute legs, was a stripe of bright white flesh. “WTF do I do now?” I wondered. I couldn’t exactly walk around with a big stripe shaved into the front of my legs. After the pain of the first stroke, I was having serious second thoughts about this.

So I took another swig of my beer, and soldiered on. An hour later our bathtub was covered in black, curly hair, and my legs were shiny pink and tingly. I must say, underneath that thick coat of fur was one sexy set of gams. Each and every muscle of my legs was defined, and ripped like some cover model in Men’s Health magazine. Not that I read Men’s Health magazine.

What? Stop looking at me like that!

OK, so there I was, all pink and tingly, marveling at the strange sensation of having skin rubbing skin as I lay in bed. But I knew that when the sun rose, I would be hanging out in front of Grand Performance, trading stories and opinions about the merits of Campy vs. Shimano, looking the part of a real cyclist.

Except that nobody seemed to notice. Oh well, at the very least I didn’t feel so self conscious about my legs when I was riding with the club. However, that’s when I discovered that I now felt self conscious the other 99% of the time. Standing in line at the grocery store, I felt like everyone was staring at my legs. If only I were bald, I could at least make them think I was a cancer patient.

When Mrs. 20 Prospect came home on Sunday night she shed tears like Jujubes.

Now I not only felt stupid, I felt guilty too. Damn Catholicism.

My race came, and went, summer quickly faded into fall, and slowly things got better. Little black itchy stubble at first, then fat, bristly whiskers like porcupine quills. Finally, by autumn my legs were once more covered with curly, luxurious, hair like a mink coat. Just in time for winter.

So what did I learn from this experience? Did it make me a better cyclist? Did I garner praise, adoration, or respect from a group of malnourished waifs on two wheels? Not exactly. What I learned is that women go through entirely too much trouble on behalf of men. Really ladies, if this is just a small part of what you endure to look lovely in the eyes of men, let me make a confession.

We’re not worth it.

No, seriously. If you all stopped shaving tomorrow, we’d get used to it. Sure, it might gross us out for a few days, but what alternative would we really have? It’s not like sheep are any less wooly.

What? Stop looking at me like that!

Eventually, we’d all just shrug, ask what was for dinner, and life would continue.

So ladies, on behalf of all men let me say, “Thank you”, for this grand gesture. But honestly, we really aren’t worth all that trouble. Evolution may have transformed the cave woman into today’s sexy cover models, but as for men, we’re still living in the cave.

Can you find the hidden Mickey?

The 20 Prospect viral marketing campaign has begun

Top Five

Last week were the first cold days of fall on the front porch. The wind was ripping and tearing at the house, trying to find a way inside. After the monsoon’s we had earlier in the week, I had hoped for a reprise to summer. Instead we got leaden clouds, and a cold wind blowing in from the steppes of Outer Mongolia.  OK, OK, God, it’s fall, I get the point already!

Driving the kids to school the maple trees were flaming orange in the overcast, and already the first few fallen leaves of autumn were swirling down the street, inspiring mopey teenagers all over town to pen poems about death in their journals. Not that I did that when I was a teen. At least as far as you know. (Note to self: burn those old journals in the fire pit tonight)

Last week was Lil’ Miss 20 Prospect’s parent-grandparent lunch, and since Mom and Grandma were in San Francisco I got to be the guardian-du-jour. (I don’t speak French, but I think I just said I got to protect the soup). Anyway, rather than make the 40 minute commute to work, just to turn around and drive right back to school for lunch, I took the morning off to work from home. And by “work from home” I mean “hang out in a coffee shop surfing the internet, waiting for the Used Record store to open so I could loiter and browse.” (Shhh, don’t tell our shareholders).

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Autumn puts me in a pensive mood. I’ve always been deeply affected by the seasons, and fall has always had the biggest impact on me. (Relax. I’m not going to share a poem about death.) Ever since the weather started cooling off, I’ve been playing old 80’s music in the car on the drive to work. My playlist has been kind of limited, as most of my music from college and single days was on cassette tapes, which have gone the way of Victrola’s, and pay telephones. Being a Luddite, it took me until 1994 to embrace CD’s. Then a few years ago, Mrs. 20 Prospect convinced me to get rid of most of my old CD collection of 90’s music. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time as the kids were so little most of what I listened to was Raffi, and the Wiggles. (You know you have arrived as a parent when you drop the kids at daycare, and realize half way to work that you are not only still listening to the Wiggles, but you are singing along.)

Mrs. 20 Prospect bought me an iPod for Christmas last year, and ever since I have been gradually adding back to my music collection. Being a Luddite, however, it took me months to figure out how to operate the thing. So I just want to pause a moment to ask; if Steve Jobs is such a freaking genius, why is iTunes so bleeping hard to figure out? I could do my taxes in less time than it takes me to find and download a podcast. So, instead I loaded all of my current CD’s into iTunes. Well, the ones that didn’t get purged, or have been bought in the last few years. Which meant that my collection was mostly Alt-country stuff like Lucinda Williams, Wilco, The Jayhawks, Son Volt, and old Uncle Tupelo.

So now that I have an iPod, and a half hour to myself in the evenings as I walk the dogs, I have started listening to music again. Lately, I’ve missing been all the old music I used to listen to in the 80’s and early 90’s, which was the first and only time in my life that my tastes in music were remotely topical, and relevant. (That probably had more to do with rooming with a couple of guys that had great taste in music, and working at a college radio station, than anything on my part.)

So I considered downloading some music from iTunes. Of course this had a few drawbacks.

First, I am technically incompetent and not at all convinced that I could do it based on my experience with iTunes.

Second, I am cheap and the thought of paying $0.99 a song seemed way too decadent for my frugal ways.

Third, I am still suspicious of buying downloaded songs. I mean really, what have I bought? I can’t see it. I can’t touch it. I just can’t wrap my little brain around the abstract concept of digital music. What if my computer tips over and all the songs leak out? How would I pick them up off of the floor? (Yes, I fully realize that these questions are on par with an aborigine believing that a camera steals souls)

So for these three reasons I have continued to buy CD’s.

Well, mostly because of reason #3.

My store of choice for buying music in the Twin Cities, is, was, and always shall be Cheapo Records. Besides the obvious reason that the store is named after me, they have the biggest remaining collection of CD’s in the city. Of course, that’s like saying you have the biggest collection of VHS tapes. But, the best part about Cheapo is that married 40 something guys like myself have been forced by their wives to sell off their  CD collections, so the used CD bins are overflowing with 80’s and 90’s music.

So I spent the bulk of an hour perusing the bins, looking for deals as I waited for lunchtime. For 20 bucks I was able to add back a nice portion of the soundtrack of my life. This trip netted me New Order, The Pixies, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and some REM.

So, without further ado, I give you the TOP FIVE songs for morning commute…

5.)    New Order: Blue Monday

4.)    REM: Gardening at Night

3.)    The Jesus and Mary Chain: Just Like Honey

2.) The Replacements: Unsatisfied

1.)    The Pixies: Gigantic

So that’s what I have been listening to lately, which probably explains why this blog has been marinating in stories from the 80’s the past couple of weeks. What have you been listening to?????

La Vita e Bella

Good morning from the porch. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and pull up a chair. Autumn has arrived.

Our Lady of the Subdural Hematoma

Mom is back, and all is right with the world. It’s amazing how quickly the family can slip back into business as usual. I don’t know why this surprises me. We shift back into normalcy pretty quick after my business trips, so it why should Mom’s vacation be any different.

This morning dawned rainy and cold. Not a very promising start for the girl’s soccer game. By 10:30 the rain had stopped, but the field was a pit of mud. I wasn’t sure how the girls would handle it. They’ve been working hard, and are finally starting to show a little aggression, but would they be willing to get down and dirty?

Well I needn’t have worried. My first clue that something was different, was when half the girls took mud from the field and smeared it on their face like war paint. And folks let me tell you, they came prepared for a war.

The teams went up and down the field on each other all game long. Bodies were flying, mud was splattering, and at half time the referee stopped by to have a word with me.

“Coach, uh… can I talk to you?”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“Well, I’m not sure how to put this, but, uh… some of the girls have been swearing out there on the field.”

“What? Really? Who?”

“Well… several. Some on both teams. I’m going to give you a warning, and ask you to talk to the team. The next time I’m giving ’em a card”

“OK sir, I’ll have a talk with them”.

As I turned back towards the sideline, all I could think was “Wow. Am I a master motivator or what? I should be giving motivational speeches for a living.”

I have to say, I was kind of proud of them. Of course, I’m supposed to be the adult though, so I had to put on my best grown up voice, and call the girls around to have a talk with them. The whole “you are representing Our Lady of the Subdural Hematoma… blah, blah, blah., sportsmanship… blah, blah, blah, respect,… blah, blah, blah character.”

I felt like Sister Josepha. Not something I anticipated having to do, but then again, times are different. All the nuns are dead now, and I think the kids parents probably cuss a little more than our folks did. Well, if their parents are anything like me and Mrs. 20 Prospect, it probably sounds like the boiler room of a Navy ship around their houses.

Of course, the 5th graders put on their haloes, and looked up at me as sweet and innocent as could be. How could such little princesses possibly be cursing like sailors out there?

Hmmm… maybe the war paint gave them away.

So after denials, and assurances that they would never, ever, say a swear word on the soccer field, they headed out for the second half.

The game ended in a draw, and I couldn’t have been more proud of them. We showed those rich kids from Highland Park how we roll in the North Metro. That’s what I’m talking about…

Next game, I’m thinking of changing our nickname from the Jaguar’s to the “Potty Mouthed Hussies”

I Will Survive!

Well we made it 5 whole days without Mom in the house. We haven’t had any tears since day 2, except mine, but those don’t count. Tonight we will be picking her up from the airport. Right after we get done cleaning the house. What a mess. It was a heck of a party, and thank you all for coming. Unless you were the one that threw up in the downstairs bathroom. I’ve now discovered the limits to the magical powers of Febreeze.

I have a new found respect for single mothers. Sisters, I don’t know how you did it. Mine are old enough to bathe and dress themselves and I still felt like I never stopped running. When do you find time to get to the grocery store, much less cook? Thank god I was born a man. I’m not tough enough for motherhood. It doesn’t get any easier after you’ve squeezed the bowling ball out between your legs, does it? Not having to endure child birth is God’s greatest gift to men. That, and peeing in the woods. (That never gets old)

So starting tomorrow it is back to normal around the 20 Prospect household. The dogs will not have to spend the day at the neighbors, the kids will not have to tolerate my cooking, and I won’t have to try to remember their names. I think we’ll all be happy about that.

Thanks for stopping by! See you next week!

Smells like Teen Spirit

As I mentioned a few weeks back, I volunteered to coach Lil’ Miss 20 Prospect’s 5th Grade Soccer team. I have to say, it has been fun. It’s been a few years since I coached the kids in soccer, and this time around it’s a lot more enjoyable. Of course, coaching a girls’ team makes it a lot easier. They pay attention, they try hard, and they keep their hands to themselves. You just have to be careful not to raise your voice or you’ll induce tears. Coaching boys on the other hand is like running a correctional facility. You can’t take your eyes off them for more than 5 seconds, or a riot breaks out. Their attention span is roughly 3 milliseconds. I’ve coached both boys and girls and I have yet to pull girls apart to break up a fight.

It’s the first time playing soccer for a lot of these girls which strikes me as funny, as soccer Mom’s are such a part of the culture here, that you’d think the kids dropped out of the womb dribbling a soccer ball. I guess all those articles about the sedentary Nintendo generation are true. Coaching rookies is not hard. In fact, it’s a bit easier as you can put the emphasis on playing little games to teach fundamentals. No need to fret over whether to play a 2-4-4, or a 3-3-4, or a 3-5-3. No, you just try to get 11 players on the field to stay at least an arms length from each other. One area that I have had trouble though is teaching “aggression”. This is never an issue with boys.

After they stood stone still and watched the opposing team dribble down and score in the first 10 seconds of our first game, I decided I needed to do something different. I considered teaching them the Be Aggressive cheer, as I spent so much time standing on the sideline of ND Varsity football games during my Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior years, that not only did I know the cheers by heart, but I also had the choreography down. However, I doubted that teaching them to B-E A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E, Be Aggressive (Stamp foot), B-E aggressive, would have much effect. So I scheduled some joint practices with the 6th grade girls’ team to help them get used to a little pushing and shoving.

That was when I realized for the first time that the difference between a 5th grader and a 6th grader is the difference between a child and a teenager. H-o-l-y buckets. I had forgotten how much attitude you can get from a 12 year old. The rolling eyes, the bored looks, the heavy sighs, we get that stuff at home from Lil’ Miss 20 P, but neither her nor her 5th grade classmates would dream of doing that to an “authority” figure. Then I thought back to my own 5th and 6th grade experiences at St. Joe’s to try to remember if we were any different.

I am here to report that we were not. In 5th grade I still had a secret crush on my teacher Mrs. Maier. She was firm but fair, and she always treated me like one of her favorites, commenting to my Mother during parent-teacher conferences that I had the vocabulary of a college student. (Still do unfortunately). In 5th grade I would never have dreamed of talking back to a teacher. Our class wore haloes with our school uniforms, and stood in crisp, straight lines in the hallways when it was our turn for a bathroom break. And then came 6th grade…

At some point during the summer, a contagion settled over Batavia like a fine mist, and suddenly glands that had previously served no more purpose than an appendix kicked into high gear. By the time we arrived at St. Joe’s for the first day of school, you just knew that things were going to be different. For one thing, we would now be switching classrooms during the day, as the 7th and 8th grade teacher’s taught us English, and History. And then there was Sister Josepha.

This was her first year teaching at St. Joe’s, although she had obviously been terrorizing parochial school children since the Truman administration. Sister Josepha was not the first Nun we had ever had as a teacher. Our fourth grade teacher, Sister Annette, was a rotund, jolly little woman, who played the guitar and was as wide as she was tall. She had the usual eccentric quirks you expect from a Nun, but nothing like what we encountered with Sister Josepha. Looking back, I think Sister Josepha was the first mentally unstable person that I ever met. She could be smiling, and happy one minute, then turn into a raving lunatic the next. You never knew what was going to set her off, it could be chalk dust on the floor, looking out the window a little too long, or answering a question incorrectly. Her verbal tirades became the stuff of legend.

She had buck teeth, and a habit of spitting when she leaned in close to your face and started yelling. When she was finished, she would reach into the sleeve of her habit, remove a Kleenex, and dab her teeth with it to dry them off. She also had one of the more bizarre cadences, and accents that we had ever heard. Overnight, Sister Josepha imitations became the comedy hit of the lunchroom.

“Jock, what are the five books of the Pentateuch.”

“Umm…”

“Jock, please name the five books of the Pentateach!”

“Umm…I don’t know”

“Jock! What kind of a protestant are you?!”

We quickly began to devise devious schemes to try to trip her hair trigger. It never took much effort to set her off.

There was the time she walked down the aisle after lunch, stood in front of Jimmy Sheelar’s desk, and said “Spell Ur”.

He looked up at her puzzled, with his head tilted like a dog, and said “Um… what Sister?’

“Spell Ur in my hand!” she repeated loudly, with her hand outstretched in front of his face.

Jimmy paused for a moment, and pondered what strange game they were playing. Then reaching out with his index finger he traced “U R” in the palm of her hand.

She pulled her arm back, and tried to deliver a round house slap to his ear, which just skipped off the top of his head as he ducked. Apparently, she had been asking him to turn in his spelling book.

It was a tumultuous year. By the end of it, the students had already been sorted into the categories that we would inhabit for the rest of our middle school, and high school years. The jocks, the geeks, the brains, the clowns, the trouble makers, were all diagnosed and labeled by Sister Josepha, and our reputations like our permanent records, would follow us always.

Whether our rebellion against authority began at that point due to hormonally induced chemical imbalances in our brain, or as a direct response to her sociopathic tendencies has never been determined. Some claim that we would have continued on to be the sweet, angelic youth that we had always been had she not arrived on the scene to terrorize us. Others contend that whoever taught that class was doomed to bear the full force of our scorn, and raging hormones. However, after experiencing just a few evenings of coaching 6th grade girl’s soccer, I’m beginning to understand Sister Josepha a little better. If I start carrying a Kleenex up my sleeve though, please call my Doctor and have her adjust my medication.

Sky Diving

Sky Blue Sky

It was Teriyaki Chicken for lunch today at school. Needless to say, I was busy packing the kids lunch boxes this morning. I appreciate the efforts of the lunch ladies to put together nutritious meals for our finicky kids, but I half expect they put stuff like this in the menu on purpose so they can take a day off. Hard to blame them. For the most part, I am amazed at the stuff that my kids will eat. Lord knows I never bought lunch at school during my time at St. Joe’s.

Seriously. I made it from Kindergarten to 8th grade without ever buying lunch. Not once. Not even on pizza day when Mrs. Suranni would make huge sheets of Sicilian style pizza. I was a very strange little child. Why my Mother humored me by making me lunch every day for 9 years is beyond me. I would eat the exact same thing for lunch every day for months, before I would decide to make a change. Sometimes the change was only from PB to PB&J, but these were not the kind of momentous changes a guy should rush into.

Unlike my siblings, I’ve never been big on spontaneity. My Big Bruddah was the one who dropped out of college, and hitch hiked his way around the country. My Bratty Big sister just celebrated her 49th birthday by jumping out of a perfectly good airplane somewhere over Missouri. As for me, the thought of not knowing where I would sleep at night would have given me ulcers. When I did take to the road, it was for work and I was on an expense account. I doubt I’d have ever become a field service engineer if my life hadn’t become such a flaming wreckage during my last year at Clarkson. Some people will only use a parachute when the plane is on fire, and luckily, I had a parachute handy.

Still, the romance of the road was something that I could relate to. As a kid I would ride my bike down the sidewalk to the corner of Mix & Prospect, and stand there looking out at the traffic on Oak Street thinking, “a person could take that road south, and keep on going until they came to the Gulf of Mexico.” That always amazed me, even if I never had the courage to ride another two blocks and cross the Tonawanda creek.

It wasn’t until I read Kerouac during my Junior year at Clarkson, that I began to understand the lure of the road and how the romance of it must have called to my Big Bruddah like a siren’s song. As the interminable weeks of winter dragged on in Potsdam, cabin fever took hold, and for the first time in my life I began to feel the itch to wander. So when a room mate told me one Friday morning, that he had decided to drive home to Rochester for the weekend, I asked if he had room in the car for one more. A few hours later I was headed south down I-81, with a change of clothes and a toothbrush, and no idea where I would be sleeping that night.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I did have a plan, however it was far from a sure thing. As I have mentioned before I spent a good portion of my later teenage years pining away for the girl next door. (Well, technically she lived around the corner from Prospect, but “the girl next door” makes a better story than “the girl around the corner from Prospect”.) She was attending RIT at the time, and living in a sorority on campus. Whether or not she had a boyfriend at the time, I can no longer remember, although I doubt that would have prevented me from showing up on her doorstep. We had been “friends” now for over 4 years, despite the fact that I had been following her around like a puppy dog for at least 3 of those years. Like many of the girls I have known in my life, if we had met in another time and place we probably would have ended up dating. But for a variety of reasons fate had somehow always stood in the way, and by the time we were both “free” to get together, we had known each other so long it just didn’t seem right. Well, it didn’t seem right to her that is. Lord knows I would have walked from Potsdam to Rochester if she had asked me to.

So while I wasn’t sure where I would end up that night, I had a plan that if I showed up on her doorstep like a stray dog she’d feel sorry enough to take me in. After all, isn’t that what ‘friends” do? So after our 4 hour drive down from the North Country my room mate pulled up in front of the utilitarian red brick campus buildings, and dropped me off. There I stood in a cold drizzly mist, with my backpack over my shoulder, screwing up my courage to go find her, half hoping, and half dreading whether or not she would be there.

RIT is not your typical collegiate campus. It doesn’t have ivy covered walls, or gothic buildings with age old gargoyles peering out from the eaves. It looks more like an office park than a college. The dorms on campus were cheerless rectangular blocks of red brick, connected via tunnels and treeless sidewalks. Like most of the buildings built in Western New York since the 60’s it would not have look out of place in Stalingrad.

The falling mist made the streetlights glow like candles in the gloom as I walked the sidewalks to the generic two story dorm building that served as her sorority house. The lobby of the “house” was deserted so I stood conspicuously in the entryway waiting for someone to let me in, holding my breath in the hope that she would be home. After what seemed like an eternity of nervous sweating, a pudgy brunette came up the steps and let me in. I explained who I was, and where I had come from, and told her I was here to see the girl next door. She walked me up to her room, but she was nowhere to be found. So she handed me off to another sorority sister, who led me down a hallway to where she thought she might be, asking all along the way if anyone had seen the girl next door, and relaying the story that I had just come four hours to see her. This seemed to intrigue the sorority girls that a guy would make such an effort to see one of their sisters. Why, it was like something out of a book! (Apparently, sorority girls read books. Who knew?)

It took awhile, but we eventually found the girl next door. By that point I think that half of the girls at the RIT campus knew I was there. The girl next door was in a basement bar at a nearby fraternity house, hanging out with some friends, and was probably the last girl on the RIT campus to hear my story. She squealed with delight when she saw me, and ran up and threw her arms around my neck. I’d like to say that I had that kind of effect on women, but alas, I think it had more to do with the three beers she had already downed by that point in the evening. Not that I was complaining. To be honest, that hug made the entire journey worthwhile. I could have turned around right then and left a happy man.

But I didn’t.

No, the night was just beginning. She was thrilled to see me, and basked in the glow of jealousy that my visit had aroused in her sisters. She led me back to her room, where I dropped my bags, and then she took me out on the rounds of the Friday night frat parties. Now, I have never been into the frat scene. In fact, I pretty much despised it, but I’d have followed her into a biker joint, or a gay bar if she’d have led me there. I never dreamt she would be so happy to see me. We danced, and we drank, and I met more eligible, attractive women in one evening that I had met in 3 years at Clarkson. But the girl next door was the only one I had come to see. At some point in the evening we picked up her “little sister” who became her tag along, and most likely her “wingman”, if sorority girls have such things.

We danced as the disco ball twirled around, and lousy 80’s dance music played. When a slow song came on she hung her arms around my neck, and leaned her head on my shoulder. It was hot down in those basement bars, and we were both sweating. When the song ended, we walked over to the shadows along the wall, and stood there laughing. I hadn’t been this close to her in over 3 years. We caught our breath while we waited for the music to start again. I turned towards her, and she looked up into my eyes, smiling. There was a look there that I had never seen before, and I think for an instant she must have finally realized how I felt for her. I leaned forward and she turned her mouth up to meet mine. We kissed, and for that brief moment all the world disappeared. It seemed to last forever, but before we could even come up for air, her little sister tapped me on the shoulder and screamed into my ear “Hey! You’re kissing my big sister!”
When I turned back to the girl next door, she had flown away like a startled bird. The night continued, but the mood had changed. She never let herself get that close to me again, and by the end of the night, it was as if it had never happened.

I awoke on the floor of her room the next morning, wondering if I had dreamed it. Could it really have happened? If it happened once, could it happen again? Those were my thoughts as I lay there looking up at the gray light creeping in through the window. My answer came soon enough. The spell was broken, and the kaleidoscope of the previous evening had been replaced by the grayness of an overcast March morning.

The remainder of the weekend passed like a trip to the library, all quietness, and formality. When my room mate arrived to pick me up, I knew that I would never get a chance to kiss her again. By summer her folks had moved out of Batavia, and she would spend the summer at RIT. Any time we spent together was in the company of friends, and the safety of a crowd. Summer would quickly melt into Senior year, and with it came the end of the remaining ties that bound us. We exchanged a few letters that year, but we were already heading away from each other on diverging roads.

The night I showed up on her doorstep, one of her sisters snapped a picture of us. It was taken just a few moments after my arrival. I am still in my coat, with a backpack slung over my shoulder. Our arms are around each other, and our cheeks are squeezed together in an embrace. The light from the flash bulb, couldn’t blur the glow in her eyes as we smiled at the camera. Somewhere deep in a shoebox, in the closet, I have it still. Just a memory of a moment when I closed my eyes, stepped out of the plane, and felt the rush of air upon my face, as I waited for the chute to open.

All our youth is training for the real life that begins when we step out that door. If we’re lucky we do our learning on the ground before we find ourselves falling through space. I like to think that those years spent chasing the girl next door were not spent in vain, for I was a far different person at the end of them, than I had been at the beginning, and she was one of many people who played a part in that. Looking back on them now, I am smiling as much as I was in that photo. If she is reading this story I hope she is smiling too, and if her “sisters” ever read it, I hope that they’re still jealous.

The Girl Next Door

She grew up just around the corner from 20 Prospect, but we didn’t meet until she transferred from BHS to Notre Dame at the start of our junior year of high school. I was introduced to her by my best friend, who met her when girl’s soccer practices began in late August.

From the first day at ND it was clear that she was different. She didn’t dress like the other ND girls. While it was the very height of the 80’s, the girl next door had a wardrobe that would have not been out of place at a New England girl’s college in the 1960’s. While most girls at Notre Dame wore their hair in big 80’s style, or with swoopy Farrah Fawcett bangs, she wore her hair bobbed to her shirt collar, which was usually turned up. She wore penny loafers, and fuzzy sweaters, and could have stepped from the pages of a J. Crew catalog.

For those first few weeks, she didn’t say much, but followed my BFF around everywhere like a shadow. Perhaps she was intimidated by us. Lord knows we were a loud bunch of brawling, kids. I didn’t blame her if she felt a little out of place. It wasn’t like I was Mr. Extrovert. If we hadn’t been in Sudsy’s social studies class together who knows how long it would have been before we started talking. But fate was kind, and my BFF ended up in another class, so when she walked into class that first day I was the first friendly face she recognized, and she sat down at the desk in front of me. There she stayed for several weeks, both of us too shy and nervous to say much more than hello to each other. I stared at her back as I day-dreamed the classes away, until by the 3rd week I pretty much had her wardrobe memorized.

Usually I preferred the girls in the class to wear their classic plaid skirts, but she had a way of filling out a pair of blue slacks that made it hard for me to concentrate. (Not that it took much to distract me in those days). She also had a collection of fuzzy sweaters that she wore that probably didn’t come from J.C. Penney’s. Even after 25 years I can still remember the rainbow striped wool one that was my favorite.

Our dress code at ND required us to wear sweaters from Oct 1st, to May 1st, and in those ancient days, real wool was still prevalent. I had my own wool sweaters that used to make me itch like I had poison ivy. One day as I sat behind her in Social Studies, groaning as I tried to scratch my back with a ruler, she turned around and gave me a puzzled look. Embarrassed, I blurted out “I’ve got an itch”. She huffed loudly, and spun back around in her seat. When class was over she gave me an evil look, and I asked her what I had done to offend her. “Well, you called me a bitch!” she said, and my face turned deep red. Stammering, I tried to explain that I did not call her anything, but that she must have misunderstood me when I said I had an itch. She smiled coyly, and in that very moment I knew the hook had been set.

It wasn’t long before we were whispering to each other all class long, or seeking each other out in the hallway between classes. When hockey season started I discovered that she was a bigger Sabres fan than I was. By Christmas time, I had finally mustered the courage to call her one evening with a contrived question about homework. We talked for an hour, and soon we began calling each other between periods of the Sabres games to compare notes.

Looking back I was so naïve that I ignored all the obvious signs. She liked me, but I was already dating a girl from BHS and had been since August. So I told myself we were just friends, and used that excuse to justify our time together. By February though there could be no ignoring it. It was during a dance at BHS one weekend, that I finally realized how much I had grown to like her. My girlfriend was babysitting as usual, and I was attending the dance with my good friend Chris. The girl next door was there as well, with her old BHS classmates. I spent the night dancing with her, and when the night was over I knew in my heart that I had a dilemma. I spent more time thinking about her than I did my girlfriend, and looked forward to every chance I had to see her outside of school. Walking the dog around the block in the evenings, my pulse always quickened when I passed her house, hoping she’d be outside.

In April, I clumsily broke things off with my girlfriend. It was the first time I had broken up with anyone, and I can’t say it was something that I relished doing. But in my heart I knew it was the only fair thing to do. To continue would just lead to more lies. My family was not happy about it, and quickly deduced that the girl next door was the reason. Consequently they never liked her. Neither did my now-ex girlfriend, who could rightly sense what was going on despite my denials. It didn’t take long for the girl next door to realize she was being called a homewrecker, and worse behind her back.

Despite my Catholic guilt I was at last free to start dating the girl next door. Then a strange thing happened. I chickened out. For some reason I never followed through on my feelings, even though those feelings were undeniable and apparent to everyone who knew me. It made no sense, but I was frozen and could move neither forward nor backward. Spring bloomed, and with it began a new season of romance for all the kids in our group. Everyone was coupling and re-coupling, pairing off with new kids for the summer. It should have been so easy to call her up, ask her out alone, and then profess my feelings to her, but I never did.

When the school year ended she left ND to go back to BHS. I never understood why, anymore than I understood what brought her to ND in the first place. Before summer was over, I had fallen back into the relationship with my ex-girlfriend, where I would stay for the next 2 years although I would never again stay faithful to her. The girl next door started dating a guy at BHS, and life continued on. Years would pass, and we would remain friends, but we would never come close to dating. I carried a torch for her far longer than I care to admit, but even once we were in college and I was single again I couldn’t bring us back.

There are forks in the road that we pass by, and choose not to take, and others that we mean to take, but end up passing by. Once you’ve turned down several roads it becomes impossible to retrace your steps. As much as I valued our friendship in the coming years I could never let myself stop wondering “what if”. That wasn’t a fun way to live, and I spent the next few years in the wilderness of the North Country pining away for a love that never was. Eventually I came to resent her and hated myself for feeling that way. Then even the self loathing passed, until there was nothing left but embarrassment, and memories fading into the distant past. Memories, added to the others that have accumulated here, like stones marking the paths I’ve walked.