Don't Drink, Don't Smoke...What Do You Do?

So, here's the thing. I don't really have any deep, dark secrets. I'm quite boring, and have had a life-long fear of Getting In Trouble, so I don't have any wonderful stories about youthful madcap foolishness that turned legendary with the application of time and adulthood. I want to keep with my challenge theme about posting potentially embarrassing things, but today I'm drawing a blank. How embarrassing (heyyy...)!

So, for tomorrow's post, I'm going to give you an assignment: you ask me something, anything, and I'll answer it honestly. What do you want to know?

In exchange, I will offer up these tidbits of cringiness (seriously--I actually cringed while writing each one). They may not seem like much (certainly none of them alone are enough for a whole blog post, dammit), but these are exactly the kinds of things that my subconscious likes to offer up in the wee hours of the morning, whenever it feels like I might be thinking too highly of myself.

Pretty Minor But Still Awful Things I Have Done

• I totally manipulated a friend in high school into throwing me a "surprise" party when I was 14. I can't remember how, but I got her to offer it, and then to be in cahoots with me about how I would act (duh) surprised. I don't think I even helped her decorate or anything beforehand, as that would have...um...wrecked the surprise. Wow. I was a tool. I remember really having a good time at that party, though. So much for learning a valuable lesson, hm?
• In eighth grade, those of us with no detentions were allowed to go on a field trip to a nearby amusement park. One of the girls in my group, Diane, shoplifted a bunch of stuffed animals and other tchotchkes (screw you, spellcheck, that's a word. No, I didn't mean to write latchkey, artichoke, or crotchless) and passed them around to the group. We were summarily busted by the amusement park rent-a-cops, and while I can laugh now, I was TERRIFIED at the time. I mean, they read us our rights and everything! The rest of us were released (and ejected from the park, which was convenient, considering the buses were waiting...my friend Casie went back the next day, just to thumb her nose at The Man, while I didn't return for a year and only then wearing a pair of Groucho glasses), because we hadn't actually stolen anything. And while we maintained to the cops that we didn't know she was stealing things, and I've always made that part of my story when I related this to other people, even as an adult...I knew. We all did. I mean, we weren't sending her in with a list of things to steal and a blueprint of the kiosk security system, but when she handed us that candy or stuffed animal, we knew she wasn't buying it. We (or at least I) didn't know that she also had her shoulder bag crammed with over $100 of merchandise until the cops emptied it out when she claimed innocence. But the point is, I knew that these were ill-gotten gains, and I pretended I didn't. Even when I told this story as an adult. I guess I was worried about the statute of limitations on juvenile receiving of stolen goods. So don't drop a dime on me, OK? I've done my time. My sentence was to ride to the waiting buses--full of the good students--in a police car so that I'd hear "Ooooh...busssted!" from a bunch of white, middle class twelve-year-olds.
• In college, I was an RA in the dorms. As a fundraiser, we held a date auction, where you were signed up by someone (this way you were guaranteed a bidder) and you describe the date you would take a person on, which is then bid upon by the audience. Bidding started at a dollar, and usually went up to $15-20. When my friend Amanda went up, bidding went up in the usual dollar increments, until our friend Eric offered $50. It was sweet and unexpected, and they ended up dating that year and later got married (and then divorced, but I don't think that had anything to do with the date auction). I was next, and was flattered and, to be honest, a wee bit triumphant that I also got the bids up to $50. However, the guy (tall, confident, funny) who made the final bid was not buying the date for himself, but for this other guy (short, timid, possibly funny but who would know because he was so quiet) who we'll call Roger. And, in the finest tradition of teen TV sitcoms, as Tall Funny Guy stepped aside so Roger could shyly step forward, I could hear the "wah-wah-wahhh" in my head. I'm so ashamed about this now, but I was disappointed. And really nervous. I mean, the guys had helped this kid buy a $50 date...what if he really liked me? It is a testament to how inexperienced I was that I was absolutely panicked at the idea of this guy making some kind of move that I'd have to refuse and I wouldn't know how and even if he didn't, I'd have to TALK to him and he didn't talk and what would we talk about and STOP SAYING TALK, and, and...and I chickened out. I swapped out my original date offer (dinner and...a walk? a movie? I can't remember, but there was definitely a phase two) for a double-date with my friend Jason and his date. Roger and I had dinner in this pseudo-sandwich shop that was actually an extension of the dining hall, then we met Jason and his date at Ben and Jerry's. It was an uncomfortable, early evening, and I never gave that poor guy a chance. I was so terrified of awkwardness...in me, in him, that I ended up creating the most awkward situation anyway. I saw him in the dorms, of course, and was nervously friendly, but mostly embarrassed. And now, of course, I can see how much worse I made the situation by being so obviously uncomfortable. I mean, if he didn't actually like me and was just caught up in the camaraderie of the guys doing something nice for him, then he probably just thought I was weird.. If he actually liked me, well, I bet he didn't after that night.

Whew! Doesn't that feel good, to get that off my chest? And you all still like me, right? Right? Um, hello? HELLLLOOO?

Damn. Should have stuck with the pooping stories.