During my run the other day,  I passed a couple of kids being all lovey dovey at a bus stop. Kinda young , kinda inappropriate too, especially  at 7:00am in the morning.  But hey, love is a powerful thing.  Made me think about my first love, well…maybe not ‘love’, but the first girl that actually acknowledged my existence.  I was in 6th grade,  Joy Pierson was a freckle faced red head that actually talked to me on occasion.  The only time a girl talked to me was to ask for help with math homework.  Once they realized I didn’t fit the stereotype I went back to leprosy status.  Going ‘steady’ was all the rage at the time.  For some reason I thought it was going ‘study’ together.  Made sense, kids should ‘study’ together.  I so wanted to ‘study’, with a girl.  Anyway, it took all the courage I had, which was very little when it came to girls. I just got over the stage of girls being ‘gross’, my hormones were kicking in and I could barely keep my hands out of my pants.  My best friend  James,  finally asked Joy for me.  She was something else, she walked straight up to me and said,  ”let’s share french fries tomorrow”.  ”Huh?!”  Share french fries together?  Wow!  I made it!  I’m sharing french fries with a real life, living, breathing girl.  YES JESUS! HALLELUJAH!

I went home and begged my dad for two bucks.  He seemed to understand, maybe he knew what it felt like to be my age.  Or maybe he found it amusing.  Or maybe he felt bad for embarassing me the day before.  He walked into my room and found me with my hands in my pants and demanded an explanation.  He knew what I was doing, all I could come up with was, “uh, it hurts alot”.  He yelled out to my mom and said he was taking me to the hospital because I was in so much pain.  Then he told her what I was really doing.  This sucked!  My mom being my mom started to cry and ask Jejus (korean for Jesus) why her son was playing with himself.  Damn, that night really sucked.  Anyway back to Joy.

I got the two dollars from pops and spent close to an hour feathering my hair with moms Aqua Net.  Looking good I thought.  Thinking back,  the stares I got weren’t because I looked good, my hair must have have looked like a bowl cut with clumpy hair spray.  But what the hey, I felt good.  Lunch couldn’t come sooner, I was so excited I went to the bathroom five times to check my hair and rehearse what I would talk about.  Finally the bell rang, romance time was upon us!  On my way to meet Joy, James wished me luck and asked if I wanted some of his pop gun caps.  We planned on playing cops and robbers after school, cap guns elevated the pretending to another level.  I put the caps in my back pocket and went to my french fry date.  Joy looked great, I felt great, cupid was doing his job.  Joy was a really cool gal.  At 12 she was already forward thinking.  She insisted we go dutch on the fries.  I was disappointed I couldn’t buy them for her.  But it seemed cool because I had a dollar left for the arcade.  We ate our fries and talked about hair.  Just as things were getting good James and the crew came by and said plans changed and they were going to start playing cops an robbers.  Joy said I should join and she would watch.  Sweet!  Rock, scissors, paper…I was a cop.  James and the bad guys started their getaway and shot imaginary bullets at me.  I dodged and ducked.  Instead of running down the stairs I decided I would impress Joy with a dare devil roll down the stairs.  Once again, dodge and duck, but this time a roll down the stairs.  This would woo any girl I thought.  Then it happened.  The caps in my back pocket…one pop…then another, then pop, pop, pop…pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop!  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!  My ass was on fire!  I layed there crying for my mother.  I couldn’t stop.  Hey, I was twelve and my right butt cheek was smoking like a burnt  piece of Kalbi.  Joy went to get the nurse.  My dad had to come pick me up and take me to the emergency room.  He wasn’t too happy about that.  Needless to say Joy never shared french fries with me again or any other girl for that matter.  But at twelve, who cares, I could just pretend I had a girl friend and play with my self.

Be good party people. Adios.