Here it is. The entire month of May for the year 2000. Don't you just feel like a part of my life? Doesn't it make you all warm & fuzzy inside to know that I'm sharing a part of myself with you? I know it does. Read on, starting from the bottom.
May 31st, 2000: I picked Tracey up at her house, listened to Gladys brag about how wonderful Tracey is, and drove to our first party at Crystal's house. I don't think Tracey knew a single person at Crystal's house, because they were all from my church, but that was cool with me. Oh, wait. She did know a single person, because we talked to the school's choir director about college for a while. You have to understand that once upon a time, my freshman year to be exact, I told the choir director that when he had first come to the school at the beginning of the year, I was positive that he was gay. I didn't know that he would take it as badly as he did, but I would guess that the guy either actually is gay and isn't quite ready to expose himself or is just incredibly insecure with his sexuality. He called me Satan in retaliation. It didn't help that Tracey and I spent all of freshman year singing his choir songs with lisps and/or making up new words to all of his songs to make them dirty and/or filled with references to the men we were in love with. Under the comments section on our report cards, he wrote that we were "easily influenced by others". I think I'm going to miss him most of all. So, we talked to the choir guy for far too long about our college plans and made fun of Gabe and our other friend Andrew until it was time to move to Katie's party. And move we did.
I ended up giving the bonsai to Katie, because I knew that she would appreciate it. And appreciate it she did. Tracey and I spent most of our time at Katie's with Gabe and Andrew, looking through a gigantic memory book that her mom had put together. Now that I've so thoroughly discussed that, we'll move on to Jennifer's house.
I've seriously known Jennifer forever, and dang, has she changed over the years. When we got there, Jennifer's dad (who quite possibly could be viewed as the scariest man alive until one gets to know him) greeted Tracey and me and led us inside. We went to the backyard on a search for Jennifer, and we found her surrounded by a group of people from our school, of course. She was in the middle of a fascinating story, so Tracey and I stood and listened for a while until Jennifer offered us some chairs. She kept talking to one of her friends from a different school, and all I could see when I looked at the girl was her hideous mustache. I mean, this thing was grotesque. But she was nice enough, at least. After a bit, my friend Jacquie showed up in a limo with a group of friends, one of which was Sarah. Sarah used to be Jacquie's best friend until Sarah slept a certain guy who Jacquie was absolutely in love with, thus ending her reign as best friend. I love happy endings like that. So, after more stories from the heavily-mustached stranger than we could handle, Tracey and I packed up our bags and headed to the part of another friend named Katie.
Now, this Katie's party was absolutely over by the time we got there. The remaining guests included Katie's mom, dad, brother, aunt, and two cousins. Talk about excitement. No, really, Tracey and I completely entertain ourselves, so it didn't matter who was there. Katie led us in, and I had my first piece of graduation cake. Katie's brother asked, "Hey, Katie. What's her name? I can't remember," while pointing at me as I stood five inches from him in the kitchen. Such a delightful boy, he is. Ahh, but he's going to be a freshman next year, so it only makes sense that he would be in love with me. Katie's dad took out the trash as an excuse to go find a beer in the cooler, which amused me to no end. I wonder what it's like living with him. After a half an hour or so, Jacquie and her crew showed up, so we took that as a cue to leave. Off to Sheena's we went.
Sheena wasn't there when Tracey and arrived, but that was okay, because I love Sheena's mom. We admired a gorgeous wooden photo box that Nick had engraved with his and Sheena's names for her graduation gift. We went outside and walked around Sheena's pool while a couple of fearless kids jumped into what we guessed had to be near-freezing water. Then, we headed for the bonfire and stood for a minute until I noticed that Sheena's brother's once-extremely hot friends were there. They all kind of disappoint me. When they were in high school, I thought that they were all sooo good-looking and sooo smart and sooo funny. Now, they're just Jed's friends. Weird how that happens. Jessica's was next.
Jessica's party was more dead than Katie's, if that was even possible. Her dad led us to the backyard, where a tent was set up with tables, chair, and all sorts of luau whatnot. Jessica's going to Hawaii for college, you see. We watched her open a huge box of toiletries sent to her by her grandma, talked a little about the people who had been there before us, and admired her display of pictures inside. Why do other people's grandmas always find it necessary to send bath whatnot to their grandkids? I've always wondered that. My grandma gives me jewelry or money or other things that kids want. If she ever gave me shampoo, I'm not sure how I would react. I also don't get children's sports. Like, Jessica was a cheerleader before time began. She had dance team pictures taken when she was in her mom's womb, I swear. I was never one of those kids. I think my parents wanted a better life for me.
After that, it was time for a choice. It was getting pretty late, and we still had to go to our friend John's party and stop by Mike's to drop off his gift. We chose to go to Mike's first just to sort of get it over with. Since his party was only for family and whatnot, I thought that I could hand him his present, give him a hug, and leave. But it didn't work out that way. I had to take a road that I usually don't, because there was some construction on Mike's road. I had never driven the road in the dark, but I thought that I remembered how it went. I knew that there was a nasty curve in the road, but I didn't know that I had come to it until Tracey and I both noticed at exactly the same time that the road ahead of us was swiftly coming to an end and we were about to run into a phone pole/random sign/grassy field. I heard a horrible sound as I turned the wheel hard to the right, not even thinking about what the heck I was doing. I ended up putting myself right back on the curved part of the road where I belonged, but I have no idea how. I had just been telling Tracey that I was totally unconcerned with following any sort of traffic laws earlier, because I've gone through so much crap this year that there's no way anything else can happen to me. We decided that either I hadn't gone into the ditch because of that or else that was my warning to not feel so confident. Either way, I apologised profusely to Tracey, vowed never to tell my dad that that little bit of nonsense ever happened, and continued on my way to Mike's.
When we pulled into the driveway, Mike's mom got up and came to the door to see who we were. I wanted to make her fidget a little, so we sat in the driveway without opening our doors. She moved to the kitchen to look out the window, and I was having a good time, but then she recognized the Mustang, so it wasn't fun anymore. We walked up to the house, and Mike answered the door. He took my gift, and I told him that I had no idea what he was going to do with it, which made his family chuckle. It was a framed picture of us from back in December when I had some of my senior pictures taken with him and Joanie. He said that he knew exactly what he was going to do with it and took it over to the area of his living room where a bunch of other pictures are sitting. It was appropriate. Jonathan and his parents were there, which made everything all right. I felt more welcomed there than I think I ever have before, so we stayed for a bit. Mike opened up a package of those little paper umbrellas and stuck one in each of our shirt pockets, which seemed apropos, for some reason. We picked out our favourite senior pictures of his, and I told him that he looked like a space alien in them, which is really the best way to get back on someone's good side, if you think about it. Actually, I wasn't worried about getting on his good side. I feel strangely in control of my life right now, and I'm not really looking to any of my relationships to tell me how I should feel about life. I feel great. Anyway, the topic of a game of Monopoly came up, so I called Dad to tell him that I would be home somewhat past midnight. Then, I stood around in Mike's kitchen and boxed with Mike's younger sister, Karen, while Tracey talked about music education with Mike's older sister Eileen. (You can guess who got the better end of the deal.) Karen and I tried to take our fight outside at one point, but the rain kept us inside. I'm sure that Mike's mom was terribly happy about me punching her daughter in the stomach, but hey, anything to make Karen like me more. Someday soon, I will have his entire family worshipping me. Someday soon.
So, we left for Jon's, Mike in his Tempo, Jon's parents in their van, me in between in the glorious Mustang. Tracey and I listened to Guster on the way. Nothing puts me in a better mood. Mike was making random lane changes every five seconds to confuse me. Actually, he explained when we arrived at Jonathan's that he wasn't sure if I was going to be able to make the changes, so he was toggling back and forth between the lanes until I was able to change. I swear, he doesn't think I can drive. I mean, I can't drive, but I can drive about 400% better than he thinks I can. It's nice that he tries to take care of me, though. I think I would rather have his toggling than to have him leaving me behind because I suck at switching lanes. He also told me that he was proud of my one time ability to parallel park in front of Jon's house, which was unexpected. I swear, I expected coldness, and all I got were compliments.
Jon's parents let us inside after Mike got his pants a bit soggy in a front porch chair that had apparently been rained on. Tracey tested out Jon's new couch while Mike flipped through an old yearbook that was sitting out and I wrote "Jonathan is the sexiest stud I know. Yummmm," on the cover of his Spanish book. Such a shame that he only has a week of school left. We ended up upstairs around Jon's computer, as always, and we listened to a bit o' Elliott Smith while Jon attempted to woo Tracey with his excellent music library full of music that could never actually impress her, considering that she only listens to butt rock. (You're welcome, Trace.) One of my favourite thing about men, Jon specifically, is the way he always demonstrates things just to touch us. And I know that Jon isn't that type of guy, but if he happens to touch Mike's thigh with his foot and Mike runs away, then Jon will do the same thing to Tracey and me "just to let us know what happened". Right.
We went downstairs at one point when Jon's mom, Julie, called up the stairs and told us that the food that she had been making was done. Jonathan, Tracey, and Mike dug right in, of course, and I felt really bad for not being able to eat, but she had made something with ham in it. I certainly don't regret becoming a vegetarian, but I do hate having to have special food made for me. I distinctly remember Mike getting in my face with a mouth full of ham bits to rub it in, which made everything so much better. Jon also mentioned that he offered Mike $2 to tweak my nipples or some other whatnot. I was appalled at the miniscule amount that he thinks the touching of my boobs is worth. Sickening.
Later, one of the men asked if Tracey and I were spending the night, and Jon's dad, Roland had offered us the hideaway bed several times, so we went downstairs to call our parents. My dad wasn't home, so I just told him the situation, etc. When Tracey called her mom, Roland and Julie were in the middle of a conversation, and since they were in separate rooms, they were yelling back and forth. Tracey's mom heard the word "beer" as soon as she answered the phone, which is never a good thing when it comes to attempting to talk your mom into letting you spend the night with strangers. But Gladys obviously felt like slackening Tracey's leash a bit, so all was well. When we went upstairs again, weird things happened. I mean, I realise that I do weird things with my friends constantly, but this was weirder than normal. Mike started his usual odd hand movements in front of my face. I have no idea why he does that. It may be just to make me flinch perpetually, but no matter the reason, it's strange. Soon, that led to eye-touching. At first, I thought that Mike just wanted to fondle my eyelashes, as most men do. But he was actually attempting to touch my eye. My eyes aren't sensitive to touching in any way thanks to my contacts, but Mike was terribly proud of himself when he was able to feel my cornea. That soon led to finger-sucking. I really have absolutely no recollection of how it started, but at the time, it really seemed like a very natural thing to do to celebrate graduation. I swear, I'm like a dirty, dirty whore with a conscience. I do these weird, weird things, and only the next day do I realise that perhaps normal people don't do them. So, that whole situation was odd. I mean, I wish I could explain the oddness of it in words. The oddest thing was the fact that Jon had turned off his computer while some of this was going on, so it was completely dark in there. Some people have sex in the dark; I suck on fingers.
Julie finally got tired of us, so she sent us to bed. Jon and Mike pulled out the bed while Tracey and I sat back and marveled at their brute strength. Mike went to go change, and Tracey went to the bathroom, while I stayed downstairs. I took off one of the shirts that I was wearing, but I had a tank on underneath, so I didn't think anything about the fact that Jon was sitting on the steps downstairs. He said "Whoa!" as soon as I took it off as if he shouldn't be seeing my shoulders or something. That's another thing that amuses me about him. He pretends to be all cool around girls, but I seriously think that he's terribly frightened by us. That reminds me of a night sometime last year. Mike and I were lying on the bed in Jon's parents' room watching The Others while Jonathan was in the computer room looking at porn or whatever else he does when no one's around. Jon came in to see what was going on, and Mike got up to go to the bathroom. After a minute, Jonathan told me that he felt extremely uncomfortable being on his parents' bed with, and I quote, "a girl". As if I'm really even a girl in his world. But it was cute all the same. I think I'm looking for someone who's uncomfortable lying with me on his parents' bed. (No, that was not me inviting Jon over for sex, Bethany.) Anyway, Tracey and I fought over covers for a bit, because it was crazy cold downstairs. She had been wrapped up in Roland's plaid flannel coat all evening, so I should have had free reign over the cover distribution, but Tracey is a selfish whore, so you can imagine what the outcome of that tiff was. We watched So I Married an Axe Murderer for exactly ten minutes and then slipped away to sleep.
By the way, just so that Jon's friends don't think that he's a nasty, dirty prostitute:
Thank you.
Waking up the next morning was such a great feeling. Maybe I like my friends too much or something, but I liked knowing that they were right there. I wrapped myself in a big blanket and headed upstairs to greet Jon and Mike but soon came back downstairs to watch Little Shop of Horrors with Tracey. Roland was helping a friend move that morning, and when she came to the house with him to get something, she watched the end of the movie with us. I didn't think anything about the situation, but Jon told us when she left that she had looked rather shocked when she saw us all in bed downstairs, clearly not realising that TRACEY AND I DID NOT SLEEP WITH JON AND MIKE. The phone rang a bit later and when Mike brought it to me, it turned out to be Jon's friend Tim. Now, I've talked to Tim before at Jon's house, and he intrigues me. He's 27 years old and working on his Master's in business or something, so it never ceases to amuse me that he's so desperate to hook up with an 18 year-old chick who's just barely out of high school. The best thing about him is his way of making sure that I'm available. On Monday morning, he was asking me about spending the night at Jon's house, and when I told him that it was no big deal, he asked if my boyfriend was okay with it. Now, he knows very well that I'm not with anyone, because he asks me that every time, but he can't seem to stop asking it. I really have to wonder if he knows what kind of person I am. I mean, I really don't even know what kind of person I am, but on the phone, people fall in love with me. I have no idea why, but people constantly tell me that I sound adorable on the phone. But I'm not some giggly cheerleader. I wonder if Tim realises that. I think he's looking for a giggly cheerleader. Oh, well. This time he gave me his e-mail address, but as I'm writing this story a week after it actually happened and I seem to have forgotten to write to him thus far, I would say that I'm not going to be putting it to use, and I feel pretty darn bad about that. When Tim and I were done, he asked me to give the phone back to Jon, so I started walking the phone up the stairs to him. I was falling all over the blanket that I had wrapped around my shoulders, so I was giggling hysterically, which really confused Mike, who was waiting at the top of the stairs. I asked him to hand the phone to Jon, but he got on the phone first and asked Tim who he was, which seemed weird, since he doesn't know Tim at all. Of course, I don't know Tim at all, either.
Mike came downstairs later and pushed me out of bed so that he would have a place to sit. I nestled myself in between him and Tracey in retaliation, but he was mad at something, so he rolled all of the covers onto me and got up to sit on the couch. As soon as I did, though, Mike grabbed a throw from the back of the couch and threw it over my head. I wasn't about to let that be the end of that, so I took it off of me and put it on him. This went on for a while until Jonathan came down and started beating me ferociously with a pillow. When he got onto the bed, my lovely sidekick Tracey helped me hold down and mutilate him. Teamwork, my friends. Tracey had to get home soon after that, so we said our good-byes. You know, I just realised that Jon slapped my butt as I was leaving. Maybe he's not afraid of girls after all.
On an unrelated note, happy birthday, Joanie!
May 30th, 2000: On Friday, I went to Petsmart to grab myself a fish tank. I took $100 with me, because I had no idea how much the thing would cost me. I was expecting high-priced glass, if you know what I mean. So, I found a rather attractive middle-aged man to help me pick out a snail, since they caught my eye, for some reason. (I got golden one, if anyone cares.) Then, I asked him to help me find a 10 gallon tank. It ended up costing me $8.99. I was a little embarrassed about bringing along $100. The guy got the tank down and carried it for me, which seemed kind of funny, since I was totally capable of carrying it on my own. He said that he was glad to do it, though. I started a mental list of all of the cool things about being remotely attractive. (And of course I think I'm more than remotely attractive, but I don't want to seem full of myself, so I'll just leave it at that.) I couldn't stand hauling around more than $80 still, so I took a trip to get some bonsais. Dang, those things are cool. There were two of them in the nursery, and I couldn't just leave one there by its lonesome (which is such a dumb phrase, by the way), so I bought them both and decided to give one to Mike as a graduation gift. Later that night, Tracey called me and wanted to get together to plan our graduation party-hopping schedule, so I went down there with the intent of staying an hour at most. Well, after we routed our path to ten different parties, we ended up wanting to watch a movie. Tracey had been talking about Karate Kid III all day, so we hunted for it for a while. (Okay, actually, she hunted for it for a while as I sat and laughed at her.) So, we ended up watching Camp Cucamonga, a super cool movie from our younger days starring a very un-Urkel-yet-strangely-Urkel-like Jaleel White, a not-so-thin Jennifer Aniston, the chick who played Winnie on Wonder Years, Candice Cameron, and a whole load of other kids who were so cool when we were young. A good time was had by all.
The next day, Saturday, I picked Tracey up at one so that we could go get thousands of graduation cards before our first party at our friend Gabe's house. (Isn't Gabe the coolest name?) We went to our local Hallmark and spent more than an hour browsing the cards. Mike and I were in the middle of some sort of nasty fight or something or other. When I'm in the middle of a nasty fight or something or other, I either a) try to make it worse because fighting is so darn much fun or b) just ignore the person. I had chosen to ignore Mike since before school let out, but I wanted to still get him something or other, so I picked out the best card in the store. On the front, it had a picture of three bright yellow lemons in bright blue water, and underneath the picture, the caption read, "When life gives you lemons, throw them in the pool." Now, my sister thought that it was the lamest card ever, but Tracey and I got a good laugh out of it. Now, we pick up where I left off in the first paragraph:
After leaving the craft store when our Hallmark trip was done, Tracey and I traveled to Jack's Aquarium & Pets to do God knows what. Tracey found a chubby goldfish inside that she fell in love with. I told her that I would name a chubby goldfish "Chubs", but she wasn't too into that idea. There were a couple of college-y skater kids running around, and as I passed by the really hot one, he started patting a bag that was covering his . . . umm . . . area . . . and saying, "Calm down. It's all right. Calm down." I was amused and a little flattered, but Tracey explained that he had a ferret in the bag. Disappointing. After we stared at the chubby fish for a little while longer, we left to go get Joanie to go to Gabe's.
When we arrived home, Joanie wasn't ready, of course, so Tracey and I sat in the living room for a while and played with my one-eyed cat that really has two eyes. Then, I went over to check out Freddie, and well, he was doing a little floating number. So that was the end of my massive frog. It was highly upsetting. I had planned to take Fred to college with me this fall. But we were already two hours late for Gabe's party, so we left. When we arrived at Gabe's, his driveway was chock full o' cars, but we didn't recognise any of them. We only knew about five people at the party, but that was cool anyway. We went up to Gabe's room, and after a bit, he and his friend Jameson got out their Playstation wrestling whatnot to show us their "money move", which was about as amusing as the stories that I tell my sister at midnight when we're both half asleep, so we got up to move on to our second party of the night.
Heather is the best friend of my friend Katie, and she's about the exact opposite of me. Where I attempt to look as un-slutty as possible, Heather violates the school dress code in every way that she can. Where I'm analytical and obsessive, Heather moves right on from one man to another, depending on her mood for the week. Plus, Heather enjoys randomly taking off her clothes in hot tubs with strange men, and well, I don't. Call me a prude. So, her boyfriend of the week, Josh, came over to greet us when we hopped out of the Blazer. He has this awesome blue Dart that he bought from this old guy for $1000, and I want it so badly. He always tells me to clean out the Blazer and we'll make a switch every time he sees me, and dang, would I love to take him up on the offer. At the party, he was trying to convince me to put his "Pimpmobile" sticker in the Blazer's window, but well, that just wasn't happening. I love Josh to death, but wow, has he changed since back in the day. Tracey and I were discussing that the other day. When Josh was a freshman and we were sophomores, he dated Katie for a while. He was soooo shy around her and would write her poetry and all sorts of sweet Josh-y things, but alas, they broke up. Now, he's the opposite of shy, and pretty much everyone wants him, as far as I can tell. We have to wonder if Katie's glad that Heather got her leftovers or if Katie's upset that Josh would never date her now that he can have Heather. (I totally don't mean that to sound as mean as it did, just so you know.) Josh told us a story about going to McDonald's and yelling at Heather for pulling up his shirt. He told her, right in front of our gay friend James, that he didn't want the fags looking at him. James didn't say anything, so he didn't apologise, hoping that James didn't hear him. James told Tracey about the incident, though, she we all laughed. We sat around with a bunch of random people and had a jolly good time for a while, but then I remembered that I needed to go to the mall, so Tracey and I dropped Joanie off at home and went shopping.
We got to the mall about 15 minutes before it closed, which is never a good thing, but I was able to grab some jewelry for graduation before the little gates started closing on all of the stores. Tracey and I then decided to go to the Damon's in the mall for some trivia and potato skins. We knew what we wanted and were ready to play some trivia, but the place was packed, so Tracey and I were forced to sit and wait. Finally, our waiter came over, and it was the same guy who had waited on Bethany and me the first time that I had taken Bethany there a few weeks earlier and the same guy who had waited on the table next to ours the last time Tracey and I had been there. When he came to our table, told us that his name is Adam, and said that he would be a waiter, I reminded him that he's always our waiter. He reminded me that it was only his second time of three visits waiting on us. Then, when he was able to tell me that I order my potato skins without bacon, Tracey told me that he's clearly infatuated with me, which is fine, as I'm obsessed with him. Ahh, so very many reasons to visit the Damon's in the mall.
Finally, Tracey and I filled ourselves and headed toward my house to attach plastic pirates to our graduation caps. That soon proved to be our worst idea yet, so we spent the next hour signing graduation cards and feeling bad about the fact that our caps would be just as blah as everyone else's. Then, we went to my bathroom mirror to see how wretched we looked in the caps, and well, it was pretty wretched. I took Tracey home and went to bed, not exactly excited about the next day, but not exactly unexcited, either.
I shouldn't have even thought about being excited for a second, really. I woke up really early on Sunday morning, just because my eyes wouldn't seem to close. I got dressed in this new outfit that I'm absolutely in love with, posed for a few pictures, and left for school. When I pulled in, I made a new row in the parking lot for myself just because, and my friend Jennifer pulled in beside me, so we walked in together. Tracey called out from the other side of the parking lot, so I waved and continued on inside. People asked me where they were supposed to go as soon as I walked in the door, which made absolutely no sense to me, but hey, if I looked like I knew what the heck I was doing, then that's all the better. I put on my gown reluctantly, but I wasn't about to put on that awful cap until the very last second. I hung out with Heather and Katie for a bit until Tracey came, and then we all made a trek to a mirror to attempt to make our caps look suitable. Mine actually ended up looking much better than it was supposed to, and my hair even looked great when I took it off, so I was one happy chick. We sat in the very last row during the baccalaureate service, which was nice, because then we could make fun of people during the slide show without hurting their feelings as much. I was thinking about how lucky guys were that their hair didn't move an inch when they took their caps off, but then a person two rows ahead of me and one seat to the right took his cap off, and I noticed that his hair was sticking straight up. Then, I realised that it was Mike. I wanted to laugh. It was kind of weird seeing him there. I don't know if I expected him to fall off of the face of the earth just because I stopped caring about him for a couple of days, but he was there all the same. Except he seemed really depressed and lonely, and I don't know how that made me feel exactly, but it did make me realise how lucky I am to have Katie and Tracey. So, I put Mike out of my mind for the rest of baccalaureate and focused on the cutie speaker who was possibly the worst that I've heard in quite a while.
When that was done, we were all told to line up in this hallway in the order that we were placed in during graduation practice. I stood by Bart and waved at Tracey, who was across the hallway, as the place heated up to at least 800 degrees. Then, suddenly, Bart started talking. I didn't know what was wrong. Maybe heat forces his voice box to work against its will, but it was nice. I swear, we stood there for hours. Then, the guidance counselors led up down to the gym and let us in one at a time to be paraded before the madding crowd. (Okay, they weren't madding at all, but I like that word, and I hardly ever get a chance to use it.) I looked across the floor to my partner, the lovely Nick, and walked in. I could tell that my little skirt was sticking to the back of my legs, so every time that the group of us had to stand for any reason, I swore that everyone was looking at the back of my legs to see what was going on with my skirt. What was worse was when I got called up to the front to accept one of the hundreds of awards that I won. (Okay, so it was more like five . . . ) What was worse than that, though, was when my name was announced for scholarships, and I had to stand at my seat. The lovely Brent was behind me, and I swore that he was checking out my skirt to see if anything weird was going on with it. Of course, I failed to realise at the time that I was wearing a gown that concealed any skirt funk-age, so I was paranoid about nothing. There's nothing really to say about the ceremony in general. Each student stood while the principal announced the scholarships that we had won. I think I applied for a total of four, but only about three people knew that, so when I stood up and the principal announced that I had won two scholarships, I heard some people behind me say, "That's all?!" It made me feel pretty good to know that I was expected to get money for being so darn smart. Later, when the principal announced some more scholarships during the ceremony that I hadn't applied for but won anyway and/or not known in advance that I had won, I felt even better. Oh, to be me. Anyway, Lindsay, the salutatorian, definitely should have gotten valedictorian, just because we all hate the chick who got valedictorian. This chick, Elena, won a full ride scholarship to OSU all because she clones trees. I mean, seriously, the girl cannot do anything else. She's like Amish or something, so instead of watching television or making delightful websites, she sits around and clones trees for fun. I'm not saying that her plant-cloning activities aren't nice, but science is the only class that she does well in. However, she earned honors credit for doing the post-secondary deal where you take a couple of college courses, so she passed all of us while doing little to no work. Now, don't think that I'm jealous or anything, because I'm sure some of you are thinking that. I would absolutely never want to be her; she wore sweatpants to graduation, for God's sake. I just wanted Lindsay to be valedictorian. Watching Elena make her 20-second inaudible speech made me wish that I had actually done something in high school so that I hadn't ended up a mediocre 7th in my class. Imagine what doing some homework would have done for my grade point average. Only six people ahead of me. Oh, the regrets . . . If only I would have worn sweatpants every day to school. I'll bet that would have done it. Whatever.
So, after that was all over, I went out in the hallway, talked to Tracey about after-graduation party plans, and waited around for my family. Some people came over and talked to me, and as they did, Mike came over and stood near us as if he was waiting to talk to me or just standing there until I noticed him so that he could walk away without talking to me so that I would feel bad about myself if everything went as planned. I decided that I didn't care either way, but when the people left, he came over and said something about how he could at least give me a hug or something. So he did, and I told him that I was coming to see him that night. I really didn't think that I was going to let myself go to his party, since only family was going to be there, but it came out of my mouth, so I must have been wanting to go somewhere in the back of my mind. He said something about just wanting to say hey before he had to go find his family, except that he said something really lame like "howdy-ho" instead of "hey", so I questioned him on that, he explained that it was the first lame thing that came to his mind, and then he left. It was awkward; but at least we had talked. I spent an hour getting pictures taken with various family members after that, and then I went home to get ready for the parties.
May 29th, 2000: So, I graduated from high school yesterday. It's sort of weird how that just happens. One moment, I'm enjoying the fine public restrooms and spacious teaching facilities; the next, I find myself dressed in a hideous yellow gown, shaking the hand of my middle-school-gym-teacher-turned-high-school-assistant-principal. (Wow, if dashes weren't in such a hard-to-reach area, I would write an entire one of these with a dash between every word.) So, I got out of school officially on May 17th, which gave me quite a bit of time to sit around and learn to cook. Tracey and I decided that we were going to attach plastic bacon to our graduation caps on The Big Day a la the bathtub scene in Gummo, our very favourite crazy weird white trash movie. However, no matter how hard we searched, there was no plastic bacon to be found. Giving up on that idea, the day before The Big Day, we traveled to a craft store/nursery to check out some rubber mushrooms. However, they had magically disappeared, so we left for the pet store, deflated and shroom-less. (I just rubbed my eyes, and they made this really juicy noise. Seriously disgusting.)
Okay, so on Wednesday afternoon, I came home to find my dad running around our house with pots and pans (not that there's really a difference betwixt the two of them in this particular case . . . or any case, for that matter). I asked him what the deal was, and he pointed to our fish tank, which happened to be gushing water from a random split somewhere in the bottom due to the marbles inside hitting it repeatedly thanks to some thrasing around of our aquatic life. So, we caught all of the water in the pots/pans and transferred the algae-sucking plecto thing and the massive frog, Freddie, to a white bucket. (Notice that the inclusion of the colour of the bucket will have absolutely no effect on the story in any way whatsoever.) Dad attached the filter to the white bucket to allow for breathing of the poor, little wretches, and I went on a hunt for a new fish tank as the old one was left in my bathroom. At my local Wal*Mart, America's small business-killer, I found 20 and 50 gallon tanks, but no 10 galloners. (Oh, as if that's even a word.) So, I left and returned home, promising to buy a tank the next day. I came downstairs on Wednesday morning to take my shower, and when I pulled aside the shower curtain, there was a blob on the floor next to the old fish tank. My eyes still weren't functioning, since I had just woken up, so I leaned in for a better look. I discovered that it was my massive frog, all sprawled out. The poor, idiotic thing had managed to escape from his white bucket, hop through the living room and kitchen into the bathroom. However, the trip must have worn Freddie out, so he was unable to jump into the remains of his old tank. I ran into my dad's bedroom and woke him up, so he promptly grabbed a shovel and jabbed at Freddie to resuscitate him. It didn't work, so Dad scooped Freddie up to carry him outside. As soon as Fred was on the shovel, though, he hopped off onto the bathroom floor, much to my delight. So, he was transferred back to the white bucket, and there he stayed, with the tank light covering him to prevent further escapeture. (Yes, "escapeture".)
Thursday was graduation practice day. Tracey and I came in a couple minutes late, and the assistant principal made that evident by tapping on his watch in that I'm-joking-but-you-would-never-know-it manner of his. One of the guidance counselors told us to grab a seat in the front, so we did. After twenty minutes of explanation of the goings-on of the day and being reminded that our tassles go on the left side of the cap, we were seated in alphabetical order. Now, I already knew that I would sit between two guys named J.R. and Bart. I used to know both of them pretty well, but things happen in high school that separate people, etc. I was kind of blah about sitting beside Bart, just because he doesn't say a word anymore. In middle school, he was hilarious. Outgoing, always had something to say. But before 9th grade, Bart lost a ton of weight and all of his personality, apparently. A friend told me a couple of weeks ago that she would rather talk to a wall than Bart. So, it was even more horrifying for me when I ended up on the very end of a row with only Bart to talk to. Luckily, Brent and Stephanie, friends since kindergarten, were right behind me, so that was nice.