Purple Rain is playing but the thunder from outside is the reason my windows are shaking.
The song set off a pinball inside my head and there is a memory from long ago floating around inside my head.
I am 14 or 15 years old and standing in the corner at a school dance watching the girl I want to dance with kiss some other boy.
She kissed me, not tonight, but maybe a week or two before and I am just learning about how quickly a girl’s fancy can move from one boy to the next.
That is not to say we don’t do it too, but I am too naive and inexperienced to have any idea how that works, let alone that it exists.
All I know is one moment she was pressed up against me, holding my hand and telling me things that I thought made me special and now I am just another guy.
987 Silly Bloggers & Stupid Readers
Saturday night finds me doing some early evening shopping at a local Trader Joe’s.
The store is almost empty which is part of why I have chosen to be there now. Parking is plentiful and I can fly down the aisles with reckless abandon.
Or so I think.
There is a guy standing in the middle with a woman and they are busy trying to snap the perfect shot of something for their joint food blog.
I know this because they have told me that if I can just wait they’ll be done and it is really important to give them the time because their blog is really important.
I look at them and tell them that in 2011 I was one of the sexiest dad bloggers and that if they looked at the list now I might even have moved up from number 4.
They just stared at me and I told them that I have been out here in the wild and wooly blogosphere for 13 years and followed it up by saying I started before they hit puberty.
It is fun being old.
And then I told them if we are all really lucky we can be among the 987 silly bloggers and stupid readers.
Don’t ask me where that came from, just accept that I tried to come up with some really cool line and failed miserably.
It happens.
Just Go For It
My teenage son and I are talking about life and I am telling him about how sometimes we have to ignore fear of failure and just go for it.
He wants me to give him an example and I share a couple of work stories but they don’t seem to be resonating with him.
I tell him how about a couple of presentations and a project that didn’t go as I wanted as well as one that did but I know I am not getting through.
So I tell him about a girl who made my heart pound and left me tongue tied.
I tell him about how every time I talked to her I felt stupid, awkward and couldn’t ever do the right thing.
He surprises me and asks for more details and I tell him about how one time I was so flummoxed that I had trouble looking her in the eyes.
“What happened dad?”
“She thought I was staring at her boobs.”
“Were you?”
“Yeah, but not really. I wasn’t focused on them. I just couldn’t look her in the eye and was sort of staring through her and she snapped at me.”
“What did she say?”
“I don’t kiss men who don’t look me in the eyes?”
“Does that mean she kissed you?”
“Nope, I told her she would be lucky if I kissed her and she got pissed off and walked away.”
He laughed and asked if I ever talked to her again and I told him we ended up dating but that was much later on.
“How did that happen?”
“Sometimes you have to just go for it. A long time later I ran into her at a fraternity party and she made sarcastic remark about me. I told her I’d make it up to her, but that she’d have to kiss me.”
And then my kid reminded me he wasn’t really interested in hearing that kind of thing. I get it, I wouldn’t want to hear those stories from my parents.
Funny thing is my daughter wants a complete dossier on every woman I ever dated, but girls are different than boys so…
The Stories We Share
I have been thinking about the stories we share and the things I can blog about.
Since the kids are getting older I have made a point to try and be more cautious about the stories I share about them, but my stories are different.
My stories are mine and the choice to share or not is my own.
Been playing around with sharing more, if for no other reason than I can use them to practice my writing.
It is one of those things bloggers do.
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Larry March 1, 2017 at 6:53 pm
My younger boy is more interested in my history (history in general, actually) and loves to hear stories. Older boy – not so much.
By the way, I liked the story too.
Jack Steiner March 3, 2017 at 8:09 am
I try and engage my kids with stories on a regular basis. They don’t always appreciate/enjoy them, but…