Ski-Trip

The inherent problem with skis, as I see it, is that they slide just as well backwards as they do forwards, which leaves you entirely dependent on having some previous forward motion to keep you moving in the right direction.  If you don’t have that forward motion, or any means of attaining it, you’re screwed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know there are supposed to be little techniques that keep you from sliding backwards down a hill, but they all involve clever little tricks you do with your feet, and unfortunately, when I ski, I can’t do clever little foot tricks because someone has very stupidly attached long wooden slats to each of my feet.  Oh, and the other problem with skiing is that it just really sucks.  It's like sledding, only without the sled or the fun.  I really can’t say enough bad things about skiing, but I’m going to try.  Here we go…

So this story is about the one and only ski trip I ever took in my life, and, like most of the stories on this blog, it ends with me looking like an asshole.  I was in grade school, probably grade 7 or 8, and we were going on a class trip to the nearest ski hill.  We started out early in the morning as the nearest ski hill was still quite a ways away.  The driver of the chartered school bus must have been new at her job or something because I remember she was having a hard time with the manual transmission.  She would screw up and miss a gear, or forget the clutch entirely.

"If you can't find 'er, grind 'er", we'd all yell.

Then the bus driver would get all red in the face and look like she was going to cry.  When she stalled it out on a big hill, she made everyone get off the bus because we were laughing so hard at her.  She drove the empty bus to the top of the hill and we had to walk up to re-board.  Then she gave us a big speech about not distracting her while she did her job, but our respect only lasted until she missed another gear.  Anyway, this has nothing to do with skiing, I'm just saying we worked this bus driver over pretty good the whole trip up to the mountain.

We finally got to the ski hill, and were all fitted for our big dumb ski boots and poles and skis while I'm sure the bus driver went someplace for a drink or to cry.  The ski hill people directed us to the Bunny Hill to go through some safety courses and beginner instruction.  Most of our group spent about 30 minutes on the Bunny Hill learning the basics.  I, however, spent most of the day there. 

I practiced and repeatedly failed to master the simplest of skiing techniques.  All of my friends had moved on to other more challenging hills, but I remained on the Bunny Hill with all the 4 year olds because the instructors had told us not to try the bigger hills until we were confident we could turn and stop properly.  I could do neither of these things.  What i could do, was the maneuver where you turn your knees inward and point the tips of your skis toward one another.  This slows you down or even stops you at slower speeds, but I was terrified to use that technique while coming down one of the bigger hills.  My fear was that if I tried it, the high speeds would turn my skis too far inward, twist-breaking the bones in both my ankles, and turning the skis all the way around so it looked like I had put them on backwards.

"Nope, my skis aren’t on backwards, folks, my legs are.  Call an ambulance, please."

I had mental images of me coming down one of the moderate hills like a runaway train, screaming in agony, my skis and legs on backwards, broken bones jutting out of both my legs.  

Maybe that can’t happen, I don’t know, I’m not a fucking doctor.  It was going to be the Bunny Hill for me for the rest of the day.

Now, at the foot of the Bunny Hill was a machine called a "pony-lift" that helped tow people back to the top of the hill.  The pony-lift was essentially a long loop of cable with hard plastic handles attached to it every few feet.  This loop of cable was wound around two pulleys, one at the top of the hill, one at the bottom.  You caught hold of a handle at the bottom of the hill, let the cable take you up the hill, then you let go and let the handle made its way back to the bottom.  It was a pretty slick device, and while the handles moved pretty quickly and gave your shoulders a pretty good jolt when you latched on, it sure beat the hell out of walking back up the hill after each run.

In total, I probably made about 11 runs down the Bunny Hill (I was desperate to better my skills enough to go find my friends on the other hills), but with each run it became harder to hang onto the pony-lift on the way back up.  Eventually, while halfway up the hill, my cold hands, wet mittens, and pathetic upper body strength made it impossible to hold on to the hard plastic handle any longer.  When my hands slipped, I started sliding backwards down the hill.  I slid directly into the person behind me who was also being towed up the hill.  The collision caused them to lose their grip on the handle and as they started to slide backwards, I lost my balance and fell over sideways onto the moving cables.  The sharp-eyed operator, probably having already noticed what a lemon I was, killed the motor on the lift immediately.  The cables stopped abruptly, and my weight caused them to dive towards the ground.  All the way up the hill, handles were being yanked downwards and out of peoples’ hands.  I could feel the cables beneath me vibrate and make a metallic "PUH-TOW" sound each time someone lost their grip.  While I kicked and thrashed on the cables like a fish in a net, all the way up the hill it was mayhem.  People were falling over, sliding backwards, running into one another, yelling for help.  It was awful.

"GODDAMMIT!" I heard the Pony-Lift Man say as he came marching up the hill.

He lifted me up off of the cables and set me on my feet.  He handed me my poles and put the Pony Lift handle in my hand again.

"Hang on to it!" he said ferociously before heading up the hill to help everyone else.

The lift was re-started, and though my arms shook and quivered, I managed to hang on to the handle to the top of the hill.  Once there I decided that maybe it was time to move on to one of the more challenging hills.  Not that I was ready for a bigger challenge skill-wise. God, no, even I knew I was probably leaving the ski hill on a stretcher, but I just couldn't risk pissing off the Pony-Lift Man again.

I found my best friend, and he convinced me to accompany him down one of the intermediate hills.  We made our way to the chair-lift area, and I studied how people were getting on before I got in line.  It looked easy enough, you just positioned yourself and waited for the chair-lift to pick your ass up.  Easy!  I was nervous when it was our turn to get on, but I managed to do it no problem.

The trip up the mountain in the chair-lift was intense.  I have a phobia about heights, so I tried not to look down and just joked around with my buddy.  As we approached the "landing area" though, I realized I couldn't see how people got off of the lift.  I had no example to go off of, I had no idea what to expect!

When our chair came in, I was panicked.  It came in way too fast.  When the bar was lifted I tried to be brave and just jump out, but I immediately faceplanted.  My skis tripped my friend, and the people coming in off the next chair tripped over us.  A pile-up had begun.

Ever been at a ski resort and had the chair-lift stop for no apparent reason.  You're left dangling dangerously high above the ground in the freezing cold air, and after a few minutes someone gets mad enough to yell, "What the fuck is going on?"

Well, I'm what the fuck is going on.

They had to halt the chair-lift to pull apart the puzzle of people and skis I had caused.  When my friend and I were set free, we bolted as quickly as possible because a LOT of people were really unhappy with me.  We tried to find an intermediate trail, but all we could seem to find were the terrifying "Black Diamond" trails for those with advanced skills.  My friend was more confident than I was, but there was no goddamned way I was doing one of those trails.  I told my friend to enjoy his afternoon, then I took off my skis and I started hiking down the black diamond trail on foot.

As I walked down the mountain, the wide trail funneled itself down into a much more narrow passage through the mountain.  I had been walking for a few minutes when I heard a whooshing sound, and felt a blast of wind go by me.  I heard someone say "WHAT THE FU---" before their voice disappeared down the hill. 

It turns out, being relatively stationary in the middle of a narrow black diamond trail isn't very safe. 

I tried to make my way to the edges of the trail, but it was so narrow, and the snow was too deep to walk in at the edges.  I decided to keep walking in the middle of the trail, and I just tried to keep an eye and an ear out for people coming up behind me.  It didn't work very well at all.  They were moving so fast!  More than once I stood there facing down an incoming human missile. 
 
Imagine being an expert skier, coming down a tight trail in the forest, rounding a bend at like 80km/h and coming up on a terrified fat kid standing in the middle of the trail, kind of dancing from side to side, unsure of which direction to dive out of the way.

This happened like three or four times.  I was a nervous wreck all the way down the hill.  By the time I reached the lodge, I had tears in my eyes because I was so emotionally exhausted.  What a shit day, man. 

I sat in the lodge at a table, staring out at the mountain in defeat.  It was almost time for us to leave, and I was just sitting there waiting for my friends to return from the hills when I noticed the bus driver sitting at another table.  She was sipping hot chocolate by herself.

It hadn't occurred to me that this poor woman we had tormented all the way up here had given up her entire day so that we could go skiing.  She had been sitting down in this lodge the whole time.  I started to feel really bad about having teased her about her driving earlier.  I knew what it was like to suck at something.  This woman and I, we had both had rotten days. 

I decided that I would be really nice to her to try and make her day better.  I got up, walked over to her table, and said, "Hey, thanks a lot for bringing us up here today, we really appreciate it."

"Oh," she said, clearly taken aback, "Well, you're very welcome, it was my pleasure."

Feeling awesome about myself, I sat back down and waited until the rest of the class came back to the lodge.  When we boarded the bus, the driver gave me a little smile and she was clearly in a good mood.  Both of our days had been salvaged by a simple act of kindness. 

"All aboard!" she yelled with a smile.  The kids, all in happy moods after a day of fun, laughed good-naturedly at her little joke.  She put the bus into gear, and we started for home.  We hadn't even gotten out of the parking lot when she stalled the bus again.  It was a pretty bonehead move on her part, so we gave her shit for it the whole way home.

Ghostbusters

My old elementary school used to be pretty hard up for school events.  Sometimes we would all gather in the gym and watch a cartoon, or we’d assemble to have some old guy tell us how dangerous bears were, or sometimes a dude would bring a bunch of reptiles to school, but, other than that, there really wasn’t a lot happening.  

One of the things the school did to try and spruce things up a bit was to have “Talent Shows” a few times a year.  Now, they were called Talent Shows, but nobody had any real talents.  What this assembly always turned into was a bunch of skits that weren't very funny or entertaining followed by a number of lip-sync/air-band routines where people got up and pretended to play instruments and sing to their favorite songs.  You know, exactly what people do in front of their mirrors at home with their bedroom doors closed, only in this case it was done in front of a gymnasium full of people.

Now, the skits were more just for the really little kids; the Kindergarteners and Grade One kids would come up and act out scenes or songs from their favorite cartoons.  Air-bands, on the other hand, were for the big kids, the cool kids.  Nobody from our school had ever played any instruments, so over the years we had all become air-band connoisseurs.  You couldn’t get up there and just pretend you had an instrument; that’s fucking stupid! No, no, what you did was go to the equipment room in the gym and gather up things that could stand in for instruments.  Mop handles were microphone stands, badminton-racquets were guitars, pylons were trumpets, batons were drumsticks, etc.  Everybody had to have something unless it was an all-girl air-band, in which case there might be a few dancers, but dancers were the only ones that were allowed to be up there without an “instrument”.  After an air-band had performed, it wasn’t silly in the least to say things like, “Oh, man, did you see the way Trevor totally nailed that guitar solo?!” or “Brian’s drumroll blew my mind!”  If the right song was chosen, an air-band could even get a standing ovation.  It was like the entire school suffered from a mass delusion when it came to these Talent Shows.  I couldn’t even tell you what visitors to the school must have thought when they saw the way we went nuts for imaginary musicians.  It must have looked like a rock concert in a mental hospital.

Anyway, I remember attending one of these talent shows when I was in Grade 2 or 3, and seeing an older girl I had a crush on (yeah, I had crushes in Grade 2) doing an interpretive dance routine/imaginary music video to "I Think We're Alone Now" while lip-syncing the lyrics.  She had her "boyfriend" come up and be a part of the scene too.  He sat there, slumped in a chair, looking all cool while this angel "sang" to him.  She looked like she could sound just like Tiffany.  I sat in the crowd, years younger than the two of them, fuming that this guy had the cojones to smirk and laugh and pay attention to his buddies in the crowd while this girl pretended-to-sing her heart out for him.  In my twisted young mind I thought:

"This guy doesn't understand you!  What are you doing with him? Sure, maybe he looks cool in the tight black jeans with the three parallel tears on each thigh, and that black leather jacket over the Metallica T-shirt is pretty rad, I’ll give him that, but c'mon, this guy is just a Slash-wannabe.  If you stay with this Grease-stain you’re headed down a path that that leads to unemployment, Zesty Doritos for supper, dope-smoking, and receiving nothing but cartons of cigarettes in your stocking every Christmas."

I guess she wasn’t the brightest girl around because she stayed with that dirtbag for most of the schoolyear.  It didn’t matter though, my crush only got more intense.  When the next Talent Show came up, I decided I had to get in on it.  I knew this girl was into music and performing arts and crap, so being in the Talent Show was an excellent way to get her to notice me.

Luckily for me, one of the more meek and quiet students in my class had had a sudden burst of confidence, and decided he was going to organize an air-band routine to the Ghostbusters theme-song.  It was perfect!  Everybody loved that fucking song.  Standing ovation for sure!  I asked this guy if I could be a part of the band, and he said it was no problem.  He then very stupidly went on to tell six other guys that it was also no problem for them to join either.

On the day of the talent show the eight of us were discussing our positions.  We’d have two singers with mop handles, two badminton-racquet guitar players, two tennis-racquet bass players, a baton drummer, and a pylon trumpeter.  I was to be a guitar player.  Ladies love guitar players, I was so in.  All I had to do was a real legit-looking solo, maybe play the badminton racquet with my teeth like a real guitar god, and this girl was going to flush the fucking toilet on her current boyfriend and come running to me.  Yessir, I’d be dating an older woman by recess.  A real cougar, now that would be just aces.

While I was day-dreaming about my soon-to-be girlfriend serenading me with Tiffany songs, we were called up to perform.  I was SO ready!  We went to our positions, and suddenly, something went wrong.  There was only one mop handle, so one of the singers grabbed the pylon, which meant that the pylon guy had to grab a badminton racquet, which meant that when I went to grab MY badminton racquet there were none left.  I quickly scanned around for anything I could turn into an “instrument”.  I didn’t care what, I’d turn a vacuum cleaner into a tuba at this point, but everything had been claimed.  I had banked it all on a badminton-racquet and lost.

I had just become a dancer.

Now, when I tell you that I froze with stage-fright, please understand that no one has ever frozen as badly as I did that day.  I mean I froze up goddamned solid.  I went catatonic.  I stood there like a perfect statue, mouth half-open, staring wide-eyed at the entire school staring back at me.  It didn't matter how catchy the Ghostbusters theme-song was.  It didn't matter how realistic the guys with the badminton-racquets looked.  All eyes were on the fat kid having some sort of psychological episode in front of them.  I could see some of the older boys laughing, including that Slash-wannabe motherfucker my future-wife was dating.  My eyes scanned the crowd and when I spotted her my heart split in two.  The look on her face was a mixture of horror and disgust. 

"Jesus, what's wrong with that fat kid," I could hear her thinking, “I would NEVER date anyone that uncool. I’m soooo glad I have my current shit-rat boyfriend”.

A teacher at the back was waving her arms at me, trying to get my attention.  My eyes moved to her, and I could see her pretending to dance and mouthing the words, “Dance! You have to dance!" to me.  Sorry, Ma'am.  I appreciate your attempts to help me out here, I’m sure you’ll go to heaven for that and all, but I think we both know it’s too late for me.  I've been frozen here for almost a full minute.  To unfreeze now would just be even weirder.  If I were to suddenly burst into a dance right now it would just startle these people so bad that they’d probably jump a little.  No, if the alternative to what I’m doing right now carries with it any risk of me looking even MORE crazy, then I’ll just stick with what I’m doing.

Afraid that I was ruining his chances of getting a standing ovation, the geek that arranged this whole thing tried to salvage it by doing a big Corey Hart-esque running knee-slide on the last note of the song.  What he forgot was that Corey Hart didn’t do knee-slides on waxed gymnasium floors while wearing “Where’s Waldo” jogging pants.  This dork crashed into the first row of the audience, a bunch of Grade 1 kids still congratulating themselves on a smashing rendition of that “Chim-Chim-Cher-ee” song from Mary Poppins.  This guy slams into some little kids with a running knee-slide at the end of the Ghostbusters theme-song, and somehow I was still the one remembered as being the jackass that ruined the routine. 

Whatever.

I spent the rest of the year NOT having that cougar girlfriend and hating the guts of the opportunistic arsehole who had jumped from mop-handle singer to pylon-trumpeter and thrown everything into chaos.  To this day I can’t listen to “I Think We’re Alone Now” without getting teary-eyed, and the Ghostbusters theme-song makes me have to go to the bathroom.

A Pimp-Walk and a Prayer

So I have a story to tell all of you (both of you), but what you’ll need to know right off the bat is that I’m a trained educator. I know, you'd never know it with all my grammatical errors and foul language, but it's true. I don’t have a permanent job as a teacher or anything, so I just fill in for schools whenever they’re short-staffed or need some extra help. I’m kind of like a mercenary, a mercenary that people refer to as a supply teacher. Anywho, you're up to speed now.

LET’S DO THIS THANG!

So, this morning, I am getting ready to go to a school, and I’m in a rush to get out of the house in time. I’m 99.9% ready, the only thing I need is my belt. Usually, I can’t find my belt in the mornings, but I was smart last night and left it in the pants I had on yesterday. BRILLIANT MANEUVER, says I to you.

So, I locate yesterday's pants and I start trying to slide the belt out of the loops. The problem is the belt is old and worn, and the breaks and creases in the leather get caught up on the belt loops. I’m cursing and freaking out at these pants that won’t let go of my belt and I think, Are you really going to be made a fool of by an old pair of jeans and a worn-out leather belt? 

NO WAY! 

So, I tells myself, I’m a MAN and I’m not messing around with this screwy belt no more! 

I use my man-muscles to yank that mischievous belt right on out of those loops. When I do this, two unexpected things happen.  First, one of the belt loops in my jeans rips (now I have four belt loops and one denim tassel on these jeans). The second thing that happens is that my belt snaps in two, leaving a much shorter belt which would only fit a much thinner man. As it is, I am beltless.

"Greeeat," I spit sarcastically, "No belt!"

"You’ve got your blue and white one" my girlfriend says groggily from beneath a pile of blankets on our bed.

The belt she’s referring to is a white leather belt with a bright-blue and black diamond pattern on it. I bought it as part of a clown costume a while back, and I had worn it once or twice with jeans just to show how hip I was when it came to ironic fashion. What is ironic now, however, is that my ironic belt is the only one I have, and I’m not nearly hip enough to wear it to work with black dress pants.

With no time to sit and think, I let out a sigh and decide that I’ll simply have to wear my old black dress pants; the ones that are tight enough around the waist to stay up on their own. I nab these pants and throw them on, they sag a little, but they’ll have to do. I charge out the door and head to school.

The morning goes reasonably well until I’m on my way inside from supervising the kids on recess. On my way into the school, I snag my pants pocket on the door handle and hear a tic-tic-tic sound as the button from my pants skitters down the hallway and into a sea of moving feet. I’m still moving forward, but I can feel my already sagging pants loosening and my zipper beginning to inch downward. It would be helpful to have a belt at this point. At this moment, I would pay $500 for a nice white leather belt with really loony blue and black diamond patterns on it.

I manage to zip into the staff washroom and slam the door closed just as my pants drop to my ankles. On the back of the bathroom door there’s a long mirror which forces me to look at myself in this position. I'm dressed professionally from the top of my head all the way down to my waist, and then shit gets weird. There's a surprise of colour provided by my Ghostbusters boxer shorts, then it's pale legs down to the black dress socks that are sticking up from out of the crumpled pile of my dropped pants. This is an unacceptable scene. No one else can be permitted to see this. 

I look at the time on my cell phone. DAMMIT! I only have 4 minutes before I’m supposed to be supervising some Grade 2 kids for one of the teachers.

With nothing at my disposal, I get my pants up and zip the zipper as high and tight as I can. I do a quick knee-bend and the zipper rockets down.  My pants are on the floor again. I try again, but this time I don't try to test the zipper with the knee-bend. It holds, for now. I look at my phone; I have 1 minute left. I'm going to have to risk it and just take things as easy as I can until I can find some time to fix this.

Fearfully, I exit the washroom. I take a deep breath and start walking. I walk slowly and smoothly, leaning backwards a bit and carefully placing each foot forward and then easing my weight onto it. I pass classrooms where some of students stare out at me in confusion as I pimp-walk my way to class with nothing but a prayer holding up my pants.

I ease around the classroom, trying as best I can not to make any sudden movements. One kid drops a bookbag full of stuff all over the floor and I watch coldly as they pick it up. Sorry, Junior, you're not going to be getting any assistance from me, I've got my own problems here. The class goes by without a hitch, and by the time the regular teacher comes back, I've relaxed a little bit. We're chatting away with one another when I feel the zipper slip down a bit. Immediately, I lose all interest in our conversation. While she's talking, my face goes slack and my eyes get hazy and distant. I'm not really talking now, I’m just nodding and saying "Mmm Hmm", and "Oh yeah?" every few seconds. In my head, I'm pleading with whatever deities might be out there: Please, please, PLEEEEASE don't let my pants blow wide open while I'm talking to this woman.

I tell myself that if the worst happens, if these badboys drop, and this woman and a whole classroom of 7-year olds sees me in my Ghostbuster underwear, I'm just going to do a Van Halen-style jump kick, yell "WHO YA GONNA CALL?!" while in the air, then walk out....possibly into oncoming traffic.

The pants hold, and my conversation with the teacher comes to an end. Finally, I have a few minutes to fix this problem. Actually, I have exactly 10 minutes. I pimp-walk my way back to the staff washroom, but make a stop at the office to grab some supplies on the way. Not knowing exactly what I'm going to do, I decide I better take anything that might be useful: rubber bands, paperclips, clamps, scissors, and a stapler. The secretary looks at me like I might be crazy, and I look back at her like she might be right. Then it's into the bathroom.

At first I try one of those black clamps with the little metal levers. It's a no-go, so I get more extreme. I hold my pants closed and try to staple them shut. This sounds like a better idea than it is, and it doesn’t even really sound like that good of an idea. The waist of my pants is too thick to staple together and when I try to drive an open staple into the pants to act as a "hook", all I manage to do is drive a staple into my bikini-zone. Scrapping the stapler plan, I move on to rubber bands. Surely this will work. I use the scissors to cut a hole where the button used to be and try to loop the rubber bands through with the hopes of tying them. Both of the bands snap in half. 

I check the time. I have 2 minutes. Enough fucking around.

I pull out two heavy-duty paperclips and call upon my man-muscles for the second time today to straighten the clips out. I feed them through the two holes in my pants, cross the ends, and start to twist. I twist them up until the remaining ends snap off. Where the button used to be, I now have a sharp little knot of twisted metal that pokes into me whenever I lean forward. I haul on the pants and shake them and test my work. 

It's perfect! I'm not even sure how I'm going to get these pants off later. It's then that I realize I probably should have taken that piss I've been holding in for the past hour before I tied my pants shut with twisted steel.

I spend the rest of the day holding in my piss and being scared that somehow the paperclip knot digging into my body is going to let go. I have the junior high kids in the afternoon, and I reeeeally don’t want to lose my pants in front of them. With the little kids, I might have been able to laugh it off. I mean, come on, they do embarrassing shit all the time, but the older kids, that would be awful. They would tease me ruthlessly and I would probably die of embarrassment. If I did, there'd be no one to explain what had actually happened. All anyone would know is that I dropped my pants in front of a bunch of kids. I'd be that known as that sick bastard who wore underwear with cartoons on them and drove staples into his own groin for kicks. No, I can't have that happen to me, so I just take it reeeaaally easy for the rest of the day, playing it safe by pimp-walking everywhere even though I probably don't have to.

I manage to hold my piss in until the end of the day. I'm thankful for this because the only thing worse than dropping your pants in front of colleagues and students is pissing your pants in front of them and then not being able to get the pissy pants off your body. There’s no way I could have undone those pants at the school. When I got home that afternoon, I had to use a pair of wirecutters to get out of them while I did the potty-dance. I managed to pinch myself twice with the cutters.

Anyway, that was my day. My groin took a beating what with all the staples, pokey metal knots, and the wire-cutter pinches, but you know what, that's the life of a supply teacher.

And that's that.  I'm going to bed.

The Ladies Man

I used to go to Prince Edward Island every summer when I was a kid.  For a few years there was a kid there named Josh who was approximately the same age as me—about 13 or 14—and who stayed in the cabin beside the one my family stayed in.  Josh and I were best friends during those summers.   We liked the same things (cheeseburgers and candy) and both loved hanging out at the beach where we could stomp on dead jellyfish and kill crabs.  Ah, youth!

One summer, there was a new family on the other side of our cabin who had two kids about my little sister’s age as well as a daughter who was a year or two older than I was.  My sister had become fast friends with the two younger kids, and spent most of her day playing with them while I hung around with Josh.

Now, it just so happened that one afternoon Josh and I were lounging on the deck of the cabin when the eldest daughter of the family next door happened to come outside to sunbathe.  The girl looked like an angel.  She was like D.J. Tanner from Full House.  She was goddamn perfect.

Being 13 year old boys, we nonchalantly (actually, it was probably very fucking chalant) moved our lawn chairs to a position where we could stare at this poor girl all afternoon.  Whereas before we had been talking about movies we liked, now we said nothing, we just sat silently in our chairs behind our mirrored sunglasses.  Not creepy at all.  When she went back inside—after about 10 minutes—Josh and I immediately started in with the locker room talk.  Never mind the fact that this girl’s cabin was only 10 feet away and she was only behind a screen door, we were all about this girl, we didn’t care if she heard us.  She was a “total babe”.  Our conversation was full of all those testosterone-fueled comments that teenage boys like to think sound manly but really only prove how little they know about anything. 

“I’d put my hand in her back pocket”

“I’d French with her”

“She could sleep over at my house, ANY time”

We were pathetic.

Later that evening, Josh and I were inside the cabin eating our way through an oversized bag of cheap-ass no-name wannabe-Doritos with a picture of Garfield wearing a Sombrero on the front when my Dad came in and said that there was going to be a big campfire in the backyard that night with my sister’s friends and their family.  Josh was welcome to come as well.

Josh and I thought the same thing, That babe is gonna be here!

Then we both thought the same thing again, But which of us is going to be her boyfriend?

And then again, one more time, we both thought, I am!

We decided to be gentlemen.  We’d each take our shot, and to the victor would go the spoils.  We agreed to take some time to get cleaned up for the evening, then meet back at my cabin in about an hour.  I showered, put on my newest-looking swimming trunks and my best Batman t-shirt.  I kicked on my least-stinkiest flip-flops and took a look in the mirror to see what my hair was doing these days.  Roguishly windblown.  That was perfect.  Mix the unruly hair with my tanned skin and freckled face and I looked like the very spirit of youth.  I looked like Tom Sawyer.  Who could resist that?  [Sadly, it would turn out that most women could resist that, and for years to come.]

I went outside onto the deck and sat down in the chair.  The air was rich with the smell of the salt water, and a warm breeze carried the scent of smoke from the various campfires.  It was going to be a magical night.  Josh was taking a while so, while I waited, I fantasized about showing this girl off to all my friends back home.

“Hey Dudes, what’s up?  Oh, her?  Pfft, that’s just my girlfriend.  Yeah, she’s from the island.  Yeah I guess she does sort of look like D.J. Tanner, no big deal or anything.  I’m actually getting kind of bored with her”.

Then she comes over and I totally put my hand in her back pocket like it’s not even a big deal either, and I am immediately crowned King Shit.  There might actually be a crown, I’d just have to wait and see about that part.

Yeah, that’s how this shit was going to go.  After tonight, a lot of things were going to change.  Tonight would mark the beginning of my rise to power.

Eventually I heard the screen door on Josh’s cabin screech open and bang shut.  He walked towards me in the twilight.  At first my heart sank, and then it began to fill with rage.  This piece of shit coming towards me was wearing dress shoes, new blue jeans, a maroon windbreaker (with no t-shirt on underneath), and a gold chain necklace.  He was dressed to kill.

“Hey”, he said, “I’m ready”.

As he stood next to me, the smell of the campfires surrendered to the overpowering scent of his Old Spice.  His hair had been over-gelled and combed straight back like a cool 80’s movie villain. 

Dammit, I thought, Ladies love the badboys.  This guy’s done his homework.

He looked like a young Val Kilmer and I looked like one of the Little Rascals.  I had lost this shit already.  I felt sick.  With disappointment in my heart, I walked behind Josh to the fire.  That was my place, after all, behind him.  Second-place.  Always last.  Sigh  We got to the fire and stood there for a bit.  Everyone was there except for the babe.  After about 15 minutes, we managed to snag her little brother for a second.

“Where's your older sister” I asked.

"She went to a campfire down the beach with some guys...your Dad bought us SPARKLERS for tonight!"

Josh jumped in, "What did he say?"

The little boy repeated, "We got SPARKLERS!"

"No, not that" Josh spat at him, "where is your sister?"

"I dunno, some campfire on the beach somewhere"

Josh sounded desperate, he clearly had a lot riding on this.

"Where on the beach?" he demanded.

But the kid had already lost interest and was running away with his arms out, pretending to be an airplane, a very unhelpful airplane.

We stood there for a bit longer, and I could see Josh was trying to think of a plan.

“Wanna go for a walk?” he asked

“Where?” I replied, just to piss him off.

“I dunno, down the beach or something”

“Sure, I guess so” I said, not really wanting to go.

We trudged up the beach one way about a mile.  There were only a few fires on the beach because the tide had just gone out and everything was still pretty wet.  When we did come across a fire, Josh would veer towards it enough to get a look at who was there.  Mostly it was older teenagers who said things like, “Don’t you guys look romantic?”, and “Nice fucking windbreaker!”  Once we had gone the mile, Josh insisted we turn around and check about the same distance the other way.  We spent most of the night walking on the beach being harassed by guys with backwards baseball hats who made it clear how ridiculous they thought we were and, in one case, threw handfuls of wet sand at us.

The walking wasn’t bothering me; I was wearing shorts and flip-flops, but Josh’s dress shoes were soaked from walking through the wet sand, and his pantlegs had taken on water and become so heavy that he had to hold his pants up by the pockets as he walked.  The effort had caused him to break out in a sweat and his windbreaker stuck to his clammy skin.  Eventually he gave up his search, and we trudged back to the fire at the cabin, Josh grumbling the whole way.

He plopped himself down in a lawn chair in front of the fire and let the heat dry his shoes and pantlegs.  The heat of the fire also loosened the product in his hair.  It mixed with his sweat and dripped down onto his forehead and shoulders in globs, drying to leave disgusting white spots.

The night wasn’t a total loss.  The campfire at the cabin was nice, and I did get the consolation prize of listening to the little kids tell Josh all the gross things they thought his too-much-cologne smelled like until he got so mad he had to go inside to wash some off and towel some of the sweat-gel out of his hair. I also watched in quiet satisfaction as the sparks from the campfire and the sparklers my Dad had bought melted little holes in his fancy-ass maroon windbreaker while he sat unaware, pounding marshmallows into his face.

Now, here’s the best part.  Before the night ended, the Total Babe came back from her fire (wherever the hell it had been) and checked in with her parents at the one we were all at.  She was only quickly introduced to everyone before she went into the cabin to watch television, but when Josh got his turn to say “Hello”, he tried to do it all smokey-voiced and didn’t even look at her.  He just thrusted his marshmallow roasting stick in the fire a few times, like “Yeah, pffft, whatever”.  Everyone noticed, and the parents kind of smirked at how silly he looked.

I just stared at him and smiled.

Yeah, that's it. Enjoy those tasty marshmallows, cool guy.  Your shoes are wrecked, your cologne made people sick to their stomachs, your hair looks fucked, and that sweat-bag you call a coat is ready for the garbage.  You’re gonna sit there looking like a homeless person and play hard to get when you’re clearly hard to want?  Nice strategy, Ladies Man!

So, neither of us got the girl.  It was actually the first in what would become a long run of romantic failures for me.  I’m not sure how Josh made out with his love life, but I like to think he failed a lot too, and that he probably got beat up at least twice a summer for most of his life.

That was actually the last summer Josh and I hung out.  The next year my family went to Old Orchard Beach instead of Prince Edward Island, and I made friends with two Dutch boys .  They couldn’t speak English worth a damn, but they had a smoking-hot mom who traipsed around in a bikini all day and called me “Zveetheart”. 

Top that, Josh.