1. Prologue/Beginning of Freshman Year

Prologue

As a kid, all I ever wanted was to be Popular.

I wanted to know what it was like to have lots of friends.  You see this time, and time again in movies on television.  Teenagers are all depicted the same way. 

They are all good looking, have nice clothes, and have a large circle of friends.

That was what I wanted when I was going through the torment that was Middle School.

I fell far short of my aspirations in those years.

I was short.

I wore a lot of hand me down clothes.

Occasionally, I wore glasses.

On top of that, I tried too hard.

I tried so hard to fit in, that often times, I was my own worst enemy.

I was significantly smaller in stature than my classmates.  In the wolf den of adolescent boys, makes you the easy prey. I was targeted every day. 

Name calling, physical altercations, you name it… I went through it.

I was scared to go to the bathroom at school in fear of being beat up by bullies, (when I tried to fight back, I was either too small to make a difference, or I would simply be out-numbered).

I HATED PE class because of my lack of athletic ability, and in turn getting made fun of.


I never answered questions in class, in fear of being wrong and getting chastised.

The bullying got so bad that one day, I went to the boy’s bathroom and refused to come out.  My teacher got our principal to come and talk to me from outside of the boys bathroom stall.  He convinced me to come out, and let me go home that day.

I never really have figured out why I was the victim of such behavior, but I suppose when you’re different than everyone else at that age, it’s easy to get singled out. It’s hard to face the day when you know that everywhere you go, nobody wants you there. 
Looking back, I’m not sure if things were quite that drastic; but in the mind of an adolescent daydreamer, that’s the way it felt.

I firmly believe that Hell is an eternity in stuck in adolescence.  

However.... It doesn't last forever.

Beginning of Freshman Year 

1988-89

At barely the age of 14 years old, I began my high school career at Scotland High School in my hometown of Laurinburg, North Carolina.

My cousin Randy, (a junior at SHS) picked me up in his slightly beaten up white Isuzu pickup truck. He was driving me to school on my first day.

Randy had spent a fair amount of the summer trying to scare me with stories of riots, knives and bullies.  Looking back, I suppose it was a rite of passage to do that to an upcoming freshman.  I’m embarrassed to admit that I believed every word he said.

As he drove me to my first day of high school, we didn’t say much to each other. The silence was a bit un-nerving, as I was expecting more stories of juvenile delinquency and utter terror within the walls of my now home away from home.

He didn’t have anything to say, and neither did I. I didn’t want him to see I was nervous.

I was scared.  

On a scale of one to crap your pants scared, I was borderline code brown.

Randy dropped me off at the front door of the school, then drove away to park his truck.  I guess he was kind of embarrassed to be seen with a lowly freshman on the first day of school; especially a freshman who looked every bit of ten years old.

I kind of wandered around out the front of the building for a few minutes before walking in. 

The building itself was quite a bit larger than I anticipated. I imagined all of the times that I would get lost trying to find my classes.  Following directions had never been my strong suit, as I got lost pretty easily.  This could be a nightmare, just from a geographical standpoint alone.

Somehow, I did find my way to my homeroom class. The room was full, and yet quiet.  Kids were looking around for familiar faces, but they were few and far between. There were five middle schools in Scotland County, but only ONE High School. So the majority of us didn’t know each other.

It was a room full of quiet freshmen who were too proud to admit their anxieties.

I wanted to make new friends.

I wanted to move up the popularity chain.

I wanted to even explore the possibility of landing a girlfriend!

While other guys and girls were playing spin the bottle and attending middle school dances, I spent the majority of my days in my room listening to cassettes and playing my guitar. When I wasn’t doing that, I was playing Nintendo with my best friend David ‘Tater’ Turner – A Great American. 

Outside of Tater, I didn’t have much of a social circle.

I was barely 5’5 and weighed all of 120 lbs ( and somehow I made 120 lbs look chubby). 
As I said earlier, I’ve always had the distinction of looking quite a bit younger than my age.  Add the height deficit to that equation, and I was easily overlooked, or worse.

At fourteen, I was still at the age when I thought I might still have a chance for a growth spurt.  The disappointment didn’t set in until a few years later, (by the time I hit twenty five, I had finally gave up all hope of advancing vertically).

My first class was my Physical Science class. Mr. Hedgepeth was my teacher. 

He wore high water khaki pants with coffee stains on them, a short sleeve plaid shirt with a pocket protector, and he had glass with extremely thick lenses.  

My assigned seat was in the 2nd row of seats, 2nd seat back. I was seated between two very pretty girls that made me feel shy and awkward immediately.

Beside me was a guy who I could tell was popular just by the clothes he was wearing. He was wearing a light blue preppy oxford button up shirt, (perfectly pressed of course), a pair of stoned washed Levi’s – tight rolled.  His hair was feathered back to perfection, like most boys had their hair in the late 80’s. 

 Of course the two pretty girls I sat between immediately gave him all of their attention. 

In a way, I was relieved to be unnoticed.  Alone in a room full of people, I felt tension in my stomach. It was familiar butterflies that also moonlighted as full-on nausea.

I didn’t belong there.

I had felt that way for the majority of my adolescence, and I could tell the same insecurities were haunting me into my early teens.

The shortness of breath that came with these minor anxiety attacks soon followed. 

I needed a distraction. 

I glanced around the room, looking for anything to take my mind off the claustrophobia that was my inner voice feeding on my insecurities.  

The walls were as exciting as any science class could be.  They were an odd color of beige and gray, just to set the mood of boredom that was to come in the coming year.

Florescent lights above were all bright, and showcased the off white tile on the floor.

Lab tables had beakers and microscopes.

I kept looking for something to distract me from the anxiety that was choking me, literally.

I found it.

 I saw her for the first time.

She had long blond hair.

Her skin was the perfect shade of light tanned brown, from days spent in the sun over the summer.

She wore tight stone washed Guess jeans (again, late 80’s) that just fit her perfectly.

It was early August, but she came to school in a light brown leather jacket.

When she removed the jacket, she revealed a plain white T-shirt. The T-shirt fit her in a way that was “different” than most of the other girls in class.

Her lips were full, glossy and red.

Her eyes were blue.  Not a cliché’ blue, but the kind of blue other girls dream of having.

Sitting that far across the room, I could still see how blue her eyes were.

She sat in the 9th seat back on the 14th row.

She instantly became my high school crush, but would become far more than that.

At that moment, she set the mark for everything beautiful I would see for many years to come.

She would become my primary participant in many daydreams, and arguably a minor obsession.

On top of that, one day she would teach me one of my greatest life lessons…..

Always Kiss the Girl