Diary of a Network Geek

Well, I went to the doctor for my results today.

According to the doctor, I have an “unidentified mass” in my right lung, along with fluid and some excess fluid around my heart. Obviously, the concern here is cancer. I used to smoke, though not much, and I have a family history of cancer. On the other hand, it could just be an adenopathy as a result of having such a bad infection for so long. That’s sort of what I’m hoping for, but we’ve got a ways to go before figuring it out.
Friday morning at 9:45am, I have an appointment with a pulmonary specialist to see about getting a biopsy done. My doctor talked to MD Anderson, but going through them could take four to six weeks to get as far as a biopsy. That’s why my doctor went ahead and referred me to the specialist. My timeline should be compressed from many weeks to one or two. Not sure about what this proceedure will entail, but I know they’ll knock me out, so I’ll most likely have to arrange for someone to take me to the proceedure and take me home again. Luckily, I have legions of friends who have already volunteered.

I really, truly had no idea how many people cared about me. I’ve gotten several calls this afternoon already and, in spite of my protestations, I have friends coming over with food tonight. My minister is going to call later, as are several friends I’ve been in touch with via e-mail. I hope it will put my mother at ease to know that so many people are ready to take care of her little boy, so far away from home.

I don’t think I mentioned last night when I wrote that entry, but C. offered to help me with my dog and so on if I had to go into the hospital when we thought I might need to get the lung drained, though she allowed that I had plenty of friends that would be more than willing to help. I was talking to her on the phone, which is a good thing because I’m sure my jaw was hanging slack. I’m not quite sure what’s up with her, but she seems caught between wanting to have a friendly relationship with me and… Well, and keeping some kind of distance. I’m not sure if it’s because of the prohibition on her dating someone from work, or something else, but I definately feel the distance that she’s trying to maintain.  But, don’t judge her too harshly.  Her heart really is in the right place, even if she has some issues right now.  God knows, I’ve been through plenty of that kind of nonsense myself.

So, I guess I’ll update you all again after I know more from the pulmonary specialist.  If you’re the praying kind, now’s a good time to add me to your list.

Well, I had my CT scan this morning.

I headed over to my doctor’s office this morning, arriving very early.  In fact, a good thirty minutes before they opened.  So, I called work to make sure C. knew where I was at and gave her my cell number, in case there was an IT emergency.  Then, I had her transfer me over to the president’s voice-mail, since I report to him, I thought he should know where I was all morning.  Seemed reasonable.  Not that it’s a big deal.  I generally work more hours than all but two or three of the salaried people at my office, so they can afford to give me a little leeway about this pneumonia thing.
So, naturally, I’m on the phone with yet a third person when they open the office and a mess of people get in before me, so I sit and wait another thirty minutes just to get my blood drawn and my order for the CT scan.  Then, I hot-foot it over to the imaging center so I can wait a little more.  Something close to an hour and a half, but they got me in the same day, so it’s not so bad.  Oh, and apparently, my insurance doesn’t cover the CT scan so I had to cough up $450.  Thank God this is a month we get three paychecks!  Normally, I hate getting paid every two weeks, but this month it’s going to work out very well for me.
It was an “open” CT scan, which means it was basically just a donut they passed me through.  But, I had to lay flat on my back.  I got down on my back and immediately started breathing heavy.  The genius tech looked at me and asked if I was having trouble breathing.  I thought, yeah, moron, that’s what the funny look on my face means and why I’m making that strange whistling noise!  But, instead of saying that, I reminded him that I was here because I had pneumonia and probably a lung full of fluid.  So, he told me how the machine was going to ask me to hold my breath and that if I couldn’t, to just let it out slowly and breathe back in slowly, too.  While I couldn’t hold my breath all the way every time, I was able to get by with just a slow exhale to finish out the count for the nice machine overlord.

Now, the doctor didn’t say it, but I’m sure he was checking for cancer, since I have a family history of that.  The tech seemed to think it was just a lung full of fluid from the pneumonia.  I would be surprised at this point if I ended up with cancer.  A bit early for my family, and I’m much more aware of it than anyone else in my family and have made dietary changes to suit my family medical history.  High-fiber and, usually, light on the red meat.  More fish and chicken and even straight vegetarian sometimes.  I know, I know, heresy in Texas, but there you have it.  (Though I have to admit I do have a weakness for bacon.  “Bacon makes it better!”)
So, tomorrow morning at 11:30am, I go see the doctor to get the results.  And, no doubt, several prescriptions to drain the lung and fix whatever else ails me.  Hopefully, I won’t have to go into the hospital to get my lung drained, but whatever the doctor tells me to do, I’ll just do.  Now that I’m under a doctor’s care, it would be foolish to do any less.

What was interesting, though, was the call I got about 1:00pm.  C. had been out to lunch when I finally came back, so she didn’t know I was in the office.  She called on my cell phone to see how I was doing.  She lost her mother to cancer, so she knows why they tend to send folks for CT scans in situations like this.  It was a little surprising to me that she’d get worried.  Honestly, she’d started to get rather predictable, even going back to her old, less-than-kind  boyfriend when she was denied her work-related dating.  Took about as long as I thought it would, too.  Under two weeks.  Predictable.  But, the concern was a bit of a novelty.  She even apologized for not being as good a friend as she should have been when she saw me in person next.
The other surprise was the other girl who started at the same time C. did, O. coming by to check on me.  I don’t think I’ve ever done more than exchange a few pleasantries with her, maybe flirt a little, but she seemed quite genuinely concerned for my health.
Honestly, I had no idea so many people worried about me!  It’s sort of nice to know.  And, I’m sure my mother is relieved to know that people are looking out for me down here, so far away that she can’t.

So, still, no real news yet.  I’m sure I’ll have more tomorrow after seeing the sawbones tomorrow.

It was an interesting weekend.

So, Friday morning, I get to work within seconds of C. We park in different rows, but make it to the door about at the same time. I notice that her hands are full, so I wait a little longer than I normally would to hold the door for her.
“Wow, you’re wearing jeans for a change. It’s nice to see. You look good in jeans,” she tells me. Now, I’m not vain or concieted, but when I worked at the Front Desk, the black girls all complimented me on my ass. I may not have a lot going for me, but I do know I have a better than average ass for a white boy. I’m pretty sure that’s what she really meant.
“Um, I wear jeans every Friday, C. and have since you worked here.”
“Oh, I guess I never noticed before…”
Well, no shit. Who notices the quiet, polite, professional guy who looks you in the eye not the nipple? Who notices the guy that puts you on the prayer list at church because you’re obviously having trouble with the guy you’re dating and just can’t figure out that you should leave him, be alone and figure out who you really are instead of running from the tragic death of a high-school sweetheart? Apparently, not C. Go figure. Just call me Rodney Skinner. After work, I took my favorite, flirty strawberry-blonde out shopping and for Jack-in-the-Box 99¢ tacos. She might be a bitch, but she’s a cheap date. Hey, I’m talking about Hilda, my dog! C. has artificially enhanced red hair, unless I miss my guess.

So, then Saturday night after church, W. the former mechanic who now works with me and, in fact, is responsible for me having my current job, and K., J.’s former fiance, and I go out to sushi at Koto’s. W. and I have known her for quite awhile and I encouraged him to talk to her via e-mail, because I know she’s been a bit lonely and feeling a little out of the social scene at church. After she and J. broke it off, she got engaged again and that didn’t work out either, though for totally different reasons. She’s a very nice woman who invited me into her home the first Thanksgiving I was alone, the week after the Queen of the Damned left. In any case, they cooked up a dinner out, pre-planned, so that she wouldn’t feel suddenly trapped while everyone else got together and went out.
K. is on the Prayer Team with me at church. Actually, she invited me to join back when she and J. were still together. While we were waiting for everyone else to get together for our group prayer, she and I got pressed into service serving communion, which I had never done at this church before. I swear, when we got up to do it and found our place, J. and L. were staring and whispering about it. It may have been my imagination, but I swear I saw her look right at us then lean over to him and say… Well, something.
After church, we hung around a bit, while W. went and got a table at Koto’s. Apparently he knew the place quite well. Also, he speaks very fluent Japanese, which I’d forgotten. I think he might have been showing off for K., but I’m not sure. Either way, it was great sushi and rock bottom prices and I cannot reccomend it enough. We had a nice dinner, even though I was coughing pretty badly. And, my eyes were bigger than my stomache, so I ended up bringing home a bit of sushi for Hilda. Yes, my amazingly spoiled dog eats sushi, thank you very much!

Sunday, I did nothing and loved it.
This morning, though, W. tells me that K. “likes” me. Now, as a former fiance of perhaps my best friend, she’s automatically off-limits, but I have to admit, I am attracted to her. Still, he’s the second guy who’s seen us interact and said that. I’m starting to wonder if it’s not true. But, I really need it to not be true, and I told him so. His response?
“Well, at least she likes you a lot more than she likes me.”
Oh, God, help me!

Now, for the health update…
Got my chest x-ray this afternoon and got a call from the doctor about 6:00PM. Apparently, the x-ray showed no improvement, or not enough for the imaging center’s liking, so tomorrow morning, after I go see the phlebotomist, so they can check on my anemia, I’ll be off to get a CT scan. Apparently, it’s pretty gruesome.
And, I’m taking this very seriously now, because last night, I listened to a guy share at a men’s support group meeting I attend, about his inoperable cancer. The symptoms that he described going to see the doctor for? The exact same symptoms I ignored for months. Now, I don’t think I have cancer, but I do have a history of it in my family, on both sides, so that scared the shit out of me. No more screwing around, I promise, folks. Uncle Jim is taking it all very, very seriously now. Whatever the doctor says I need to do, I do.

I’ll give you more as I know more.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Our dignity is not in what we do but in who we are."

No, not that kind, you perverts!

Just a quick update.
As I head out to the office this morning, eight bags of clothes and shoes are waiting on the front porch for the Salvation Army to come pick them up.  I’m getting down the point now, where it’s just my old junk, her papers and her books to sort through to reclaim the entire first floor of my house.  The upstairs, well, that’s a horse of a different color.  My goal, though, is to get the first floor acceptable enough for a few close friends.  I might even get some advice on colors for the rooms I want to change.  Something warmer, I think.  More welcoming and less sterile than white or off-white.  Don’t know yet, but I definately need to paint a room or two and at least one ceiling.

Tonight, on the way home from work, I’ll be putting a check in the mail that hammers the last nail in the coffin of one of my four credit cards.  One down, three to go.  Sadly, it was the smallest of them to go first, but, considering that I otherwise live pretty much on a cash basis, I think I’m doing fairly well.  One of the guys at work always tells me that I should have stayed married because my debt wouldn’t be so large.  But, as I explain to him, repeatedly, the divorce actually saved me from getting deeper into debt.  My money problems are related to my former marriage, not getting out of it.  So, one by one, I clear my accounts and the books are balanced.
Proof yet again that I can survive anything, somehow.

I know this seems a rather lame post, but all the other posts I’ve started lately either got too heavy too quickly, or got a little too deep into my past.  A past that is, well, just that, past.  I don’t need to get into any details that might put off a future employer or date, especially since none of it was illegal or anything.  A bit immoral, but, hey, even the President seems to be able to slide by on shakey morals these days, no matter what party he’s from.  In any case, I might write them all up one day, but probably not for the blog.

And, now, it’s off to work!

So, I’m tired of everything tasting like metal.

I know the antibiotics are helping me, curing me of a terrible, wasting disease and all that, but I hate the nasty metallic aftertaste they leave in my mouth. It’s like licking the cheap, stainless steel, diner spoon after stirring sugar into your ice tea.
Oh, and what they’re doing to my insides! The other day I belched so loud my dog jumped and ran for cover.
Saturday night I hardly slept at all. I just couldn’t get comfortable and find a position that didn’t leave me feeling like I was going to drown in my own bodily fluids. I fell asleep on the couch Sunday morning after putting on a pot of coffee. A pot of coffee that went to waste, naturally, since I slept beyond the auto shutoff timer.

However, on the good news front, my former roommate finally got all his stuff out of my garage! Yea! So, now, I can move my nasty, brown kitchen table out into the garage and use the nicer butcher-block table my ex left behind. I almost feel guilty using it, not because it was hers, but because she stole it from her second husband. I offered it back to him at one point, but he declined, so I guess I shouldn’t feel strange about using it. It is a nice table. I’ve made quite a bit of space in the one room that used to hold virtually everything the Queen of the Damned left behind. Later this week, I’ll be donating another eight bags of clothes and shoes to the Salvation Army. And, yes, I’ve finally been convinced that it’s okay to donate the stripper shoes that she left behind to the Salvation Army. I’ve been told the working girls shop there, so they’ll go fast. And, no, it’s probably best not to disclose how I found the right people to ask those kinds of questions.
So, soon, I’ll start working on my office and getting that room straightened up. But, I think that can wait a couple of weeks while I heal up some more.

I’ll need to paint, eventually, too, but that’s going to require a bit of thought and planning. Also, I think it will require a second opinion as I’ve been told my taste in colors may not be the best. Well, perhaps, by then, I’ll have a feminine touch around the house somewhere that might lend a hand. Anything’s possible! The people at church keep telling me how God works miracles, so, I figure if He can part the Red Sea for Moses and the gang, certainly, He should be able to find me someone to love all the rest of my days. We’ll see how that works out, but I’m praying for it.

Well, I’ve sort of rambled all over here tonight, so, instead of giving this post a clever title, I’m just going to let WordPress number it. #1194. Almost seven years of blogging and I’ve got 1,194 posts. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Guess who has pneumonia?

I think the doctor was a little surprised to see me walking around, to be honest. He never actually used the word “pneumonia”, but just talked symptoms. I described how things had progressed over the last three months, or so, and how two weeks ago, things had seemed to be getting better. I admited I should have come to see him sooner, but, well, I was a bit thick-headed and from sturdy stock, so I figured I could out last it, whatever it was. I believe his only comment at hearing that I’d fought this for three months was to agree that I was, indeed, a little stubborn. Then, he gave me the inhaler and the first of an eleven-day course of antibiotics, just to help finish “it” off. But, after listening to my lungs, he decided I needed a chest x-ray. Apparently, my right lung wasn’t filling with air very well and he wanted a picture of that. So, he had his staff get me into the imaging center right away. Oh, and he thought I looked a little pale and my blood pressure was a little high. So, they’re doing some blood work on me and, after all the over-the-counter drugs are out of my system, we’ll be checking on that blood pressure.
At the handy, local medical imaging center, they had me fill out a form that included a description of what brought me to their facility. Naturally, I put down “a cough”, because, as far as I was concerned, that’s all it was. The nice lady entering me into their system laughed and said,”Oh, no, honey, your doctor said it was pneumonia, not just a cough.” Naturally, I laughed that off as nothing much to worry about for hardy, Midwestern stock like me. Then she asked me how many days of work I’d missed.
“Well, except for one day travelling for family business, none.”
I mean, c’mon, it takes more than a little pneumonia to keep me from getting the job done. That’s why I get the “big bucks”, right? Yeah, that’s the ticket.
So, in any case, I’ve started my antibiotics and I have my Official Network Geek Inhaler and I’ll hear back about the results of the blood work and x-ray later this week.

Now, on the mental health front…
I had an interesting conversation with C. from work yesterday morning.  Apparently, as a  condition of her full-time employment, she was told she couldn’t date anyone from the company.  According to the grapevine, she put the question to the guy she was seeing, who’s actually “Pappy” from the whole Wild West incident.  Unfortunately, his answer was that his job was more imortant than she was.  Well, there were some other, um, “words” used to, ah, “express” the sentiment that were, to be honest, less articulate and a bit more crude, but that was the gist of it.  In any case, she calls and starts talking about work, but then asks me if anyone is around me.  When I told her no, she starts explaining how important her job is and that “it’s not going to happen”.  I can only assume she meant her going out with me.  Which, frankly, after all the crazy signals and her getting all involved with this other guy, who is a real clown and, well, not much of anything as far as I can see…  Well, let’s just say it left me scratching my head.  Honestly, I think I’d be better off dating the reluctant groom’s former fiance.  And, no, that ‘aint gonna’ happen.

So, now, it’s time to set up the coffee for tomorrow and get some well deserved sleep.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car."
   --Kenneth Tynan

As a fourth-generation Chicagoan, I celebrate this day a little differently.
You see, not only is this a day that greeting card companies crafted into a reason to waste money on cards, flowers and candy for someone who should love you without all that junk, but it was also a very important day in Chicago history. Today is the day when, in 1929, Al “Scarface” Capone gathered together seven of his closest friends and gunned them down. Yep, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Old Al was clever, too. Not only did he get seven of his arch rival’s men together, but he dressed his hired guns up as police officers so that if they were spotted any witnesses would assume everything was under control because the police were already there! Yes, sir, that Al sure was an innovator.
So, as you shell out your hard-earned cash for disposable junk that will most likely go to waste, remember how they used to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day on the South Side. Feels about the same, doesn’t it?
Something else to keep in mind this year, the saint for whom this day is named was a martyr. What does that mean to you and me? That means that Saint Valentine was beaten almost to death and then beheaded on this day. Later he went on to perform miracles and all that to become a saint, but, today is the day we celebrate the fact that a hired mob worked him over pretty well with clubs and then chopped his head right off. Sort of sounds like how love feels for some of us about this time of year, doesn’t it?

Hey, all joking and dark humor aside, I hope everyone has a nice day today, whether they have someone to share it with or not.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously."
   --David Bowie

Trouble in mind, I’m blue
But I won’t be blue always,
‘Cause the sun’s gonna shine
In my backdoor some day.

–Trouble in Mind written by Richard Jones and sung by Nina Simone

So, Saturday, I had lunch with my minister.
Now, when he reads this, I have no doubt that he’ll balk at the title of this post, but, for me, it’s no less true. In fact, that was half the reason I wanted to get together with him.

He’d been helping rehearse a wedding, apparently without the benefit of food, because at two o’clock when I came to get him, he asked if we could get lunch instead of coffee. Naturally, that was fine with me, even though I’d eaten. So, we jumped into the Black Beast, as I often refer to my retired police car, and headed out. I think Matt was a little surprised to find Nina Simone in the CD player instead of Ramstein, but, hey, I like to keep my spiritual advisor/fashion consultant on his toes, you know? Anyway, we made a bit of small talk about health and weather and getting older as we zipped past Six Flags over Jesus (aka Second Baptist) to Escalante’s. Matt’s been working on his PhD. in Lubbock and, apparently, they don’t have any good Mexican food there, so he was craving. I just had ice tea, but they were slow and we had enough to justify taking up the table.

By the time we’d walked through the door, Matt knew I wanted to talk about the two most confusing, vexing, baffling subjects known to man: God and women.
God, it turns out, is the less vexing of the two. As I explained to Matt, I still have a hard time with certain things about religion. Belief in a Supreme Being isn’t so hard. Belief that He cares about so insignificant a life as mine, well, that’s a bit of a stretch sometimes. So, too, that whole salvation concept is a little beyond me sometimes, too.
But, he explained it in a way that, somehow, I’d never considered before.
“What if a friend came to you with a problem? A bad habit he’d tried to break, but had given into. What would you tell him?”
“Well, I guess I’d ask him what he learned. I wouldn’t be focused so much on the bad habit, but the behavior and thoughts that led up to the backsliding. I mean, the point isn’t to be perfect, but to learn from the mistake and move on.”
“Well, don’t you think that an all-powerful, all-knowing supreme being is at least as compassionate as you are?”
“Oh…” Yeah, somehow, I lost sight of that whole idea. That God, as powerful and huge as He is, still cares about me at least as much as I care about people who come to me with problems. See? Like I said, Matt may not be comfortable with the label, but Holy Man fits.

Now, as for the women end of things…
Well, I’ve tried every other approach to women that I can think of, so asking a minister seemed like a novel idea. Besides, Matt’s happily married with two kids and a third on the way. I told him about the subject of my posts last week. I gave him all the detail I leave out of this blog. How I made myself vulnerable to her. How I told her what I felt and thought. How I shared my writing with her. The kind of writing I rarely share with anyone, because I never think it’s good enough. I told him how she rarely returns phone calls or e-mails. I told him how I’d made the decision to pull back, for my own safety, but still called to let her know why I was doing that, because I’d always hated seeing someone turn cold to me with no explanation and wondered why. I told him how all my efforts seem to be met with a confusing mix of appreciation and disdain.
Matt summed it up when he made two simple gestures. With one hand, waving me closer. With the other, holding it up to say “stop”. “Come closer, no, wait, go away.”
And, after listening to the whole thing. Hearing my frustration and my embarrassment and my self-directed anger, he said something to me that shocked me down to my bones.
“She’s not worthy of you.”
I hate to admit it, but that’s a fairly alien concept to me. Me not being worthy of someone else, that I get. But, the idea that perhaps there was someone not worthy of my honesty and openness… Well, it certainly made me think. So did the last thing he said to me about all that.
“Guard your heart.”
And, that I got. The trick, as I told Matt, is figuring out the right balance between guarding myself from harm and being transparent enough to be real. I’ve struggled for a long time to rediscover my authentic self and, mostly, I like who I’ve found. And, damn it, Matt’s right, that should be more than enough for anyone who’s paying attention. How many people would take the risk to be honest enough to share their feelings, even after being fairly certain that things weren’t going well at all, just because it’s the right thing to do.

The other thing that surprised me a bit was when Matt asked me if I’d prayed about it. I grew up with the idea that one never asked God for anything for one’s self. That was the height of selfishness and practically heresy. But, he reminded me of Scripture, which I can’t remember now, where Christ told someone to express their wants to God. He told me it was not only okay to tell God I was lonely for that special relationship, but that God wanted me to bring that to Him. God wanted to hear my heart’s deepest longing. Yes, he already knows it, but God wants to hear it from my own heart.
And, I’ll be honest, I am lonely. It’s not that I lack for friends or family or love at all, but it’s different. Yes, if I want to get out to a movie or dinner or just not be alone, I can find someone to be with easily enough. Male or female. But, I’m lonely in a different way. There’s something different about that tender, intimate relationship with a member of the opposite sex that goes beyond simple friendship. I feel like I know so little of that sort of relationship that I can hardly hold a picture of it in my mind, much less describe it. But, this much I do know, it’s a kind of intimacy that goes deeper than anything else. It is, I think, what drives us all, in one way or another. The search for it gets me up in the morning and exhausts me during the day. If I were to remember my dreams at night, I’m sure it would be all I dream.
So, I started praying about that longing to God. I don’t pretend to know what the results will be, but when my holy man instructs me, this student listens.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Be careful about the bridges you burn, because one might turn out to be the one you later want to cross."

I didn’t do anything bad today.

But, I wanted to.
I’ve been craving cigarettes all week, but I haven’t gone and bought any or bummed any.  Nor do I plan to.  Even though I want to chain smoke really badly.
I haven’t had a drink this week.
Oh, I’ve thought about drinking a little 80 proof medicine to “help me sleep”, but I haven’t done it.  I almost bought into the illusion that the drink would help me forget my self-directed anger and my continual embarrassment.  But, the reality is that, even if it did for a few minutes when I was drunk, it’d all come back when I sobered up.  And I’d be embarrassed by having been drunk.
I’ve wanted to pound my fists against something hard in anger and frustration because I just never seem to learn.  But, I didn’t do that, either.

Instead, I cleaned three great, big, black garbage bags of junk my ex-wife left behind out of my house.  They’re by the curb now, waiting to get hauled away.  There’ll be more next week.
And, I made arrangements to join a standing pot-luck dinner at one of my minister’s houses Friday night.  I still don’t know what I’ll bring, but I won’t cook.  I want them to have a good impression that first night, after all.
And, I made a promise to write something for another blogger’s special project.  A project that she’d aimed towards women, until she found out that sometimes men have the same problems women do, even if we don’t talk about them as much.
And, I made an appointment to meet my other minister for coffee on Saturday before church.  Though I have no real idea why, he always seems eager to sit and talk with me.  I must have more interesting spiritual problems than I realized.  Who knew?

So, I did good things today.   I can always do those other things, those things that will slowly eat me up.
But, not today.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"When in doubt, don't."

Some things never change.

You know, no matter how hard I try, it seems there are just some things about me that never change. Take, for instance, my terrible luck with the opposite sex. Okay, not so much “luck” as the results of a range of poor interpersonal skill and bad choices. Frankly, every time something like this happens, it’s just like Junior High. (I think they call that “Middle School” in Texas.)
There was a girl, naturally, who caught my fancy right at that special time when we were all “changing” and discovering all these new feelings about our opposite member. Her name was Julie. Nice gal, cute, popular, the works. Sadly, I was not cute nor popular. Only I hadn’t figured out that mattered yet. I was a late bloomer. So, throwing most of my caution to the wind, I wrote her a note, no doubt expressing my undying love for her with all the eloquence my little seventh-grade writing skills could muster. I think I can sum it up by saying I wrote something equivalent to “I like you. You’re pretty. Do you like me?”

I was subtle in my delivery of said note. No go between for me! Nope, I bravely told her she dropped something and handed her the note. Then, I believe I practically ran in the opposite direction. Then, for what felt like the next six years, Julie and her friends, the popular girls, all pointed and laughed and made me feel… Well, I guess they didn’t make me feel anything, but what I felt was strange, bad, small, and “less than”. It was a feeling that chased me all through the rest of Junior High and High School, too.
It was that feeling that made me feel good enough to help the cheerleader with her physics homework, but not good enough to be her actual date. No, that was reserved for her boyfriend who was too busy with his Advanced Placement Physics to help her figure out basic physics. Honestly, I doubt she even remembers my name today.
But, that’s pretty well how things played out over those years. I was the nice guy that all the girls felt safe around, and I worked at that, but, as a result, none of them really thought of me “that way”. In retrospect, I wonder how many of them thought I was gay. Regardless, that’s just how things were. No, I’m not whining about that “nice guys finish last” malarkey. It’s not that they didn’t like me, but, somehow, in being safe and careful with them, I just got shuffled off into another category where dating wasn’t a possibility.

So, flash forward about twenty years and several relationships, including one failed marriage. You’d expect that I’d have learned something, right? Apparently not. I discovered that I’ve made an ass of myself again, doing the same things that I did in Junior High.
I put myself out there. I was as real and genuine as I know how to be. I wore my heart on my sleeve. And, I even got a little response. Enough, at least, to keep me hooked. Oh, I put her on the prayer list at church. I prayed for her, at her request. I even sent prayers along to her. (Prayer and my relationship with God is actually a very private intimate thing that I don’t share with a lot of people.) I was caring and I listened to her problems. The whole nine yards. But, Monday morning, when I got into work, I found out she’d been to a Super Bowl party with someone else as her date. Her and her kids.
The guy who squealed had no idea that I was the most likely reason why she’d sworn him to secrecy, or I’m sure he wouldn’t have told me.
I’ll tell you true, faithful readers. I felt like a right jackass. I was embarrassed and ashamed. I was damn mad at myself for getting into that position yet again. And worse, for letting it get to me. And, yes, it really burns me up that after more than twenty years, when I do this to myself, I can still hear Julie and her friends laughing at me.

A friend told me, via e-mail, that it was just my turn to go through this. Again. Just like everyone else. And, honestly, I know that. Deep in my heart, I know he’s right. And, yes, I can hear my very own father saying “In a hundred years, who will care?” And, yes, I know that’s true, too.
But none of that makes it sting less today.
And, yes, just like in Junior High, I want to say something, do something, to make her see, make her understand how unfair it is. How I felt deceived. How I would have handled it all differently if I’d just known from the outset that I wasn’t dateable. But, I know, just like in Junior High, that none of that would be of any use anyway.
Okay, I’m done feeling sorry for myself today.
Thank you.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy."