whatever happened to, you know, that person, who we used to know?

I was walking around earlier trying to figure out what I was going to do tonight and it hit me -- I am going to do nothing, which happens to be the usual these days.
I try going out, but I do not see anyone I recognize and I go home and watch TV or try to sleep.
Neither of those options sounded appealing tonight.
So I type, about what I have not figured out just yet, so if you are looking for specifics, you might want to try another blog.
It is boredom. Pure and simple.
Ever been there?
Yeah, probably so, since you are reading this right now.
Well, I will start from the beginning of the night so you can better understand the dilemma I am in.
I worked earlier today and finished my portion of my job that is expected of me daily. This comes after going to the eye doctor.

Seems my vision has not changed at all, which is good, cause I was one of those kids who had coke bottles by like the third grade. It got in the way during my teenage years, cause you know, the cool kids did not have glass bottles of the original formula on their faces, or was that during the New Coke years? It might have been, that miserable, poor tasting, failure of a soft drink or pop.
But I digress.
See, four-eyes was not a nickname you sought out in middle and high school. But I got it anyway.
Add to that, my father is a Methodist minister, so I not only had four-eyes to endure, but also "Preacher's Kid" which meant that I could do nothing right in the Biblical sense, at least according to all of those throwing stones.
Well, I got scarred and bruised, but I was not broken. I think. Well maybe that is something for my therapist to sort out, but like the New Coke, Original Formula, it is entirely another topic and one that I have gotten way off course discussing, so back to the idea that sparked me into this chair and in front of this handy computer. So, dating and self-esteem. Hmmmm. That is a tough one and an easy one at the same time, a sort of oxymoron that is.
I always had plenty of grrrrrlfriends. Girls who were attractive, some dare I say HoT! I was never sure why they were with me. I played sports, but it was those dorky sports like tennis and soccer. At the time, I was very good at both. Almost won the state singles title in tennis my junior year, finishing runner-up at sectionals both times. My ability was good enough to catch the eyes of several college and university scouts, so I hit the road playing tennis at a junior college.
Those were a fun two years. Most of my friends were as good if not better than me at tennis, so we had competitive moments. But freshmen and sophomores in college do not always have the rules and regulations tattooed on their hands in case they forget. So me and my band of vandals hit the road with fury. We drank, tried to score some female companionship, there were a few cigarettes puffed on and maybe a cigarette that was filled with a different kind of tobacco.
We had no worries. We were the team. Plus our coach was KooL. He was young and he got into his own hijinks in the hotel bars and such. We were a year or two away from entering the sacred hall of booze. The nectar of the Gods. But hey, who cared, we did not need a bar. We had cheap beer and two or three rooms of ladies from South Alabama who were there for their "HigH sCHOOl" -- get this stroke of luck, or misfortune -- cheerleader camp. They told us there were more.
MORE?
She had our attention, in more ways than one. Let us say our body parts stood at attention. Well, you get the point...
Oh yes, she was right. The Montgomery Holiday Inn and the La Quinta, right next to it, were booked up. There were approximately 500 rooms between the two fine establishments and my crew handled five of the rooms -- two players in each room, there was the starting six and two alternates who filled in during an injury or would play doubles in a blowout win -- and one single room for coach. Well that set our strategy.
Coach would do a door check each night at 11 o'clock, so what we did was make sure we had a designated door man (we were fair, we would rotate us around on long road trips so we each had to do it once). So coach would come around pounding on the doors looking for booze, mary jane, or for mary and jane, two of the cheerleaders we met. Forgive me at that fleeting shot at humor. I will cease.
So after coach made his rounds he would have us believe he was going to his room and locking the door and he would be out. Right? Wrong!
Conniving coach, unaware we were watching from the rooftops in the shadows of the night, observing him slide past his door and he would then tiptoe down to the lounge where there were women his age.
Coach was not much older than us, maybe 30 or 31 at the time, so he was old enough that we would not be hanging out, but close enough that we still had a lot of the same interests. And that spring our tennis team was interested in seeing how many grrrrrls we could get unclothed and how many water tower tanks full of swill we could ingest, And I cannot forget the healthy example we set for all to see as we chain smoked Camels, Marlboro's, Lucky Strikes and one player's Vantages -- yuck!
Still, we looked like we were skinny, Southern, young Rat Pack offspring.
We had the Dean Martin (wonder who that was), the leader Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and on and on. We toured through Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi and our Great State of Alabama. We went all over the place and saw everything. We took pictures, both with a camera and with our minds. This blog is from my mental vault, in case you were wondering.
We sped through towns with no stop signs and no stop lights. We toured through major cities with all types of influence that Coach would not let us near for fear of the school disbanding the team and firing Coach.
We refrained from the truly bad -- which by the way would have been really, really good -- we did it for Coach. He signed us and gave us a team of friends we got really close.
Sorry reader, I am rambling again.
Here we go, back on course.
One of the stops we made was late in the summer, maybe August. School was about to start back in early September and we had restless energy to burn.
We rolled into the Holiday Inn in Montgomery and registered. After finding our rooms, we went to the tennis center to practice and look at the tournament draw. For those of you who are not familiar with the lexicon of the Sport of Kings, I will spell it out for you. The draw is where players are drawn out and placed on a spot on the tournament bracket. That is how you match players up in a tournament and they then play the tournament out to the finish based on where they are on the bracket or the draw.
Back to what I was trying to say.
We went to the tennis center and practiced, but before long we all started to tire of the tennis and we started lusting serious food. Coach decides to drive us back to the hotel where we can shower and make ourselves presentable for the ladies of the Capitol City.
We board the bus and head out. We noticed nothing strange or new about the hotel, but it will be different when we get back, possibly altering the future of the game of tennis forever.
We had an uneventful meal, with one exception -- we invited the whole waitressing crew back to party. They accepted and we chatted and for teenage boys, it looked downright promising.
But Coach nixed the idea, so we got mad and left.
We were surprised when we got back to the hotel. Seems in the four hours we were gone to play tennis and get dinner, every junior and senior high school cheerleader had purchased a room in our hotel.
We set up a strategy and set out into the warm, dark night.
We walked down the hall and met five voluptuous blonds, brunettes and maybe a redhead. The whole crayola collection!
We talked and hung out, they told us where they were from and we returned the same. We walked and talked more. We visited restaurants located beside the hotel. We went to the local park. It was a blast.
I was 17 years old and I had no idea what to do. I played it cool. I played it quiet. I figured, if no one hears me, then no one will see me, and I can lust after their gorgeously, hot bodies, glistening in the streetlight because the heat and humidity made us all one big drop of sweat.
As a kid, I did not know of the eroticism held in a drop of sweat. I did not comprehend how hot nights and bodies close together tend to get even closer and also tend to find ways of cooling off -- like removing unnecessary clothing, which for quite a few meant everything they had on.
Mind you, I kept my clothes on. I was skinny, like malnourished skinny. I also had the Coke-a-Cola glasses to worry about, too.
But I played it cool, I had a sweet tan, good hair, which was rock star long, earrings, and playing tennis had gotten me into fantastic shape. I was toned and had an eight-pack, even though I was skinny, because of that, there was not a single ounce of fat on me. Doctors said I was dangerously skinny, that I needed at least seven ounces of fat with the exertion.
Ha, there I go again, off on another ramble. Hope I did not lose you there.
So back to the glasses -- and being the son of a preacher man -- I was terrified and extremely self-conscious about them. I did not hate them, mind you, but it was like an albatross, hanging around my face, pointing out to those who were way cooler than me how much of a dork I was.
I did not let it get to me that bad, however. I had friends and they were all super cool to me and I to them.
But with grrrrrls, it was different.
I could talk to them. Heck, I could talk their ears off. And I was good with words. I could put them together that would have grrrrrls getting weak-kneed and drifting in and out of consciousness. So maybe that is slightly exaggerated. No harm....
So we spent the entire week in Montgomery and we met and did other things with lots of cheerleaders from all over the state. But there were five grrrrrls that had my card. I kept going back to them. Over and over. There were topless juniors jumping on beds in Room 241! Sorry, I am sitting here in the floor while I look out the window. But at least I am in the room with them. Hey! There are about 20 grrrrrls swimming in the pool! Naked! Nah, I'm going to go to McDonald's with her. BUT SHE'S DRESSED!?! I know. YOU ARE CRAZY! ARE YOU GAY?!?
They did not mean it, but you know hetero teenagers, if you are not trying everything you can to see a grrrrrl naked or get between her legs and start a fire in her panties, then you must be queer.
Well, I am not, nor have I ever been, gay. I just liked this grrrrrl.
Our bond was over my glasses. Like I said, it was a burden and it was an Albatross sitting on my nose. But she let me into her world and it changed my life.
She showed me the braces she had to wear on her legs. She was born with a problem with her legs. Those braces not only attempt to straighten her legs, but they add support so she can walk, although she called it more like a "shuffle."
I noticed them, and commented that I thought they were cute. She said, the same as your glasses. We smiled.
We both tried to overcome our "cute." We so desperately wanted to be hot, or sexy, or whatever adjective the kids are placing on clothing ads or centerfolds or music videos (speaking of that person we used to know! What happened to "MuSiC tElEvIsIoN?).
We wanted to be the ones who had their clothes ripped off by passionate persons seeking the highway to heaven. Lust was not used to describe us. More like loathe. But we were cool with that then. And I would imagine we are cool with it now.
We spent so much time that week together. We swapped addresses and phone numbers. This was the time before cell phones and camera phones. We had nothing to give the other to show off when we got back in school or the amazing person I met at cheerleader camp, or for me at the state tournament.
So we returned home with our memories. Neither of us wrote. We never even spoke to each other ever again.
The Internet is a fabulous universe. You can find almost anything and I did.
I did a search for this grrrrrl and found her. Address still in the same small South Alabama town she had always lived in. Even said she has three kids and has a "wonderful" husband who is the "greatest thing that has ever happened to me!"
I am happy for her.
I got older and got married myself, although my ex-wife probably never thought of me as the "greatest thing that has ever happened to me!" But that is ok.
I got over the glasses issue, by the way. But I am still a dork. But by choice, not because someone put me in that class.
I have had my fair share of women and grrrrrls. Had a lot of fun with them, too.
I have gotten a few "Hot" and "Sexy" thrown my way. I am still cute, too.
That sweat I have seen up close. I have been the one sweating a time or two, too. What I have found is it is fun. A lot of fun. But it is also sticky, too. And most will want you to shower so you do not mess up the sheets! Haha.
The whole "Preacher's Kid" syndrome passed, too. I never pretended to be perfect. I am not a fan of hypocrisy. Those that threw stones at me when I was growing up, well some paid for what they did. Karma. It is a Charlie Batch.
Anyways, that gets me to tonight.
I was walking around and around. Circled the block three times. My newspaper's office is right at the entertainment district of the town I live in and a quick walk out the main door puts you in front of a small bar. The big, populated booze halls are around the corner, but you can smell the smoke and alcohol in the air and you can often hear the bands playing, too.
Trying to figure out what I was going to do with the next six to 10 hours of my life I got to thinking.
I did not really want to go to any of the bars and there was no homes that welcomed me right in. I could have gone to the coffee shop and took a chance that there was a single grrrrrl who might provide me some company, a little conversation. But I backed out.
Not because I am so self-conscious. No.
Not because of my man-hole-cover thick glasses. No way.
I did not go, because I got to thinking.
Thinking about a grrrrrl who I knew back then.
A grrrrrl who overcame a lot more than I ever will.
She did not complain about her condition, so I most certainly should not.
What's complaining about being alone when she kept her mouth shut for 17 years while wearing an erector set on her legs as she mounts a pyramid?
So I walked to my car, turned the key and drove home.
The whole time thinking about that grrrrrl. I think of her now.
How she changed my life by showing me I was not alone in the world.
By being who she is.
I want to thank you Lana, where ever you may be.....