The Tragic Tale of Carlos and Mari

(there is a video here, RSS subscribers)

I used to have two Siberian dwarf hamsters just like these when I was in college. My boyfriend and I bought them together. It was his idea and when we broke up, not long after we bought them, I retained custody of them. They were named Carlos and Mari. They were both very cute but they met bad ends.

Carlos died during winter break while being watched by my sister, and is buried behind the dorm I lived in at the time. I paid my friend to clean out the cage and bury him for me, because he had been dead a while apparently, before I had been made aware of his demise. We used a spork to mark his grave.

Mari had a stroke sometime the next semester, I think (though I am not veterinarian), and I released her into the wild to enjoy her freedom as an act of kindness, and also because seeing her dragging herself around her cage in circles made me sad. My family likes to tell me that she was probably promptly eaten by a hawk the moment I set her free.

This is part and parcel to why I don't own pets anymore and why I don't think having children is a good idea for me either.

From Russia with Love

When I was in college, I took Russian to fulfill my foreign language requirement.  In fact, my college transcripts say that I attended "МГУ" (pronounced "Em- Gay- Oo"), which would stand for Moscow State University.

background source

I did not go to Moscow State University.

I wanted to go to МГУ, but alas, I missed a lot of class and my teacher wouldn't give me the recommendation to be an exchange student, and I graduated as a surprise that semester anyway, which was kind of fine with me because I learned that I had to get an assload of vaccinations and stuff to go, and that was a point in my life where my fear of needles overpowered good sense. Little did I know that many years later, I would be allowing doctors to stick needles in my face.

Anyway, my choice of Russian, instead of a standard foreign language, like Spanish or French, was on account of the book "A Clockwork Orange," and also because the challenge of having to learn  a new alphabet appealed to me. I had tried to teach myself Russian my senior year of high school, but I was reading from a book and it had no pronunciation guide, so I didn't learn much.

Despite having taken about 2 solid years of Russian (over many semesters), while I can still read cyrillic, I can only remember how to say a few phrases/words and none of them are very helpful, unless I ever find myself writing bad Russian airport porn.

Here is the Russian and the phonetics for you, just in case you want to look it up yourself!
здравствуйте - zdravstvuyte - Hello
Извините за беспокойства - Izvinite za bespokoystva - Sorry for the trouble (said when one calls a wrong number)
Какой большой чемодан!  - Kakoy bolʹshoy chemodan!- What a big suitcase!
Да, это очень большой!  - Da, eto ochenʹ bolʹshoy!- Yes, it is very big!
Я хочу твой большой чемодан! - Ya khochu t'voy bol'shoy chemodan!- I want your big suitcase!
четыре! chetyre!

Just as an aside, this porn script has been a running joke since I was in college, when my classmates and I, who had a crush on our teacher, would go to lunch and laugh about having to talk about his BIG suitcase repeatedly.

Crazy Mike and the Debbie Stick

Hey, mom and dad, you might want to skip this one…

Yesterday, I was in the gift shop in St. Regis, Montana, which is one of my regular stop-offs when going on road trips because it is roughly 2/3rds of the way from my house to my friend’s house, and because once I took a bus to Washington State and it stopped there, so since professional drivers deemed it a good place to stop, I do too. Also it has a Live Trout Museum, and if you won’t stop for a Live Trout Museum, what the hell will you stop for?

During this particular stop, I was searching this giant gift store for something small and amusing to give to a Cheeseblarg follower on Facebook, because I like rewarding people for paying attention to me and humoring me without my having to actually put a lot of effort into posting. I think of it as Operant Conditional Love.

What I wanted to buy was a flashing solar keychain that said “Debbie” but I realized that I hadn’t told you the story that makes referring to everyone as Debbie hilarious, so I bought something else that was equally as amusing, to me at least, and made a note to tell you guys the story, which is what I am about to do.

When I was in college, I had low self-esteem, which as we all know, leads to some really bad choices and amusing tales, thankfully. This story started at a Drag Show at the gay club in my college town. I sat outside on the porch, smoking (which I no longer do), and was approached by a very handsome guy who I had noticed around town before, due to his handsomeness, and somehow, the details of which are fuzzy, it lead to us making out by the stairs. (Yeah, parents, I told you to stop reading this).  As I was giving him a ride home, it occurred to me that I didn’t really know him and he was leading me down unlit and unpaved roads and that he might be leading me to a dark, out of the way clearing where he was going to murder me, but, as you might have guessed, since I am writing this now, and called it an amusing story, he didn’t kill or rape me, for which I am quite thankful.

I didn’t bother getting his number or anything, I just dropped him off and went back to my dorm because I realized that my stupidity was overwhelming, and that while it was quite an experience, it was really a dumb DUMB choice to let someone into my car who I didn't really know, but I could now cross “make out with random attractive stranger” off my list of things to experience in life, and yay, I survived it.

Except Crazy Mike apparently didn't feel the same way about the experience that I did.

I think it was when he started giving me random presents that he got the nickname, Crazy Mike. The first was a Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch tape. No case, just the tape.  And I should probably mention that this was about 1996 so Marky Mark had not been heard from for about 5 years.

 The next time he gave me a ring. I think it was a man’s ring. He might have found it discarded in the street.

“Oh, that’s nice…” I said sitting on the porch of the gay bar with my friends.
“Yeah, we’re gonna get married.” he told me.
“Oh?”
“You’re my girlfriend now.”
“Oh…” For fuck’s sake.  And THIS is why you are not supposed to make out with random strangers, THIS right here.
Entirely creeped out by this, I tried avoiding  the gay club. Crazy Mike, however, started showing up all over town, usually sitting on the hood of my car when I would come out of Denny‘s or Simon‘s. I drove a big ugly station wagon. It was pretty easy to find apparently.

So after a few weeks of being unable to avoid him, I finally went back to the club, and sitting on the porch was Crazy Mike’s equally crazy brother, Mark.

“Hey, Debbie! Debbie!” I looked around, and then realize he was talking to me.
“That’s not my name.”
“My brother likes you, Debbie.  I think you look like a hippopotamus.”
“Well, thank you, Mark. My name still isn‘t Debbie though.”
“He’s got a present for you…”

Oh yay, another present. How wonderful.

He wasn’t there though, so I went inside and watched the Drag Show, and after a while, I grabbed my friend and went to leave.

“I have something for you.” he said when I came out of the club.
Oh, was pretty much my standard response at the time, because OMG, LEAVE ME ALONE, somehow was not part of my vocabulary, most likely on account of the low self-esteem. I looked up at him, sitting on the top part of the porch, he was holding a knife and something that looked like a very long ax handle.
“I made you this, I’m carving your name into it.”
He handed me the stick, which I really can’t be sure wasn’t a very old ax handle. He had carved two lines all the way around it, kind of intertwining around the length of the stick, and at the top, he was starting to carve the name “Debbie.”
“Yeah, my name is NOT Debbie!”

After I received the Debbie stick, he seemed to lose interest in me, although a few weeks later, he found me outside Denny’s and told me that he had something to show me.  Apparently he had learned my name by then because he had it tattooed really crudely in a misshapen heart on his shoulder. I, on the other hand, really appreciated the gift of the stick, even though I had to change the name to my own, myself, because he had actually given me a weapon that I could use to bludgeon him if he had chosen to take his creepy stalking up to the next level. I actually still have it, because it was a nice stick. And also because it serves as a reminder not to make out with strangers who don’t know your name and who have brothers who tell you that you look like a hippopotamus.

Burger Times

I am entirely unable to fathom why, when you go to a fast food restaurant and order your food without bread, they then become completely unable to put condiments on meat and cheese. I get the concept that they are most likely accustom to putting the ketchup and mayonnaise on the bread, but it really isn't that hard.
In fact, every time they refrain from putting condiments on my sad and lonely bunless burgers, I am somehow able to put condiments on it, myself, so clearly it is not rocket science.

Today, at our local Burger Royalty restaurant, I took note of the very handsome older gentleman who works there. When I say handsome, I mean, nearly as handsome as 60 year old Clint Eastwood. I have to assume he either was a ranch hand who murdered his employer and has recently gotten out of prison on parole, or that he raped a 14 year old in the 1960s, because I cannot come up with another reason that some one of that age, who is so attractive, would need to (or choose to) work at a burger joint. He was, incidentally, standing right behind me while I told my mother this theory. If I go missing, it was probably him.

Also, RE: Bunless burgers... FORKS AND KNIVES, assholes. Seriously.

How to Ensure a Prosperous New Year.

Everyone in my family is pretty damned funny.  My sister likes to start traditions in our family, and 14 years ago, shortly before she had our First Annual Christmas Weenie Roast (I don't know that we had more than one), she created the tradition of The Christmas Snake.

It goes thusly:
If you wake up Christmas morning with a bed full of snakes, you will have a prosperous and happy New Year... if you don't die of fright, from waking up with a bed full of (rubber) snakes.

And this is probably why non-Christian funny people shouldn't be trusted to come up with Christmas traditions.

How to tell if someone is depressed, or maybe a hipster.

I couldn't be bothered to put on pants today to leave the house.

I don't mean I went out buck-assed naked on the bottom half, I just couldn't be bothered to put on ACTUAL pants to leave the house today.  Nor a bra.

I was just going to pick my nephew up from school and knew I was not getting out of my car (unless it somehow exploded into flames or something), so I think I am still safe.  When I start walking around in public wearing pajama pants and an old shirt with no bra, it is probably time for medication.

Although, one time, when I was in college, I decided that I would wear my flannel pajama top with a pair of jeans because it was cold out and I thought the top was cute.  I ended up at the health clinic and a lovely, but very concerned doctor tried to diagnose me with depression.  I assured him I had a raging case of weirdness, but that I had not giving up on life because I made ill-advised fashion choices.

It's the bra, really.  As long as someone who needs it is wearing a bra or some sort of chestal support with non-sexy clothing , I am willing to believe that they still have some sort of hold on their sanity. As long as the bra is worn as prescribed, of course.  It doesn't count if it is on the outside of their clothes, or on their head.  And even that can be argued for the sake of fashion, I suppose. I really don't know how to gauge it for people who don't need bras. Not brushing their hair? Wearing sweatpants to work when their job does not involve working out in cold climates? Am I just describing hipsters now?

How I learned to attend classes in college.

When I was in college, I was not famous for making it to classes. Especially not classes that were at 8am.  I learned, eventually, not to schedule my classes before noon.. fine, before 3pm... but I had an unfortunate semester where I had scheduled a Non-Western Art History class at 8am and my teacher was boring, and a jerk, and  I was suffering from allergy-induced panic attacks.  It turns out that they were a reaction to a medicine I took every night at 10 pm, though no one realized it was an "allergy" until well after I had failed a bunch of classes. And since I would take the pill at 10 pm, it would kick off a panic attack a few hours later once it got nice and cozy in my blood stream, so I would have a full blown panic attack at 2 am where I would call my sister, crying hysterically, like the one time I called telling her I thought I might actually be dead.

 "Well, how are you calling me if you're dead?" 

       "I don't know how it works! I'm freaking out, I think it is logical that I might be dead!"

 "You're not dead... go take your meds."

But the meds they prescribed at the college health clinic were Xanax (which only made the attacks worse) and Ambien (which knocked me out, hard), so the one time I recall making it to class, I was pretty much a drooling zombie, which ties back into the whole "already dead" thing ( but I assure you I am not a zombie now, so I may have been wrong on that count- although, if I were that would be pretty cool. Imagine that! You would be reading a blarg written by a zombie right now, a very articulate and funny zombie. You'd totally let me eat your brains if that was the case, right?!).

None of this is the point of what I am writing, though.  The point is, I missed A LOT of that Non-Western History class, and that kinda sucked, because it was required for me to graduate. In actuality, I only remember going to class a total of about 6 times. One of those times was for the final.

Now, I had taken A LOT of art history up until then, having gone to art schools for the preceding 6 years, so I thought that MAYBE I could wing it and get enough right to get a C- in the class so I wouldn't have to take it again, but then, I got the final in front of me, and I looked up at the slides that Professor Jerkhole was showing, and while they were certainly beautiful works of art, I didn't know a damned thing about them.  Well no, I recognized the works by Hokusai, who did those beautiful Japanese iconic prints of Tsunami waves in front of Mt. Fuji.

 And I recognized another Japanese wash painting by Ekaku of the Bodhidharma who had cut off his eyelids to meditate without falling asleep,

and the Terracotta soldiers of the Qin Dynasty (the ones that are featured in the latest Mummy movie).

But otherwise it was a bunch of pretty vases and raku cups and if you don't know anything about art history, none of this means anything to you, I know.  And it didn't mean much to me since I needed to know the artist, the title, the date, the historical period, and the materials of each piece of art.

And then this image came up:

And I looked down at the question on the test that went with the slide and the question read, I shit you not:

And I thought, "Well, shit, I imagine I would know that if I had ever gone to class... um... Buddha?" which was not the right answer.  I was wrong on about 85% of the questions, in fact... and I failed the class and had to take it again at which point I managed to actually go to class and pass.

But even taking the class over, I never found out who made that damned bowl.


UPDATED: 12/13/12 1:52 am- I FOUND THE BOWL! OMG! This is it. It was made by Ogata Kenzan, and his brother was the painter Ogata Korin! I cannot tell you how absolutely exciting finding this was! I found it at the following link FINALLY by searching "famous Japanese pottery." The internet is a wonderful place!
http://mcgyakimono.blogspot.com/2010/10/ogata-kenzan.html

Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Independence Day, fellow Americans, and others who choose to celebrate, as I do, yet another year of no alien invasions.

I am spending my day making ridiculous amounts of food for 3 people and hiding from fireworks.

I really like fireworks, from afar, but the following excerpt from a conversation with my friend the other day will illustrate my main issue:

Of course, I had to clarify:

Friend: Sparklers are my favorite part of the 4th of July!
Me: I like sparklers from a safe distance.... like 15-20 feet.
Friend: Awwwww... did you have a bad experience with them?
Me: No... I just don't like being set on fire. I learned in "Trees, Conservations and People" in college that sparks cause fire.
Friend: ...I've never been set on fire in the 20-ish years I've played with sparklers...
Me: That is not to say I have ever been set on fire... that I can recall... I just would like very much to avoid it.
Friend: Sparklers are totes harmless if respected.
Me: I respect them, by staying 15-20 feet away from them.


In actuality, I was once singed by fireworks in a college homecoming display gone awry, at Gator Growl (Go Gators, and take your fiery death sticks with you) and as pretty as fireworks are, I am more than happy to enjoy them from far far away.

When it rains, it pours!

I love thunderstorms. We rarely get them here in Montana, especially where I live which is surrounded on all sides by mountains, so really “bad” weather often passes us by. But we are having them today and it makes me happy.

Where I went to college (Gainesville, Fl-- Go Gators!) it rained EVERY SINGLE DAY in the summer at precisely 3pm.  I didn’t realize this my first semester, which was a summer semester, and so every day I would walk to class at 1 pm in the sun and I would get out at 3 pm, utterly dumbfounded to find that  the skies had ripped open and every ounce of water on the ENTIRE EARTH was falling from the sky.
I had been through hurricanes in Miami and I had no idea that THAT MUCH water could fall from the sky, all at once.

And of course, I never brought an umbrella, both because it never occurred to me that it was going to rain, even though it did, everyday, but also because I consider umbrellas to be way too mature.
Staying out of the rain is the sort of behavior that you expect from adults, and people who take the time to style their hair, and those who have the good sense not to walk across campus in a thunderstorm because they realize they are most likely going to get sick, or at the least, all of their clothes will be perpetually soggy, and I am just not the kind of person that considers those things. To me, umbrellas are a symbol of a broken spirit.

Of course, if someone offers to share their umbrella with me, and it is big enough, I will squeeze under it with them, because that totally feels fun and free-spirited, but otherwise, I quite enjoy walking through a rain storm and getting soggy, because it reminds me that I don’t have anyone who expects me to be dry.

The Stalker

My family has a stalker.  I didn't realize that my internet fame would cause me problems this quickly.  I figured maybe, at some point, like when people actually knew who I was or gave a damn, I probably should invest in a post office box, but it seems I didn't do it quickly enough. And now... every time we leave the house, he is out there, staring at us menacingly. Or maybe she, I can't really tell.

Pictured here covertly hiding behind flowers while still staring at me.

I learned long ago that bunnies were not to be trusted.
In college, my friends Laura and Heather got me a bunny, an adorable ginger buck, or possibly a doe... I don't know. I really have a deficit in telling the sex of rabbits, but I named it Futurix, and I loved it... okay, I loved the idea of it... I didn't really love that it had free reign of my room as I had no cage and it escaped the makeshift corral I had set up for it in my spare closet and it decided the best thing to do when escaping a cozy closet hutch is to get up on its owner's bed and pee and poop all over it.

I also didn't love that I had to learn the hard way that bunnies can growl as I tried to gingerly get it out from under the bed where it was also pooping and peeing and I was met with fierce glowing eyes and satanic snarling.

 Or that bunnies could star in their own disgusting bunny internet shock videos (if only I had had another bun and a cup) because they eat their own poop, although I guess it was just helping with the removal of the tons of bunny poo it had deposited all over my room. Recycling, right?

After a day or two of the bunny and I tolerating each other's existences, I realized that it was possibly more my fault than the bunny's and I gave him/her back to Laura, who promptly litter trained it and gave it a happy life where no one judged it for eating it's own waste.

But that doesn't preclude the fact that I am now being stalked by a bunny... because it is out there...staring at us... with its fur, and its twitchy nose, and the nibbling... the nibbling!

GET IN MY MOUTH!

For some reason, when I see an exceptionally cute little animal, my immediate reaction is the desire to put its head in my mouth...  For example:

Japanese Flying Squirrel AKA one of the cutest known animals on EARTH!

My immediate reaction.

It's not that I want to eat it, or harm it, or bite it, or scare it, it just... belongs in my mouth.

And I know, for a fact, that I am not the only weirdo who has this reaction, because in college, my friend Norwiener and I went to visit my friend Rian to see his adorable new itty bitty kitten, and the first thing that she said was, "OMG, IT'S SO CUTE! Do you think its head would fit in my mouth?" and then she put its head in her mouth. Or maybe I am just really weird and so are my friends, but I am not alone damn it. I'm not alone.

Brilliant Product Ideas #1

Every once in a while, I come up with some brilliant ideas, instead of just pure unadulterated crap of the silly persuasion.  Unfortunately, upon presenting these ideas to the respective companies, I received the following replies (paraphrased):

Dear Ms. Rose,
That is pure unadulterated crap.
Please stop sending us unsolicited product ideas.
No love,
Us

But they were wrong, wrong I say! So I will share my amazing product ideas with you and then multinational conglomerate type companies, that I fully intend upon naming, will see how wrong they were not to steal my ideas when I was offering them up for free instead of writing about them in my AMAZINGLY popular blarg which will create a paper trail back to me, should they then decide to use said AMAZING product ideas. Early bird, yadda yadda...

So without further ado...

Marshmallow Charger Packs!

In my family, cereal was eaten more as a snack than part of a complete balanced breakfast, and as such, when I was finally able to buy myself Lucky Charms in college (it wasn't that my mom didn't let us have sugary cereal, it was just that she probably knew this problem would arise), I often found, when I went to actually eat a bowl of cereal with milk, all that was left in the box were moderately sweet oat type pieces, because, in snacking on the cereal, I, of course, had picked the majority of the delicious pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers, blue diamonds, purple horseshoes, red balloons, and tasty tasty rainbow marshmallows out of the box. You see, they were magically delicious, but without the crunchy sugary marshmallows, not so much. And then I thought, if only there were little charger packets of marshmallows in a separate bag, I could joyfully pick all the marshmallows out of the cereal, but then have some when I wanted to actually eat a bowl of cereal.  They could even make collector marshmallow packs to entice new buyers. Maybe team up with Zynga? This way, General Mills would be getting even more money from me, I would get more marshmallows, all would be right in the world.
It could also work in other applications, most notably, eating a bag of Lucky Charms marshmallows, by themselves, with no care for dry tasteless oat bits, at all.  But also for decorating cupcakes and cakes, putting in hot chocolate, or sticking them to your sister's face (after licking them, of course) while she is sleeping... the list is endless.

Oreo Stuf!

My other idea was born in the time of Oreo Big Stuf.  If you don't know what an Oreo Big Stuf is, picture a horrendously gigantic Oreo that has been mutated by radiation so that you would need a shoehorn to get it into your super, boss Dukes of Hazzard lunch box.  Who am I kidding?! All of my lunches were packed in plastic Publix Supermarket bags *sad face*... Anyway, I digress.
In high school, my mom was great about packing me lunches full of stuff I actually wanted to eat, which was greatly appreciated, however, when eating Oreos, it historically only takes a few bites before I grow weary of the chocolate sandwich cookie and end up chucking them, after licking out the middles.
I had a system that worked for me, which I now realize is completely grody, but I am going to tell you about it anyway, because, well, why the hell not.?! Sitting in the hallway of my wonderful high school (no really, it was the best, like summer camp for 4 years), I would happily eat the middles out of the Oreos that were packed in my lunch and, once I was done, I would give the chocolate wafers to my friend Erik, who apparently had no issue with eating cookies that had made contact with my mouth and were partially covered in my saliva... yeah.. I don't really know what that was about... but they didn't go to waste, and that was acceptable to me at the time.
The Oreo Big Stuf was much better, because it saved me grand amounts of time, as I only had to open one cookie to get the creme equivalence of 8-10 cookies, but I still felt bad about wasting the chocolate part. There had to be a better way.

My solution, which was summarily rejected by Nabisco, was selling jars of Oreo Stuf, not unlike cans of frosting, or marshmallow fluff. Selling the patented Oreo Creme, in a container, all by itself, would allow those people who really prefer the creamy center to the chocolate wafers (or were allergic to chocolate) to get what they want without accumulating a giant pile of discarded cookie outers.  Again, multifaceted product... it could be used as a filling for Oreo cakes, as a frosting for brownies, OR it could be consumed all in one sitting, using only a spoon, or maybe a finger or two, while watching "He's Just Not That into You," whilst crying...

Nabisco clearly made a grave error by rejecting this spectacular idea.


But, you know where to find me, companies, if you need a fresh new face for your R&D departments.  I have no qualifications at all, other than an active imagination, a love of food stuff, and a useless Bachelor's degree in art, but I'll be right here, waiting for your email! An apology wouldn't hurt either!

She's Crafty!

So the other day, I became very motivated and spent several hours aggravating myself by doing crafty projects for the blarg. I say I aggravated myself because, at heart, I am a painter or at the very least, a drawer... one who draws, not a sliding receptacle for your socks, underwear, and shirts (yes, yes or any of the other things that people put in drawers, I am not a drawer, I am a draw-er).  What this all means is that I am a complete slob when it comes to art, and so, trying to get things to actually look neat and ordered pushes the boundaries of my boundaries, and by that, I mean my patience.  And I am pretty damned patient, unless I am trying to sew things and the thread ties itself into knots to taunt me, or I think, 'oh, yes, I need to put the needle through here though I am not completely sure it will work... oh, no it won't work, that looks like crap... FFFFFFFfffffuuuu... undoing needle stitches through felt now results in me sewing backwards, awesome.'  Or something not nearly as specific.

And then I switched to clay... I took classes in pottery in college and my teacher asked me if I was planning on taking any more. My resounding "No!" was met with a not too nice, "Oh, thank goodness!" Now, that is work with cups and saucers and teapots and all that crap, and I have a great respect for people who can and desire to do that, but I can't and don't... mostly because it is beyond my boundaries of patience (I feel like we've been through this before), and so I just slap things together and hope not to fail (if I am being graded). I am fairly good at figure work, and animals... though again, my sculptures do show my special touch of impatience, which I now declare as a stylistic choice, if things don't go exactly as I expect them to.

So without further ado, my cheesy crafts (which will be placed for sale later, once I am able to procure a ruler, because there doesn't seem to be one in this house, and having the knowledge that you had a green see-through ruler, once, when you were in fifth grade, 20 years ago, while interesting doesn't really help me much when I want to measure something for a proper description now):

Narwhal Magnet (heart not included- except for in the picture where it obviously is)

Mini Narwhal Figure Thingy (man, my thumb is wrinkly)

Felt Narwhal Barrette (the clippy good kind)

Llama Magnet (it's stylistic, not sloppy!)

There will be more coming in the future... there has to be, because I bought all the things to make more so I am determined to use them and get better at things I am not great at, which is the theme of my year.  And I take suggestions... though, unless you're actually paying me, I'll make what actually strikes my fancy.

How I learned not to date at work.

In college, I worked as a desk assistant in the dorms.  That meant I sat behind a partitioned desk from about 8pm to 8am and checked out keys to drunk college kids who lost their keys while out drinking illegally. I also played a lot of pinball.

It was shortly after breaking up with my boyfriend, who had left for the semester break and just, not come back, that one of the dorm security guards, Bobert (named changed for anonymity), made it a point to stop by my desk to chat for a while every evening that we had the same schedule. And then, he asked me out on a date.  I usually just fell into boyfriends after I made them watch Total Recall with me so I hadn't gone on many actual dates, and he was quite handsome, so I was excited to go, though I was not really looking for a relationship... which is a good thing because a relationship TOTALLY wasn't going to happen.

I’m sorry, have I ruined the surprise for you? Yeah, the fact that I “changed his name for anonymity” should have been the first clue… anywho, carrying on…

Bobert decided to take me to a dinner and movie, which is standard dating fare from what I understand.  We were both in college so I was not expecting all that much, but I certainly was not expecting the 99 cent menu at Wendy’s.  But alas, he was handsome and had a totally bitchin’ beard, so junior bacon cheeseburger it was.
We found a seat and I began eating my burger while we chatted, only I was on a date, so instead of shoving the whole burger into my face, I tore off dainty pieces and nibbled them cutely… until I realized that he was staring at me like I was a complete freak of nature.

“What are you doing?” he said gesturing at my neatly torn quarters of hamburger.

“… Eating?”

“Why are you eating like a squirrel?” he demanded.

“I… I eat this way?”

How do you respond to that?  I suppose I could have told him I was of squirrel ancestry and if he was prejudiced against rodentia we could just end this now and he could take me home, which might have been slightly better. But, we somehow resolved the issue of my wildly inappropriate manner of eating and ventured on to the next leg of our date.

Being the big spender he was, instead of going to the movie theater at the mall, Bobert took me across the street to the dollar theater.  For those who don‘t know, once upon a time, they had theaters where tickets only cost a dollar and they played movies that had played at other real theaters but now, a month or two later, were available for much cheaper.  This particular theater was playing a movie I had already seen, a real romantic flick show called “A Time To Kill.”  But again, it was a new experience for me, so I just went with it, though I was getting a little less patient.

Now I have mentioned this was a date, and as such, I had gussied up some.  You know, clean clothes, brushed hair, lipstick, eyeliner, I might have even been wearing eye shadow because I wasted time on things like that back then. And so, I was completely mortified when Bobert began a rant, as we waited for the movie to begin, about how he had come to the conclusion that women who wore makeup were horrible ugly people who had no self-esteem and had to cover their terrible personalities with a slathering of bright colors. After blinking at him in disbelief, I recovered and blurted, “I think men have beards for the same reason!” TAKE THAT BEARD FACE!

About that time, the lights went down and I was relieved to escape into the world of horrific racism, murder, and  KKK meetings that the movie he had chosen to take me to was actually about, while arranging myself into a “DANGER position” and trying to scoot myself as far away from him as I could in my rickety-assed dollar theater chair, so he would stop “accidentally” touching my hand/leg/aura.

I spent the whole ride home in the same position, not even trying to make conversation any more, just staring out the window, waiting for my escape. The date ended with me pressed against the door waving with one hand while clawing at the door handle with the other.

And then I sat and fretted that I was now going to have to see this person every weekend, because we worked together and it was actually his job to come check on me. I prepared myself for it at work with extra magazines and books, so I could artfully ignore him when he came in, but he didn’t… until about two months later. At about 2 am, the door to the lobby opened and he came in with his security clipboard and his stupid beard. Thankfully, I had had enough of a wait so I was no longer allergic to him though I wasn't terribly excited to see him either. The passage of time allowed me to be cordial while he told me how much he had enjoyed our date and explained that his sister (a.k.a. my hero) had gotten mono directly after our date so he took some time off and that was why I hadn’t heard from him. I assured him it had not been a problem, at all.  I have not had one moment of regret since, though, that I never saw him or his beard again after that night.


p.s. For the record, I love beards, just not beard-faced jerk-heads.