Y'ALL!!! I can't even begin to express how overwhelmed I'm feeling right now! I just logged into my blog and about peed my pants when I saw the statistics. For those of you blog-illiterates, blogger.com keeps stats of your blog views from every post you...post. It breaks down the numbers daily so you can see how many people are viewing your posts and even gives you fancy-smancy colored charts and graphs for you math people to analyze your data. When I was a fresh blog virgin back in 2010, none of this interested me. However, with real-life book/publishing ideas floating in my head, I've been keeping track. Basically, the more people that follow me or read my posts, the better. This way, maybe people will actually PAY to read what I write. Well, I posted on Tuesday night and my data says that I have just about DOUBLED my viewing from my last post--and that's almost in less than 48 hours! My numbers are steadily increasing, which makes me giddy :) (Unless my numbers are just from the same person stalking my page over and over and over again. Which is totally a possibility. Because I'm completely guilty of creeper-stalking pages and running the viewing numbers up. My apologies to Taylor Kinney's Google Image search result page) I can't thank each of you enough for your support, encouragement, and most importantly, your stories that you've shared with me about your own similar experiences. This tiny seed started as therapy for me and it has grown into a full-blown, blossoming flower! I'm truly appreciative of ALL of you! From the bottom of my heart!
While I've got you here, I have a story that I must share! Tomorrow is field trip day for my class! Whenever 'field trip' comes into talks, my thoughts immediately go as follows:
#1. OMG I'm going to be semi-bus pukey all day.
#2. Ugh. I hate taking 20 other people's kids into public. We all know I'm not responsible--i.e. Redskins tickets. (For those of you who do not know of this story, you will. Eventually.)
And #3. My mind travels to every school trip I ever went on.
Which leads me to this jewel of a story that convinced me of real-life soul mates.
In 9th (Or 10th--my mind is foggy about this detail) grade, we traveled on charter buses to Washington D.C. for the hundredth time to view stuff no self-respecting 15 year-old gave a shit about. At this point in time, I was recognizing that I had evolved into the "girl who was always the guy's best friend, not girlfriend". All my best friends were boys and had been since pre-pre-K. This was getting old. Especially to a hopeless romantic like myself who spent weekends watching movies like Pretty in Pink and Grease II and secretly prayed that I'd find my soul-mate in high school and yada yada yada. I decided that I had a crush on one of my BFFs. However, our science teacher brought her dang daughter with us on the trip (she went to another school but her mom taught at ours) and guess who fell all over her with her stupid, super cute, orangey-dyed hair. My crush. I'd started out sitting right in front of them on the bus but on the way from one stupid museum to the next, we'd gotten scrambled together. I was sitting mid-bus and THEY were in a little group in the back. MY friends (the boys) and HER friends. Oh yes, she brought back-up. And they were the cheer-leading, stereotypical, dumb blonde types that make you want to hurl. We were in the middle of downtown D.C. and all I could hear was "hahahaha stop it! hahahaha you're so funny! hahahaha!" and other sorts of flirty, teenage nonsense. I was seething with anger. I refused to take a glance behind me because I could have vomited all over the scene. I was completely forgotten and totally self-conscious that I had on jeans and tennis shoes while those bitches had on cute, open-toed, high-heeled sandals. I mean really? We were touring WASHINGTON FREAKING D.C. And it was RAINING! I had the window seat and noticed that our bus was in a roundabout...for a second time. I could hear the bus driver talking loudly on the radio and noticed that the teachers were all aflutter, in the midst of all the ha-freaking-larious comedy coming from the kissy-kissy lovefest that had developed in the back of the bus.
As we passed the same street sign pointing to the Holocaust Museum a third time, I perked up. I realized that our driver had either no idea where he was going or we were stuck. In a roundabout. In Washington D.C. On a charter bus. In that instance, all I could think of was Chevy Chase in European Vacation when he was stuck in the roundabout in London. A classic. I knew my guy friends would appreciate a Chevy comment so I sat up, turned in my seat and said, "Hey y'all! 'BIG BEN, PARLIAMENT'!" One of the enemy girls said, "what did she say?" and started giggling like she'd heard the word "penis" or something. My crush was too enthralled with the face of HER that he didn't even realize I was 3 seats ahead of him, turned around, and all but hanging myself over the back of my seat. One of our douchebag friends said, "WHAT?" and looked at me disgustingly, so I said, "We're stuck in a roundabout. You know, 'BIG BEN? PARLIAMENT'?"
I can still hear the crickets chirping and the see the blank stares to this day. Unappreciative tools.
Anyway, I turned back into my seat and stared out the window. I remember thinking, "Is this it for me? Will I always be the girl by herself who says stuff at inappropriate times that nobody gets?" We were literally stuck in that roundabout for 20 minutes or so, unbeknownst to the Breakfast Club in the back. (Sidenote: Unbeknownst is a kick-ass word. We should use it more often in everyday language.) As of today, my "crush" and our science teacher's daughter are STILL together! I quickly got over what I thought was 'more-than-friends' feelings and accepted that I would forever be the girl that had guy best friends instead of girls. It probably had to do with the fact that I flippin' LOVE my science teacher's daughter now and find it ridiculous to have even had a negative thought about her in my head.
Now to the actual point of this story. Fast forward 8 years. Mike and I were on our honeymoon at Clearwater Beach, Florida. In the middle of the little town, there is a roundabout. On our way to our hotel, traffic was backed up because of the Friday afternoon commute. We were both quiet in my little Honda Civic as we'd been stuck in it for a thousand hours and were ill of traffic. While we inched our way around the roundabout, Mike opens the windows, turns down the radio, and says loudly, "BIG BEN, PARLIAMENT!"
I stared out the window, in complete shock. But with a grin on my face for my 15 year-old self.
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