My first date was with a fellow I met at college. Yes. Me, twenty. First date. Doesn’t seem right to me either. I was sitting on one of the old couches with questionable stains that I was trying not to think about as I struggled to do my intermediate algebra homework, when this tall skinny guy went into the bathroom which was stationed right in front of my seat. No I did not plan it that way, but as it turned out it was a very nice place to sit as even hot guys have to go to the bathroom and this assured that I would get nice glimpses of them as they made their way to the john. Unfortunately, less than savory men also had to relieve themselves, so it was just as often unattractive men I found myself peeking over my math book at. Such was the case of my encounter with my first date. Not to say that he wasn’t attractive, just not to me. Well, he went his way and did his thing and I continued to ponder over the worth of variables and radicals and all the other math jargon that can lead a college student to mental instability. When he came out of the bathroom, he suddenly turned and sat down next to me on the old couch type thingy, after asking if I could move my stuff so he could sit there. As soon as my school bag hit the ground he was talking. I can’t even recall what he talked about, but to my annoyance I found myself trapped in conversation. Couldn’t he see I was doing my homework? Still, I was polite and as charming as a socially impaired young woman like myself was capable of, and before I knew it he was asking for my number. I used my old standby of what’s your e-mail address, the plan being to conveniently lose it and then never see this fellow again. That’s when to my horror he said he didn’t have e-mail. Stupidly I had no back up plan. I found myself writing out my number to this stranger simply because I couldn’t think of a lie in time without looking obvious. One can hardly say, "wait a moment whilst I think of an excuse that doesn’t sound like an excuse." And so my fellow bid me adieu, folding the paper with an expression very much like triumph, and shoving it in his jeans pocket. I sat there for a while, dumbfounded and giggly, immersed in the knowledge that I was hot. I must have been hot, why else would this averagely cute guy ask for my number? My ego went up like a rocket and I found myself….giddy. Did I like him back? No. But he liked me, and that was one thing that I liked about this complete stranger. I mean, how bad could he be if he liked me? It was all I could do to keep from turning to the strangers all around me and saying, "I just gave a total stranger my number! Someone likes me!! What’s my dad gonna think?!!" Fortunately I had some control over myself, so I ended up grinning like an idiot instead. I’m sure I scared my share of people as I walked down the hallways with an expression that would not have looked unnatural on the Joker. All the rest of that day I thought about my guy. Obviously he was MY guy now. He had my number after all. I thought about what I’d tell my parents. I thought about what I’d tell my sisters. I thought about what I’d tell my grandchildren that I would be having with this man. And the whole time I wasn’t attracted to him. But that was a very minor and unimportant detail at the time. I was a love starved girl and finally I’d found a donut hidden under the kitchen counter. I wasn’t going to starve after all. Who cared that I hated maple bars? I had visions of him turning out to be a wonderful guy who would sweep me off my feet, magically turn out to be the same religion, have the same goals, and secretly be a very young heir to millions of dollars. Our children would be named Elizabeth, Eveline and Ponty. We would have a red porshe (convertible of course) a mansion, and be deliriously happy. My current person I was pining over would see this new man and realize what a fool he’d been. But of course I would be totally over him by then, going to Bermuda on my honeymoon. In these visions, my new guy had strangely changed appearance. His body had changed to resemble that of a young soap opera star. Any young soap opera star. His words more charming, and his face…well lets just say it was a vast improvement. There was nothing mild, or cute about this fellow. Alarmingly handsome fit much better. And so I found myself floating on a cloud the rest of the day, breaking into fits of girlish giggles and blushing constantly. What a dope I was. When I told my father, he was none too pleased, but that didn’t stop me from talking to Zach (that was his name) on the phone that night. Fortunately our awkward conversation was cut short by my father, who pretended to need the phone and then proceeded to lecture me on the dangers of strange young men who would catch me alone, chop me up into little pieces, and disburse me in various dumpsters of the greater Vancouver area. Poor daddy. Didn’t he understand? This guy LIKED me! True I would be careful, even delusional I was no fool. But it was quite obvious to me that my future husband would never try to harm me. I’d be less inclined to marry him if he did. Then the next day I was at school and ran into him again. At first I didn’t recognize him. Who was that odd looking fellow who was staring at me? Then I realized it was him. Boy, I didn’t think it was possible for someone to change so much overnight. This couldn’t have been the muscle blessed Adonis I’d talked to last night for fifteen whole minutes. This was a mildly cute in an unremarkable way, average Joe. And he recognized me. All my illusions of him crashed to the ground, and I realized this was not the man I was going to marry. My fantasies had ended. As I made conversation with him (awkward might I add), I saw that this was not going to be a Romeo and Juliet romance. Still, I kept my hope. After all, one can’t always automatically like someone that way right off. A lot of couples didn’t start off liking each other. Why should we be any different? I was determined to give him a chance. After all, HE LIKED ME. That’s not something that could be said of many men, which automatically made this one special as he seemed to be in a class of his own. And so we talked, and when my friends I’d been waiting for arrived, I made a speedy departure, not wanting them to interact with each other because the possibility of emberrassment from either side was much too strong. And so we fled, leaving him behind in the dust while I drowned my nerves in a box of tator tots. (Those ARE boxes right? Well, you know, those cardboard boat thingies anyway.) So yes, it was indeed an interesting situation. Over the next few weeks I was to run into him several times. He was like a stalker only without the psycho murderous tendencies. Thankfully! Our conversations seemed to go easily enough. I was charming and witty and everything I really shouldn’t have been towards a man I was not attracted to. He responded in kind, only without the charming/witty part, and would often thrust a candy bar at me in a primal neanderthaalish attempt to seduce me with food, as though I needed him to provide me with it and would in my gratitude be his wife and give him strong babies who would inherit their father’s uncanny ability to capture wild snickers bars after beating them from vending machines. I must admit though, it almost worked. If it had been Milky Way instead of Snickers, I might be writing a very different story. Fortunately peanuts have never been my favorite, and so I was able to maintain a clear head and decide to hide in the library until he lost interest. My ingenious plan worked for a while but it was not to last. Eventually my fellow was to find me and demand a date which I was unable to deny for some stupid reason. Probably because I’m wretched at saying no. Except when it comes to drugs of course. Consequently I have never been asked to do drugs by anyone in my life. The one thing I was prepared for! Anyway, another reason I accepted had something to do with the fact that I was twenty and utterly dateless and that was just pathetic. At least this way I could experience ONE of the many rites of passage I should have been attending. Now, before I continue further, I think I ought to explain that I’m not a complete dog, nor am I fat. You might think that’s the only explanation for me being dateless at twenty, but actually it’s a very common ailment. It is the silent illness of young men and women everywhere and there is nothing wrong with us! We’re often very hot looking even, but for some strange reason Mother Nature has decided to stamp "Do Not Ask Out" on our foreheads. Unfortunately for me my fellow seemed to be unable to read. Either that, or he had no respect for mother nature. Either way those aren’t the kinds of people you want to be dating. Reading is a very vital skill these days, and lack of respect for mother nature usually means she runs over you with a tornado or something. Don’t want to hang out with someone bound for a meeting with a tornado! So as you can plainly see we were doomed from the start.
The night before my "big date", two of my friends came over and helped me pick out the proper first date attire. It took us two hours to come up with one of the most casual looking things I’ve ever worn in my life. Ah, the joys of being a woman! The next day we met at the college for two reasons. One, he could have been a psycho and you should never tell psycho’s where you live in my humble opinion, and two, he didn’t drive anyway! I would call him a loser for that, but I don’t drive either so I’ll keep my mouth shut. So I met him at the school and he had an absolutely stunning picnic basket, one of the most beautiful I’ve seen with black curly raffia type things that are supposed to make it pretty but somehow just make a big mess. He had fancy sub sandwiches from Safeways, chips, cupcakes, and what was most impressive, a bottle of sparkling cider. I naturally complimented him on his hunting skills and followed him to the bus stop where we rode downtown and after much searching and walking in circles, finally found a quaint little park with a gazebo which is naturally where he chose to eat, being the typical male attempting to be romantic. It wasn’t long after that we discovered he had neglected to bring anything to open the sparkling cider and so he desperately attempted to open said bottle by jabbing at it with various sharp objects until he got so frustrated he started pounding the neck of it against the gazebo, grunting and mumbling like some kind of sasquatch. Fortunately there was a repairman nearby who had the proper tools and so the bottle was opened without loss of life or limb, though by then it was thoroughly shaken up and promptly vomited it’s contents all over his arms. After lunch (which he ate most of) he proceeded to tell me wild tales of his past in which he seemed to be the most accident prone and frequently hospitalized human being I had ever heard of. One of his tales he had a toothache so bad that he claims to have swallowed "60 ibuprofen" and had to get his stomach pumped. I think it was at this point that I realized our relationship was not going to get past the picnic. First of all, I hate it when people deliberately spout "Ibuprofen", as if it makes them all medical and knowledgable when really they should just say "Advil". Medicine snobs. That’s what they are. But more than that I had the thought that this man must be a total and complete idiot. Or a liar. Both were big downsides in my opinion. If he truly had a toothache that bad he would have to be an utter nimrod to take 60 Advil (I refuse to call it ibuprofen) and expect to be ok, in which case he should have used the money to get his stomach pumped on fixing his ruddy tooth! Plus, what kind of idiot takes that many advil unless he has a death wish? Suicidal tendencies are not attractive by the way, another downside. Overall I decided he was probably just a liar, which is of course one of the most unattractive qualities of all. So here I had an idiotic medicine snob liar with possible suicidal tendencies who was bragging about being stupid enough to take 60 advil at once. Nope. Not my kinda guy at all. Things only got downhill from there. We walked from the park to the waterfront by the river, after crossing many lanes of scary traffic during which he dropped the cupcakes on the highway and then picked them up and put them back! He was later to eat said cupcakes and find me weird when I politely declined. My gosh! Are men really that daft! I bet he was the type to not wash his hands after going to the bathroom either with that kind of attitude. I mean it should be common knowledge that you don’t eat highway cupcakes! Well, we at last got to the riverfront where he walked barefoot and I wisely kept my shoes on as there was gravel and splinters and wood and all manner of nasty things to step on that would likely end with someone in the emergency room and a big nasty saw amputating their severely infected limb while they also got disenfected for the bubonic plague. We were on the shore of the Columbia river after all. Then he started flicking sand at me, which I greatly resented. I threatened to rip his arm off and beat him to death with it, but he somehow didn’t get the hint and wouldn’t stop. Stupid head! I have to say, the quickest way to make me your blood enemy is to throw sand at me. You automatically deserve death in my book, and I’ll do my best to deliver it. Unfortunately the skinny thing was fast, so I didn’t get to become a murderer as I’d hoped. He continued with the sand flinging and then proceeded to wrestle me, which freaked the crap out of me. "Oh great, he’s going to rape and kill me and shove my body in the Columbia!" I thought to myself. After a while I realized he was actually trying to have fun and play, which of course only made me mad. So I twisted his arm behind him and shoved my heel "playfully" into his back. We stopped playing after that, though the fool was still happy as a clam, completely ignorant to the fact that I’d nearly busted him up. It was the most irritating thing ever. I was lucky though that he did most of the talking as I really felt the less communicating with him the better for my part. Usually I prefer equal chances to talk in a relationship, but as I considered this fellow to be on his way out so to speak, I figured I’d let him get his kicks in. I’m very kind that way aren’t I? So I listened to him for hours, chatting away about his ideas and books and his friends (the latter of which I began to wonder if were cute) when at last I declared it was time to return. We took the bus back to the college, at which point he started poking me and grinning as if he was the cutest thing since Curious George. All it did was enflame me unto murderous proportions. Poking is one of my VERY big pet peeves, and as it says in the scriptures of Heidi, "Thou shalt not poke lest though be branded with a thousand flaming swords and pinched between the fingers of a giant until thy head shall fall from they body a thousand feet and land in a pile of steaming poo. Yea verily yea." Ok, so that didn’t happen to him, but he did get several wicked elbow jabs, meant to immobilize and possibly maim him. Then the dumb stick was stupid enough to think I was playing and he proceeded to elbow me back! Hard too. It turned into a very nasty and vicious elbow war, many casualties too, and they all seemed on my side. He was laughing gleefully as if it was the funnest game he had ever participated in while I proceeded to bruise my flesh in an attempt to impale him with my elbow. I literally had bruises by the time I was done. I had to turn my face to the window to hide my tears of defeat, for I had not only lost, but my enemy had fun whilst he beat me to a pulp. Yes, my enemy had truly humiliated me. It was a sad ride home as I realized that this man seemed to have had a wonderful time and had absolutely no hint that it was over already. Poor thing, never saw it coming. As we waited for my parents ever comforting red van to show up, he smiled at me with a goofy expression that I should have forseen as a warning to imminent danger. "I’m going to kiss your hand."He informed me in what I think was supposed to be a gallant voice. I looked at him blankly, trying to figure out what he just said. Surely he couldn’t have meant what it sounded like! And then suddenly, there it was! He grabbed my hand, brought it up to his lips, and kissed it! It felt cold and wet and slimy and it was all I could do not to run inside and wash my hands. He let it go with a half lidded expression that I think was supposed to be suave but really came out as kind of a cross between a wannabe Cassinova and a village idiot. Heavy on the idiot. Yes, it was at that moment that I realized I was the most offended and that I never wanted to look upon his countenance again. Of course that meant mom and dad offered him a ride home and I had to endure another poking session with him in the car. Such is the way of the fates. Needless to say it was only a week or so later before I was clutching my green power ranger of luck and dumping him via phone, mumbling and babbling about how I would prefer it if we didn’t see each other any more while he pretended to be fine with it. Yes, at last the drama was over. The poking, the ibuprofin, the hiding in the library! My elbows could even start to heal! Oh yes, I was free and clear and I could eat Milky Ways instead of Snickers and I could walk the college without fear! FREEDOM!! Life was good! Life was beautiful!… And then I met John.

I LEFT MY HEART WITH THAT PIECE OF STRAWBERRY CHEESECAKE

* Disclaimer* I must confess that I might have exaggerated a wee bit in some places here. Ok, maybe a lOT. Especially about the near death experiences and the sweat incident and the gorcery store sequence....though I really did see a fat lady in the grocery store once! So yeah, just thought I'd warn ya cause I don't think there really is a black market for exercises, believe me, I've looked. (end of disclaimer)

Like so many other American women, I recently was overcome with the desire to get what is known as, " a hot, hot body." This is a natural desire. Much like the instinctive spawning journey of Alaskan salmon (and any other kind of salmon so I’m told) this urge just came upon me suddenly and I knew I must fulfill it or the future generations of my species would be doomed. Well, okay maybe not doomed, and I don’t know about any future generations, but the urge was strong none the less. Not to spawn, but to get a hot, hot, body. Am I confusing anyone yet? Moving right along! So after a few moments thought I decided, "why not!?" And proceeded to commit myself to endless hours of torture so difficult that I would lose all the moisture in my body through a painful process called sweating, and submit myself to physical strain so hard that I would be guaranteed to fall down on my knees in heart wrenching sobs at least twice a day. You know. Exercise. And so I did. My parents got used to the inhuman shrieks of anguish after a while. After all, they’d already had to deal with that when I went through puberty. And eventually I got them under control enough (the shrieks, not my parents. There’s NO getting them under control) that the neighbors stopped calling the cops every morning. In fact I started to improve! I did those stupid aerobics tapes every flaming morning (except on weekends and Fridays, and okay I guess I should have said almost every morning) and I got better! Eventually I was jumping higher than the instructors themselves! I had more energy, was moving faster and harder, and did I mention I could jump higher? I was getting pretty excited, even though there was that one incident where I sweated so much that every drop of moisture in my body ended up on our family room floor and I was rushed to the hospital and got a contract with a show called "Freakiest People in America" (it airs next month!) and the doctors said they’d have to study me in their lab for the next fifty years, not to mention there’s a nasty stain on our family room rug now, but at least I knew I could jump pretty good by jingo! So through the months I worked out. I did aerobics, I lifted weights, I did those degrading squats that make you look and sound like your delivering a baby standing up and the little gremlin weighs about seventeen pounds. Heck I even tried jogging a couple times! (I don’t recommend it by the way, unless you’re a masochist.) I worked and slaved for about three and a half months! Did I dramatically improve? Did I get the lean sculpted body that would make women wish to kill me and grown men weep? No. I got a little tiny bump in my arms. I stress the word tiny by the way. Sure I got more stamina, and there were slight changes, and I sure as heck looked better than I did three months before, but that doesn’t mean I got a "hot, hot body." Which is really what this was all about right? You wanna know what was really holding me back? What really kept me from achieving fitness nirvana? My legs. Or my thighs to be more exact. Its always the thighs. If you looked up thunder thighs in the dictionary, you would see my picture. I’m right in there between "thunder-struck" and "Thursday." To say that my legs are sturdy is about the grossest understatement in the world. They are huge. They are massive. I could beat Godzilla in a leg wrestling contest! You could measure the circumference of my legs in hecatres! I could jump up and down and cause an earthquake more fearsome than any California has bragged about. It is literally that bad. My sister says I have "substantial legs". That’s her way of being nice. I mean you know when you put on a swimsuit and someone starts choking on their spit so bad that they require heimlich and a weeks worth of bed-rest, you have a problem. I most definitely have this problem. I was so close to achieving my dreams of a hot, hot, body. Well okay, maybe just a hot body. Or even lukewarm. If I stood about fifty feet away in a swimsuit and someone with severe myopia were to squint at me on a cloudy day, they might say, " Oh, well. She has a fairly decent body." And then as they get closer, " Yeah, pretty decent indeed. I wonder if she would give me her phone- HOLY MACKERAL!!!!!! ARE THOSE HER LEGS?!!!!!! I THOUGHT THOSE WERE A COUPLE OF STRAY REDWOODS THAT HAD SOMEHOW BEEN STRIPPED OF ALL COLOR!!!!!" (my legs are quite pale on top of things, but one thing at a time you know?) "SHE’S THE WALKING EPITOME OF THUNDER THIGHS!!!!! I BET YOU’D SEE HER PICTURE IN THE DICTIONARY RIGHT IN BETWEEN THUNDERSTRUCK AND THURSDAY!!!" And then they would continue to rant and rave and run to the nearest optomitrist to get an eye exam and a new prescription and thus avoid another near disaster like the one they just narrowly escaped. Do you kind of get the picture? Well, now that my body was sorta half way decent from the waist up, I knew I had to buckle down on my legs. The only thing keeping me from the "hot, hot body" I so desperately desired. So I toned them, and toned them, and toned them some more, giving them the proper day in-between rest each time. I was sure the new squats I’d obtained illegally on the exercise black market would do the trick. Nope. Not a change. What could I do? I was seriously beginning to consider amputation! So I did something ten times more drastic and three times as inhumanely self destructive. I cut out sugar. Yup, I was a regular health nut. I became the anti-cookie. I was a sugar Nazi. Not only was I off sugar, but I tried to convert those around me as well, spouting gibberish about how sugar was empty calories and of the devil, yada yada yada. Meanwhile I would totally deprive myself of all things sweet and wonderful. Even juice! How did this affect my psychology? Heavily! It got pretty scary for a while. At night I would have strange dreams of a certain brand of candy that shall remain nameless for the reason that I don’t want to be sued, dancing around and singing show-tunes.( Until then I was not aware that candy could sing.) Then I would go to the store and pass the bakery section and all I could do was stare. There was pies and cookies and cakes and doughnuts (oh the doughnuts!!!!), and did I mention the pies? It was like I’d been transported to Temptation Island, and all the bakery goodies were trying to get me to cheat on my long grained brown rice. "Eat me!" They taunted. "We know you want to taste the sweet glaze in your mouth! To romp with the chocolate chips in that cookie! To drown in the lemon meringue in that pie!!!!!" At that point I kind of lost it and started answering back. I mean, how could I take that lying down? "Shut up!" I hissed, smacking my finger on the plastic cake cover harder than necessary. "I won’t give in! Never, never, never!!!!!! I won’t turn my back on the brown rice back at home! We have a good thing going!!" I proceeded to lecture the bakery items until a woman with a shopping cart pulled up behind me. "Are the pastries taunting you too?" She asked sympathetically. I nodded dumbly, a bit tired by my tirade. "Yeah. I know the feeling." She smiled. "They used to try to get me to cheat on my baby carrots and celery stalks." I looked at her in surprise. "How did you get them to stop?" I demanded. "I gave in." She shrugged, reaching over and sticking about twelve bakery items in her cart. "They only say nice things to me now." It was then that I noticed she was obese. I mean she practically had to get a separate shopping cart for her stomach! I let out a terrified shriek and fled the store, throwing my unpaid items at a bewildered cart boy and rushing to find my dad, gibbering the whole time. I knew I couldn’t go on like this. It was only a matter of time before I woke up and found myself lying next to an empty pie pan, my face stained with the blood of a dozen raspberries, and regret imprinted on my heart (not to mention thighs) for all eternity. So I did the only thing I could do. I gave in. No I don’t eat sugar nearly as much as I used to, and I do turn into a Nazi again sometimes, and I do still exercise, and I do abstain quite a bit, but at least I won’t ever wake up next to the remains of a pie and wonder how I got this way. Instead I’ll eat a small pie (you know those 25 cent ones?) and eat it in full awareness and sanity (except for that one incident where I had two pies and a candy bar and some hot chocolate, AND some juice, but my therapist told me not to talk about that.) I’m not perfect, but I’m better than that lady at the grocery store! And though I may never have thin thighs, at least you know if Godzilla comes into town you have someone who can challenge him. Besides, whatever happened to curves anyway? Are they so terrible? So as I’m here writing, eating chocolate chunk granola bars and other sinful things, I can honestly say, "Yes Kt, I DID eat the last of the lemon sandwich cookies! And no I am NOT sorry!!!!HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!"

I have discovered something fairly alarming in my past that makes me worried as to my future welfare. The discovery that I was so misfortunate to uncover is that I am truly unreliable in dire situations. Actually, to be perfectly blunt, I'm an idiot in dire situations. Now I have not had many of 'said' situations to go off, but I did have one of sorts that proved me so utterly lacking in any rational response to emergency that I fear should a real one occur I would be totally and utterly doomed. I suppose I should start at the beginning.

It was about six or seven years ago, around Valentine's day. I know this because my parents had bought those really cheap candy hearts and me and my sister had spent all day purloining them from the kitchen counter whilst my mother was obliviously typing away in the family room. Eventually my parents left, and it was just my sister and I, totally and utterly free to eat said candy hearts until our teeth were so coated in sugar that you could actually feel the cavities beginning to form. Ah, the joy of Valentine's day. Anyway, we were content to just hover in the kitchen and eat the conversation hearts until they either came home or we ran out, when suddenly we heard a knock at the door. A rather violent knock. Actually I would definitely call it a pound in retrospect. Now before I continue you must realize that my family was raised to be paranoid. We were raised on hearing bloody stories of young girls getting murdered in their kitchens or kidnapped on the way home from school to the point where I am pretty much now a paranoid freak who refuses to answer the door even when my entire family is home as I have no desire to be stabbed or shot or experience some other such unpleasant greeting. So naturally it's no surprise that we weren't allowed to answer the door or phone when alone, and to this day a knock at the door is enough to stop us in our tracks and make us the equivalent of wide eyed statues until we are sure the knocker has departed. It's actually quite the adrenaline rush! Anyway, back to my story. The fact that in this case we had not only a knocker but a pounder was quite a big deal. After all, if a knocker is a possible axe murderer who is politely asking if he may come in and kill you, a pounder is an axe murderer who has skipped the initial asking permission stage and is moving right in to rude murder without asking first at all. As it was, this pounder was quite determined, for he would pause a moment and then proceed to pound even more violently than before, and from the sounds of it he really wanted to get in. I wish I could say I thought clearly during this situation, that I had the sense to be afraid, but really my mind went totally and completely stupid. I was clutching a very generous handful of conversation hearts and I turned expectantly to my sister, waiting for her advice and feeling a bit bothered that the candy was starting to get sticky. Somehow one of us suggested that we run to our parent's room as it is the only room in the house with a lock and I had the random thought that we should drag our dog AJ with us because I didn't want him to get shot. And so we hurried off down the hallway and locked the door while the pounding continued even more violently. "We should call Tara." I suggested, hoping my sister could help us out somehow as she only lived two minutes away. Katie turned on me and looked at me like I was insane. "We should call the police!" She snapped, and I could very much hear the silent 'idiot', she'd thought at the end. It was insane, my mind was totally and completely mellow. I felt like I was on pot (or at least how I imagine it as I've never used it). I was one cool cat, I was simply chillin while our house got broken into by a possible axe murderer. That's not to say of course that I didn't try to act. I did. I looked around for anything I could use as a weapon and the best I could come up with was a box of kleenex that Katie quickly rejected, looking at me like I was insane. Realizing that there was nothing and I would have to hit them with my hands, I remembered the conversation hearts. What was I going to do with them? I didn't want to put them down, the dog might get them! Besides, what if I didn't get a chance to come back and get them later? I did want them after all. Still, my hands needed to be free if I was going to properly defend myself so I did the only thing I possibly could. I shoved them all in my mouth. There was no way I was going to leave my candy behind! And so I followed my sister around the room as she frantically looked for something to help us, my cheeks reminiscent of a gerbil who had stuffed a bunch of tissue in them and looking about as unintelligent as was humanly possible at the moment. Katie looked for the phone, but it was cordless and someone had left it in the other room so we could not call the police. Naturally the pounding was continous throughout all of this, making her more and more frantic. Meanwhile AJ treated the situation about like I did, wagging his tail and begging for some of my candy, which I wasn't about to give him, even if I did feel like taking it out of my mouth. Suddenly we heard the front door slam open and bang against the wall rather violently. Katie turned 3 shades paler and the next thing I knew she was crawling on my parent's desk, sliding open the window, and kicking out the screen. She was already leaping out by the time I realized what she'd done. "What about AJ?" I protested, knowing the poor dear would never be able to make it out such a high window and we didn't have his leash anyway. "Who CARES about AJ!" She snapped, already rushing around the side of the house. I followed awkwardly, though my leg got a bit stuck coming out the window and I pretty much fell out rather than crawled. It was very wet and rainy outside and I had no shoes on, which I was painfully aware of as we splashed through puddles and ran through muck and pine needles. "My new socks!" I whined, knowing they would be stained now. She didn't dignify that with an answer but rather we kept running until we reached her friend Lindsey's house who lived a block away. We knocked on the door hurriedly and her friend' s mom answered, looking surprised. "Oh, did Joe not come home yet?" She asked confusedly. Joe. Our brother. Our brother who had been over playing with Lindsey's brother. Our brother who we realized then had been playing a prank on us. Looking absolutely flabberghasted (isn't that a great word?) we stalked back home to find Joe, looking highly amused and very unrepentant. He was surprised to see us though, as he had thought we were in our parent's room. When he'd finally "broken in" he'd heard some shuffling at their door and figured we were in there and so had held a short dialogue with what turned out to be AJ on the other side, informing him that he could come out now, it was just him and he had only been playing. Naturally when he only got scratching and heavy breathing as an answer he'd been confused, but being a stupid guy had not investigated. And so there we were, our brother had nearly been arrested (or would have if the cordless phone had been put away), our dog was locked in the room and we did not have a key for the door, and our parent's screen window looked like Bigfoot had used it for a piece of gum. Not to mention my new socks were stained and my hands were still sticky. Yes indeed, quite a productive afternoon for being home alone. Needless to say we all got in quite a bit of trouble but it was almost worth it for me to learn such a valuable lesson. I learned that I am completely and utterly unreliable! If a crisis ever happens you might as well handle it yourself because I'll be more interested in what to do with my twinkies than whether or not we should try to find cover from the tornado. It is a very sad flaw to have to deal with, but I am comforted by one thing. I will always take care of my sugar.