A Tale of Fail, Feelings Unrequited and How Toilet Paper Helped Me Move On.

Okay, the pic is over-kill, but it took a while to "forget."

I might as well have been a Ken Doll, manly enough in appearance (I guess Ken isn’t really “manly” but you know what I mean), but instead of having a penis there was a smooth area… Disturbing? Yeah, I’m a bit creeped out, too. At one point in my life I was painfully shy and really had a hard time striking up conversation with girls. My first job, when I moved to California, was customer service related. It was the job that changed my life, if you can believe it. However, there was a whole process of learning as time passed as I became a manager and eventually turned my back on that job to start a new chapter in my life.

I bring this up because once upon a time an old friend found me on the Myspace, it was someone I worked with at the music store. I was super excited to be back in touch with her; I’d sought her out from time to time over the years. After we reconnected, I dusted off my mental time capsule to remember my life ten years ago…

Inez and I were just friends, in my mind, though, I desperately wanted so much more. I didn’t know how to just come out and say it though. Instead I was a passive aggressive shit-head.

I would often not talk to her when I’d see her chatting up one of my male co-workers. I would ignore her, push her away and such. I really had no idea of what I was doing back then. I didn’t know how to deal with my feelings. More specifically, I didn’t know how to deal with feelings unrequited.

So many times I would be warm and cold with her; she must have thought I was a whack job. I certainly felt like one. For me, it got to the point that things were too much for me to deal with. Instead of dealing with it and telling her how I felt, I ran away… Much like King Arthur and his companions ran away from the vicious rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. What did I do precisely? I transferred to a different store and didn’t tell her. She didn’t know until my last day. Needless to say she was upset with me.

To her credit Inez never led me on. We would hang out often, talk on the phone and see movies and all that stuff. At that time in my life, I didn’t know who I was or where I was going, I had no car; I was a piece of work with little to offer someone. Through it all she always said was a good friend I was. She never crossed any lines with me, even though I was desperately hoping for it… A month later I found out she had a boyfriend. I was further crushed.

What a sad story and somewhat pathetic, huh? So, was that the end of the story? Was there more to it? I did what any self respecting 18 year old would do! I, with a couple of friends, went over to her house and toilet papered the shit out of that place (no pun intended). We tied their filled-to-the-top trash cans to their garage door and tied chicken wire around the knobs on their front door to keep them shut. It was a good three hours of work to tee pee the place. In fact we did that job so nice, we did it twice!

Now that I’m half way to forty, I can take inventory and see how much I’ve grown and how much I’ve learned. Toilet Papering Inez's place was immature, but it sure felt good at the time. I think the most important thing for me was learning to love who I am and building self-confidence. I’m proud of that. I’m less proud of the epic toilet papery we exacted on Inez’s place; certainly her parents couldn’t have been very happy. However, I’d like to take this point and say to Inez: If you're reading this: “I’m sorry for being a shit head to you and I’m also sorry for the copious amounts of toilet paper I used to tee pee your parent’s place all those years ago.”