First boyfriend: CHAD.
Chad was my grandmother's neighbor in Kentucky. He was a cute lil tan boy with dark hair and a southern accent that made me melt like BUTTER. He had a little brother named "Shelby." For years (because of the accent) I thought that child's name was "ShAll-Be." Heh. Technically, he wasn't my boyfriend...but in my world we were madly in love. I met him when I was five and had a crush on him until he moved when I was 13. Rarely did I even speak to Chad. Mostly I just sat and stared at him.
Lesson: Some things are just fun to look at and that is O.K.
Second boyfriend: JOSHUA.
Joshua was my first kiss and my first husband. We were married by a fellow first grader underneath the big slide on the playground during recess. Cheryl M. (another classmate) was my maid of honor. (She was also the girl that peed her pants noted in my list of "101 Things About Me.") We were married for all of two weeks when he then dumped me to marry Cheryl. Homewreckers.
Lesson: You can't always trust your friends.
Third boyfriend: MARK Third grade.
Mr. Brenneman's class. Cute boy. Girl sees cute boy and goes ga-ga. Boy likes girl's smile and goes ga-ga. Girl realizes quickly that the kids will put "Mark and Mindy" together for fun jokes. Girl says she doesn't care because they are all losers. Boy does care and writes a note to girl stating: "I have to break up with you because my mom says I can't have a girlfriend." I didn't believe him then and I still don't buy that excuse. He just didn't like being called "Mork."
Lesson: A man's pride is a funny thing.
Fourth boyfriend:PATRICK.
Patrick was the cutest boy in the sixth grade and every girl wanted to be his girlfriend. I was relentless. I would write him letters and ask him to be my boyfriend. Over. And. Over. Nowadays, I probably would have been on some kind of list that the teachers keep hidden in their desk for all of the children they are "concerned" about....list de la child stalkers. Eventually Patrick caved one day during sixth period English and agreed to be my boyfriend. The very letter in which he accepted my proposal was intercepted by the teacher and read aloud to the entire class. Patrick broke up with me the next morning before school. Talk about your long-term relationship.
Lesson: By all means...PLEASE be too proud to beg.
Fifth boyfriend: BRIAN. Eighth grade.
Technically my first REAL boyfriend. He asked me to be HIS girlfriend. (After the Patrick incident, I'd given up on asking boys to go out with me to save myself the humiliation.) We would sit after school before my cheerleading practice started and look at each other and hold hands. Occasionally we would have conversations.
"So you have cheer practice?"
"Yeah."
"That should be fun."
"Yeah...(insert giant pause) We're learning a new dance today."
"Cool."
He tried to kiss me once and I slapped him in the face. He never tried to kiss me again. I broke up with him like a month later when he gave me his sister's necklace and her Madonna "Like a Virgin" tape for my birthday.
(The tape that later my father found and pulled the tape out and threw away.)
Lesson: Sometimes you goof up and put your own selfish needs first. Sometimes ppl just do the best that they can and you have to accept that.
Sixth boyfriend: DOUG. Ninth grade.
Doug was a boy that I met while working at the band booth at the county fair. (Y'all can keep your "band booth" comments to yourselves, thanks.) He came to the counter for three days in a row while I was working. On the third day he finally found the guts to ask for my phone number. Ours was a telephone-only relationship and my mother made me stop talking to him because she thought it was "inappropriate". She said that it wasn't necessary for a girl to do a thing like that and it didn't matter anyway because it was only "puppy love". SOOOOOOOO...I stopped taking his calls. I ran into Doug about three years later while I was working at my first job and he was INCREDIBLY HOT. Man. He really was. I said, "hey" to him and talked to him a little while but that was about it because I was dating boyfriend 7 at the time and was madly in love.
Lesson: Crushes are fun even if your mother doesn't think they are "appropriate".
Seventh boyfriend: MAR. Twelfth grade
My first LOVE and my first real kiss. He was my secret boyfriend that I referred to earlier in my post about talking in my sleep. My parents wouldn't let me go out with him because his mother was white and his father was black. (Or at least that was the excuse they gave me.) I thought he was so cute and sweet as pie and I wasn't having any part of her telling me no this time. She couldn't keep me in a shell forever, I told her. I had never even actually DATED anyone before and she wasn't even giving him a chance.
She continued to say fight me on it so I did the most "logical" thing that I could think of at the time: I snuck around behind her back to see him when I was supposed to be at my sign language class. I was head-over-heels in love and as those of you who know me can testify--I'm a very passionate person. This is sometimes great…sometimes tragic.
However, this didn't help the already-bad situation that I had at home, needlesstosay, but I knew that she didn't have a leg to stand on and I was persistent. (So I had a rebellious year.) We dated for like nine months I believe. We never really officially "broke up". We just kind of "grew apart" when he started college. (Sigh.) I may never know or understand what really happened, but he was my first real love…and we'll always have that.
Lesson: Sometimes the grass is so green that you can't see the weeds. Sometimes ppl just push you away and you don't know why--it doesn't always mean they were doing this with bad intentions or that you were a "bad girlfriend".
Eighth boyfriend: LARRY aka @#$%&
Ages 19-29. I hate to mention him here and taint my beautiful blog but he IS a part of my history and I have to acknowledge that.
"You can't change what you don't acknowledge." *Gracias, Dr. Phil*
Larry and I worked at the same place but different hours and we would pass each other going to and from work. When I started to date him I was living in my car and sleeping in my car trunk at nights. The back of the back seat would fold down and I would sleep in there with a blanket draped over the opening. Hey, it worked. It kept me warm in Ohio during the middle of winter.
In late March of that year, my parents had given into my constant begging and allowed me to sleep at their house for the time being. That was like being in prison. I wasn't allowed to speak to anyone, be around anyone, nor go anywhere in the house aside from the bedroom in which I was given to rest my head at night and the living room as my mother nor my brother were in there. I had been dealing with that for about two months when Larry came to me and said that he would be moving into a new apartment. He asked me to move in with him. In my mind (AT THAT TIME) it seemed like the best idea. We were together for 10 1/2 years. Larry was the first man I lived with. He was the first man that I married.
Larry was also the first man that ever hit me, beat me, cursed at me, told me how horrible of a person I was and that I deserved whatever was thrown at me, strangled me, shoved me down flights of stairs, yanked me by my hair, punched me, stood on me, knocked me out, shoved my hand through glass, dented my cornea, busted up my spine, suffocated me, threw me against walls, and threatened me with my life. He was also the first man that I ever had a restraining order against and the first man that I divorced.
Sidenote: If it weren't for me having raised his son...and being completely in love with that child...I wouldn't have stayed as long as I did. Think about what it would feel like to leave the child you've raised for as far as he can remember and THEN tell me that I should have left when it started. Jordan was my heart.
Lesson: Trust your gut instincts. Believe ppl when they show you who they are. You are who you are…not who people try to make you out to be.
There you have it--the list.
EDIT: There was also the boy that I "showed things" to...but I never really went out with him. We were eleven. I just showed him things and he showed me things and then he named his dog after me.
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