Thing-a-day.com

Ok, so boys, trouble.  Sixteen year old girls in a small town.  Got it. Ok, so Rana and I had a lot in common, and one of the ways we were similar was that we both had an abundance of guy friends.  With me having all those boys in the house all the time growing up, it was inevitable that I would be comfortable with them in a platonic way.  The thing that was different was that I was actually friends with them all.  Just friends.  Like no hidden dating agenda.  If a guy was my bud, that’s it.  We didn’t fool around, ok that’s a lie, there was one that crossed that line, but just one.  And like I said, most of the dudes I was tight with had been in school with me for like a decade already at that point.  Now that is not to say that any new guy I met was not fair game.  A total possibility.  So, Rana being friends with like 45 guys was pretty exciting.  She also knew all these cool, tough guys.  The guys who had long hair, or shaved heads or were already dying their hair.  She knew every skateboarder in her school.   When I met her I didn’t know that a skateboard was going to be the heart I would wear on a locket around my neck for the rest of my life.  To be honest I still have no idea why that is.

Ok, back to Rana, OK, so after our first outing together we were inseparable, even though we went to different schools.  It was the beginning of the summer when we met.  She didn’t work and my job at the Ren Faire was only on the weekends and during the week I just washed and waxed all the doctors’ cars at the hospital.  We both had a ton of free time.  We immediately filled all of it the way only two sixteen year old girls can.  We talked on the phone for hours in the morning and then met up later to spend the rest of the day together.   I remember we would walk.  Like forever.  I would walk from the East side to the West Side, we’d meet up, walk out to the Lake, walk back to downtown and then hang out in front of the pizzeria for about 867 hours.  It was in front of this pizzeria that I met them all.  Benji Werth, Jason Chatterton, Chris Roy, Chris Legg, Dave James, Bing, Chris Nelson, Aaron Johnson, Scott Schwalm, John Manwaring, Christian Clock, Kevin Narolis, Bruce Bailey, Justin Crosby, Eric Rapp, and about 30 others whose names escape me at this minute.  Basically they all wore Oswego State baseball hats, except Benji wore a Michigan Hat, jeans that were about 35 sizes too big for them, massively huge tee shirts, walked with a slump and never left the house without their skateboards.   And they all were mystified by the Sbaih sisters and in turn the Sbaih sisters thought me the second coming of Muhammed this meant I was instantly and fully accepted.

Here’s the rub, Rana instilled the ”chicks over dicks” system of belief in me.  Prior to her I knew it was right, no one had ever said it out loud to me but I knew if a girl I was friends with tagged a guy he was just that.  Tagged and therefore off limits.  Like even though Brian Canale was so delicious, when Kate Nicholson said “I want him as my boyfriend” I knew I had to step back from my previous flirtations with him because I had said nothing aloud.  Rana said this rule early on to me too.  Like she was telling me about how she couldn’t be friends with this chick Brandy Something because she crossed that line and went after a guy who Rana was into.  And that was just unacceptable.   I really liked Rana and wanted to be friends with her and all these guys thought the sun rose and set on her ass so by default I too was instantly cool because Rana introduced me as such.  I was the coolest girl she had ever met she told them, and I saw them all cast their gaze at me and believe it to be true and then that was it.   That was it because as soon as I was like, so what’s the deal with so and so she would explain that she used to like him or he used to like her or she thought she might like him someday or her sister Rula was into him or her friend so and so was into him.  It didn’t matter, there was always a reason.  And I was going to respect that reasoning.  I was not going to be like Brandy Something who was instantly known to all as a dirty slut skank who could not be trusted.  It was social suicide to cross a Sbaih.  I recognized that pretty quickly.  I could never date any guy I met through Rana Sbaih.  And every guy I met through Rana Sbaih became that much more attractive to me because of that.  And they all rode skateboards.  Ok, so that’s why.  Forbidden fruit installed from teenage years.  Wow, I’m glad I figured that out.

OK, so because I couldn’t date any of those guys and I was 16 and a walking hormone, like all teenagers, I wanted to date someone.  At the Ren Faire as I said, I had this guy Jordan who was way into me.  He gave me lots of love poems and hippy jewelry and flowers and little gifts every weekend.  But I couldn’t have him as a boyfriend or my father would have grounded me indefinitely.  Cue Pete Walker, he and I were buds since grade school and he worked out at the Faire too, he introduced me one day to this guy he was friends with.  A guy who Rana and no one else I knew had ever heard of ever, at all.  Rod Rasbeck.  Yup, that’s his name, he wore a mullet, played football and he drove an El Camino with tinted windows which may explain why no one I knew, knew him.  But I didn’t care.  I wanted to make out with someone.  I wanted to explore my sexuality.  It was summer!  Lord love a duck I just wanted a guy to feel me up.   And he had washboard abs and the biggest blue eyes I had ever seen.  Fine, you’ll do. 

Rod and I started hanging out which meant he’d pick me up and we’d maybe see a movie or something but basically we just spent hours making out and fooling around in his car.  He pretty quickly grew out the mullet and that helped and he was actually really nice to me.  He was after me is what it was.  He wanted to bed me as they say.  I had an idea of this and I had no idea of this power.  I didn’t know that a 16 year old boy would go to such lengths to get a girl to say yes.   And he did, he made me his girlfriend, bought me jewelry, said I love you all that shit.  Rana liked him well enough but had a hard time with his full on jock status.  He wasn’t like us, he didn’t really cross all the lines.  Like Rana and I, we were both into sports but I also studied dance intensively six days a week and we both dressed pretty freaky and had lots of friends in every clique in both high schools.  Rod was, well, he drove an El Camino with tinted windows and played football, that’s who he was.   But he was sweet to me.  Until I finally said yes. 

 It was cold out I remember that, I’m not sure how long we’d been dating but it was into the school year and there was snow on the ground. We were at his friend Eddie’s house.  Eddie’s dad was at work so a bunch of us were there, Pete and his girlfriend and a few other couples.  We totally did it on Eddie’s bed.  I bled and felt pretty weird afterwards, all of this is pretty par for the course from what most of my girlfriends tell me.  That’s when it gets different, Rod dropped me off that night and didn’t call me for 2 days after.  He broke up with me the next weekend.  He started dating Christy Roman like five minutes later.  The funny thing about this, if I had gone with that Ren Faire hippy Jordan, I bet he would have been way nicer to me after.  But how did I think a guy who wore a mullet and drove an El Camino was going to act? 

Rana was great, we instantly ousted Christy Roman from our group of friends and put her into the Skanky Whore Club with Brandy Something.  Rana was a great friend to me in that moment.  She talked and listened and fed me and went to the gym with me and took a ban off a couple of guys.  I remember we went on a double date with her and Scott Scwalm and me and John Manwaring.  Nothing came of it but I appreciated her efforts.  It was the first time I ever felt that sting.  I got over it pretty quickly I think but I hated that asshole.  I got him back the next summer.  He came after me again, hard.  Rana and I came up with an elaborate plan to leave him with his pants down, literally.  We were at an after work party at the Ren Faire, he asked me to go for a walk.  I made out with him for a bit against a tree, got him all worked up and then just walked away.  Never looked back.  I remember hearing him call after me and how could I just walk away from him right now and all that.  I just laughed, Rana was waiting for me and you know, Chicks over Dicks.

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