Must Pay More Attention

You'd think he would learn, but no. It has become Nordic Boy's mission in life to make me laugh while I am brushing my teeth. The lastest? What he has termed "Brush Dancing." This means that he dances to the rhythm that is created when I am brushing my teeth. This mostly consists of a very weird shuffle, sort of like the MC Hammer shuffle. And when I stop the brush-action to laugh, he freezes. And when I continue brushing, he starts. Why would he do this, after the toothpaste-money-shot of '09? Hasn't he learned anything? I do notice that he now makes me laugh from far away. So I guess he has learned something. Next thing you know he will be doing his schtick with a plastic sheet in front of him, like the people who get front row seats to a Gallagher show.

So I was thinking about the fact that I am a very loud drinker (yes, I have not yet let that one go) and I have begun to really doubt my own powers of observation. This is based on two facts. One, the loud drinking, which I think I should have been aware of. If I am gulping like a frat boy doing a chugger, then I should have noticed this. And two, there is the unsolved case of the boy with uneven legs. Did I ever tell you about that one? I have been blogging for kind of a long time, so sometimes I worry I am repeating myself. Just pretend you haven't heard this one before.

I dated this guy when I was 18. He was a dude in his early 20s, in a band, who I mainly dated just to make my friends jealous (and it really did freak their freak), and who I never could quite believe was actually dating me, as our leagues were totally different, and who used to tool me around on the back of his motorcycle among other teen-swoonworthy things. It was just about the coolest thing I had ever pulled off up until that point. As my friend Alli put it: "the Cool-o-meter blew up!" (Alli has a knack for describing that whole time in my life. She also was so impressed by that relationship that she coined the term "Champion Cherry Popper" to describe him, but that's a whole other story).

Years later, I was talking to Alli's husband, who is older than us and was a contemporary of Band Boy. I think they went to high school together. And when the subject of Band Boy came up, Alli's husband says the following: "Oh yeah. I remember him. You guys all had a crush on him? That's weird. I always just thought of him as the kid that had one leg shorter than the other."

At which point I did the biggest Scooby-Doo impression of my whole life.

"ARRRRH????"

What did he MEAN, one leg shorter than the other? That dude was physically perfect, maybe not to me now, but in a teen swoonworthy sort of way. I demanded to know what the heck Alli's hubby was talking about.

"You know, his legs. One was shorter than the other. He used to have to wear a special shoe on one foot to even them out."

NAH-UH! He has got to be joking me. I dated that guy for a whole year. A whole entire 365 days. I saw him with his shoes off. I saw him plenty. I never saw no leg-lengthening shoe device anywhere. Trust me, I was looking at that guy. All I ever wanted to do was look at that guy. I looked at him and looked at him. In the way that only a teen girl can look at a dude that she is severely crushing on, with all of those hormones thundering through my veins. I was very aware of that guy's body. And you are telling me that that whole time, he was wearing one shoe that was a Pee Wee Herman shoe and I didn't ever notice????

To this day, this galls me. I am sitting here typing and shaking my head in complete denial.

This had to be something that Alli's husband is misremembering, right? Or maybe this was something that Band Boy had in high school when Alli's hubs knew him, but he grew out of it by the time I knew him. Or he got it corrected. Or something.

But there's always that thought in the back of my mind that no, there is no explanantion. Other than I just missed it. That my hormones were so on fire that I missed. that. totally.

If someone points out to me that Nordic Boy has brown eyes or some shit like that, I swear to you I will lose it.