Kirk

 

When I started this little project, I did it because I was in a bit of a funk.  I recognized a need to focus my attention on the things in life that are most important.  Family, friends, health and faith.  I especially felt that I needed to make a concerted effort each day to recognize the kindness that others show when they reach out to me.  Life is made richer thanks to the people who surround us.  I felt I needed to turn these little moments over at the end of the day and acknowledge to myself how each person touched my life  on a deeper level in a spiritual way.

Today's thank you isn't deep like that all.  Today's thank you is more shallow than a puddle in the Mojave desert during the dry season.  And you know what....I don't care because I'm 43!

Saturday was my 25th high school reunion.  I had not been to one reunion since Greg Games and I giggled through the graduation ceremony in June of 1988.  My five, ten and fifteen all slipped by without notice for a variety of reasons I don't care to mention here.  Quite frankly I was okay missing those because at five, I felt like, "Didn't we just see each other at graduation?"  Ten and fifteen didn't seem like a lot of time had passed either.  Twenty....now THAT was a big one.  However, at that time I was in the process of getting divorced.  I had to move out of my 3600 square foot 4 bedroom, 3 1/2 bath home into my parents' basement where I could touch either side of my bedroom by stretching my arms out wide.  If you are a ten year old boy with a magic wand at 123 Privet Dr, it's totally cool to be living under the stairs in a relative's house.  If you are a 38 year old, unemployed, divorced mom of 3, one with severe autism, living in a relative's basement...you are a little pathetic.  Since I knew I would not be able to perform the Cruciatus Curse on anybody who might say that to me, I opted to stay home for Reunion 20.  But things are different now.....

I went back to grad school to get a title that makes me sound smarter and more important than I actually am.  I have a job.  I am engaged to a man who is not only nice looking, but kind of amazing in a million ways (like pushing to change service dog laws in his state.)  And best of all....I have my own house with a bedroom on the first floor.  That's right.  I went from Harry Potter to George Jefferson and moved on up.  So of COURSE I wanted to go my 25th reunion.  

It was a nice event.  Kirk arranged a lot of it and here is the very shallow, thank you part which, as far as I'm concerned, made the entire evening worth it.

Kirk wanted to take pictures of various people.  I love nothing more than having my picture taken with Matt because you don't have to ask me twice to put my arms around him or have his around me.  After Kirk took the above picture, he said to Matt, "You know what I remember most about Carol from high school?" and then launched into this story.

Back in the day, we could take gym classes in the summer.  Not because we failed, but because we didn't want to take them during the school year.  I mean, after you paid for your spiral perm and used a can of hairspray.....would you really want to have to take a shower first bell and walk around with wet flat hair all day?  AS IF!!!!!  Kirk and I took a class called "Outdoor Recreation."  It was archery and target shooting, because, you know, in predominantly white collar suburbs we spend a lot of time hunting wild game.  We also played frisbee golf, or at least walked around complaining about the heat and asking when we could go home.  The entire class culminated in a canoeing/camping trip.  Let me remind you all, that these were the days when our school still had a smoking lounge for students.  As a parent myself, the entire thing was poorly supervised and really just an all around bad idea.  As a teenager....it was so way fun!

Anyway, the class was mostly boys and then like 3 girls.  Ashley, Stephanie and me.  Stephanie was a gorgeous blond with beautiful blue eyes.  She was the typical teenage smoking hot girl.  I remembered her as not too bright, mostly because of the time she was pulled over for drunk driving when she had, in fact, not been drinking at all.  She was just that ditzy.  Kirk reminded me that she was actually in smart kid classes.  Something I would not have known since those were NOT the classes I took (and I'm still gainfully employed and have a degree.  Go figure.)  Since she didn't get a ticket or even a warning for her driving...EVER...I suspect she was not only book smart, she obviously had the wisdom that goes along with being a young, hot, blond girl.  Stephanie was also sweet as pie and oodles of fun, so we were canoe and tent buddies.  

Stephanie and I happily paddled our canoe along.  Well, we paddled some and then batted eyelashes and begged to hook our canoe to whichever boy canoe we could to save ourselves from actually, you know, exerting effort.  Oh, shut up.  We were teenage girls!  I have a chainsaw and can fix drywall now.  Don't judge!  

It was during one of those actually paddling moments that Kirk's story took place.  He and his buddy were in the canoe paddling kind of equal to us.  He said they were swim dorks.  I don't remember him being any more of a dork than I was, but the story is so much more flattering told his way....who I am to argue?  So me and hot blond are paddling in one canoe, and dork swimmers are paddling in another near us when Stephanie and I decided it was very hot.  So we did what teenage girls do.  We took off our t-shirts to sun ourselves in our bathing suit tops.  The boy in Kirk's canoe did what teenage boys do and imagined in his heart of hearts that our bathing suit tops were actually bras, that we were getting naked and that he was the luckiest man-child on the face of Earth to be able to bare witness.  (Kirk said it was a bra too, but for the record, I know they were swimsuits because I was in high school.  Had it been college...well....let's not go there.)   

The poor boy was so enthralled watching us, that he completely missed the fact that a branch from a low hanging tree had caught him.  Kirk kept paddling, somewhat oblivious.  The tree kept it's hold, bending, bending, bending until...........BOING!!!! (That was a tree boing, I'm pretty sure the boy boing had happened several minutes prior) the tree had reached full tension and thrown the boy clear out of the canoe.  The funny thing is, I remember the kid going flying, but had no idea that I was partly responsible.  Until Saturday night.  And it made my entire night.  Because I am as shallow as a puddle in the Mojave desert during the dry season.  

Kirk, thank you for sharing that story.  Twenty-SEVEN years, three babies and many wrinkles later, my girls have migrated south.  It was nice to be reminded that once upon a time, they had the power to perform the Petrificus Spell.