Would you like fries with that?

I started the waitressing job and it's actually not that bad. It's good honest work. It's hard work. I should be happy to have a job at all. I should be happy that I'm not working at McDonald's.

The friend of my father's who played my CD on his radio station wants to do an entire show on me. WTF, right? I'm supposed to give him some kind of background information on me and I've no idea what to tell him.

I can picture it..."So, what have you been doing for the past five years?"

"Well, Don, I've been getting drunk and high, encouraging the cops to come calling and basically sleepwalking through my life. Cheers."

Also, some old dude my parents know, who has played piano for Tony Bennett and Ertha Kitt, is coming to visit in November and he wants to play for me. He wants me to sing with him. He heard my CD and although he said he never wants to hear me sing Amazing Grace again (he's a Jazz standards kinda old dude), he wants to work with me.

I am full of fear about this one. Same ole fears, same ole crap... But I cannot and hopefully will not let another opportunity like this pass me by. I cannot move forward if I stay scared. Kay I have to be realistic...I probably will stay scared but I'll try real hard not to show it, okay?

I'm not sure exactly what it is that I am scared of...Maybe like I've said before about the world discovering that I am an imposter. My great fear...that people really figure me out and realise I'm not worth their time. A friend of mine (well, I call her a friend and I suppose she is, strange having a famous friend...) says that she still feels like that and that it's a natural part of being an artist. And she's successful. God, I'd be glad to be a goddamned wedding singer. No shit.



Alright...I have nothing else to whine about today kiddies.

SO many to choose from

I just spent a little time surfing around this blogger site to see if there was anything interesting out there.

Nope. All just as BO-ring as mine. People blogging about their weight struggles, their relationship struggles, their get rich schemes, their creepy hobbies...(dude, you know who you are, and it's just not right to be THAT in to Star Trek...) I thought I'd find some inspiration, ya know? Turns out I am just like all the rest, with no more ability to keep anyone's eyes locked on my page than the rest of them. So where does that leave me? Boring the masses( har, har) with my daily hole diggings? Onward!

I feel like I used to be more brave, funnier...Yes I was pissed off most of the time but it made good reading...now I feel like I've let people down with all this A.A., recovering alcoholic business. That's gotta bore the shit out of y'all. Frankly, it bores the shit out of me too. I got sober to live and now I don't know what the hell to do next.

I start a crappy waitressing job on Thursday, another crap job in a line of crap jobs and I'm feeling sorta lost. When I sang at my show in April, it was so clear. I have to sing. I have to do the things that I love. Fuck all y'all! I'm leaving on the next bus to New York, or the next flight to L.A. and I'm gonna scream in Fear's face and just do it. Right. Still here. Haven't sung in public since.

Some sound guy recorded that show and I have made copies and given them away to some friends and family. Everyone says I'm good. That I should just do it (No money has gone to Nike for the theft of their line..Ha!). My CD is playing on a small station in Halifax somewhere, because a friend of my parents' works there and the station head really liked a couple of tracks. My blog was used as a part of a multi media snippet on a television show called Zed. I auditioned for Canadian Idol, not really to be the next Canadian Idol (gag), but to overcome my fear of being judged. I DID stuff. Shit now all I can do is whine about how I get handed the shit end of the stick all the time and how I'm not APPRECIATED the way I think I should be by my boyfriend. Lame cop-out. God, no wonder nobody reads this thing. Where did all the hutzpah go?

I know I start to make myself feel like shit every time I take a job that I hate JUST to pay the bills because it feels as if I'm one more step AWAY from what I really want to do. AND I know that everytime I get close to verbalising what I really want to do, I get scared and say..."Oh well, this will do." When I took Creative Writing at Concordia University, I had a really scary teacher who would just crucify everyone's work in class. I was shit scared when my time was up and I had to present my work to her and the rest of the students. The day it was to be discussed in class I braced myself for the worst. She came into the class, looked me directly in the eyes and said "Your story was so good I nearly missed my stop on the bus".

I never went back to that class.

I have always had a problem with success. fear...that ugly, ugly thing that I can't seem to shake. I realise now that what I'm telling myself is..."If I do this and people like it, either they are a)wrong or b) they will eventually find out I am a fraud and the sucess will be gone anyway...so why get my hopes up?" This is so incredibly lame I can't believe it's true.

And then besides this insanity, my indecisiveness takes over. Well what is it that I really want to do? Is it to sing or is it to write? Which am I better at...?(OK...PLEASE DON'T JUDGE ON THE BASIS OF THIS BECAUSE I REALISE IT'S JUST INSANE RAMBLING) Which will bring me more? Should I just take another secretarial job five days a week that leaves me too tired to think or do anything else because I'm fooling myself if I think I can make a living at the things I love? And what of writer's block or of sore throats? I know I have to pay bills and eat...but should I be looking for a career? A career of serving other people, never feeling good enough and being talked down to by artless sexual harassing retards? Is this what I am supposed to do to be the good daughter, the good girlfriend, the good solid member of society? God I fucking hope not.

Bowling for Dawson

At 12:41 pm today police received a distress call that a young man in his early twenties had opened fire on students with a semi-automatic weapon oustide Dawson College.

I can't formulate thoughts right now. My thoughts are with the victims and their loved ones. My thoughts are also with the parents of the young man who carried out the shooting.

Didn't we all say this couldn't happen to us? Didn't Michael Moore tell us how safe we were? I went to Dawson College. I smoked outside where some of the kids were shot. I am watching the loop of video on the news channels, the reporters asking these kids how they felt and I can put myself there. I am grateful for my life right now and that feels selfish.

I need to find a way to help, because I know there is a problem, one that none of us can clearly identify, one that we want to put the word "crazy" on and walk away from like nothing can be done. I know better. I know there is love in this world...but so many of us have lost it.

"Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today" - Marvin Gaye

What happened to August?

So I don't work Mondays anymore. Pretty clever huh? I say I hate Mondays and that they are to blame for suicides and car accidents and my general malaise associated with working at all...and now I don't work Mondays.

I thought it would be a perk, something that would make the revulsion of working another shit eating job less dizzying (would you like a cappuccino with your pile of feces?). But no. But never.

Even without working Mondays I am a bundle of nerves. I am consummed with worry about small, ridiculous, inconsequential things. "Will I have time to do the laundry today?" can be a make or break the day question. What I want to do is crawl back into bed pull the covers up tight and shut everything out. Hard to do when you live with someone. They do that pesky expecting stuff from you thing. Like expecting you to not rip their head off and cry when they ask you a question.


I am worried about money. All the time. And I see money walk in and out of the salon every day. Big money with teeth. Privileged people who spend their lives shopping and getting their hair and nails done. I am envious and angry around these people. Most of them treat me like I am a dirty servant. And maybe I am. Maybe this is my lot.



Getting out of bed is a start I guess.

just cause I'm co-dependant

LOOK..YES. I KNOW. I was supposed to leave. Tail between my legs. But I actually have something important to say. There is this company that comes to various Canadian (although I think they have an American branch as well) cities to supposedly SCOUT for talent. They are called Canadian Showcase Talent Search and ususally hang around the city for a couple of days, leaving with cash and credit card numbers from hundreds of silly people who desperately want to be famous. They tell you that you have to pay them up front around 3 or 4 hundred bucks to supposedly secure your place at this BIG showcase that happens in the fall in Toronto. They claim you will be auditioning for Big Whigs from Elite modelling Agency, Paramount Pictures and Virgin Records. (Of course they don't tell you it's at some half-bit Hotel in Missisauga, but okaaaaY) With the popularity of such shows like Canadian Idol, there tends to be a scarily large influx of young people with low self esteem wanting to audition for whoever will offer them the promise of fame. PARENTS be AWARE. We hear stories that perpetuate these parasites' livelihoods, stories of being "discovered". It is almost always not the way it happens. Most successful actors, models and singers get there with HARD WORK, not because someone saw them in line at Starbucks. Do not waste your money. This organisation safeguards itself by saying that the auditons held in all these cities are no guarantee, that they are just the ones to push you into the SHOWCASE where all the movers and shakers will be. These are profesional scam artists and even after losing their standing with the Better Business Bureau they are adamant in their feelings that they do nothing wrong.

I went to an audition last year...too self absorbed and hopeful to realise what a sham this thing was. I auditioned. They said they liked me ...they asked me to wait till the next audition. A process that is used by these scammers so that people can get excited by being "moved o the next round" then they are made to wait. It gets the "contestants" tired and worn out so that they will basically agree to anything. Like paying $350.00 on the spot to partake in some Supershow, which is basically like a big convention room where MAYBE one low time rep from Virgin Canada could be sitting at some panel to "watch" for talent. There is no guarantee for anything. There's no business like...well, you know. All I know is that there isn't one famous person who has ever accredited their fame to this organisation.
In fact they are so used to people complaining that they have their verbal ammo at the ready for any naysayer. They are seasoned professional scammers. It's like I remember from those scary Nazi like Sales meetings at one company I used to work for. Blaring dance music, team rousing chants..SELL SELL SELL...At the telemarketing companies I worked at when desperate for money who would rip little old ladies off. I count it as my duty to warn people about this since I have been on the other side of the phone call/sales desk as well. Let's call it a lesson in Karma. Here is the email I got and you can think/research for yourselves...

"Canadian Showcase wrote:
The reason for this email is that we are looking for new faces for MODELS - ACTORS - SINGERS & DANCERS to audition for international agents including:

GIOVANNI
ELITE
VIRGIN/CAPITAL RECORDS
ARISTA RECORDS
PARAMOUNT PICTURES
DISNEY CHANNEL

AND MUCH MUCH MORE!!

AUDITIONS will be held at:
MONTREAL
Hotel Ruby Foo’s
7655 Boul Decarie Blvd.
Saturday June 24, 2006
12:00pm // 1:00pm // 2:00pm
613.789.7511 (incase you need directions)

Please come at a time that is convenient for you.
Hope you can make it before 3:00pm.

You can call toll free at 1.866.961.2768 refer this email to get your confirmation number or I can meet you directly at the hotel! Please go to front desk and ask them about the audition and they will direct you to me. Look forward to our meeting and GOOD LUCK!!

PRINT THIS EMAIL AND BRING IT WITH YOU!! Thank YOU!!

THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO BE DISCOVERED!!

Sincerely,



Victoria

I wrote:
To: Canadian Showcase
Subject: Re: TALENT SEARCH in Montreal 1 DAY ONLY

GO TO HELL SCAMMERS

Canadian Showcase wrote:
IF YOU SAY SO …. LOL

To: Canadian Showcase
Subject: RE: TALENT SEARCH in Montreal 1 DAY ONLY

No...the Better Business Bureau says so

Canadian Showcase wrote:
SURE SURE!! What does the BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU know?? We get complaints from unsatisfied people like you who think they are right … you respond to the complaint and clear all false accusations and you actually WIN the case and THEY STILL POST the complaints. WHY RESPOND to the complaint when they don’t post the response??? That’s why we are no longer with the BBB for your information. BUT thanks for your time. Have a GREAT DAY!!

I wrote:
You obviously have issues....as you would not spend your "quality time" writing back to unsatisfied people if you really WERE in the business of starting people's "careers". You feed on the insecurities of young people and their ridiculous parents, you require MONEY which EVERY legitimate talent agency warns against...I am SURE you love your job and duping people out of their cash and I'm sure you will continue to live on like the rest of the parasites who have nothing to contribute to society. The sick part is all your tactics are SO familiar...because unlike the other people who you exploit, I know the deal with you...because I used to do it...AND I know what you are instructed to say to these poor kids. Make your money and I'll sit back and laugh as you rot from the inside out....Maybe have a drink, eh? Maybe two. You've got some people's lives to manipulate on Saturday. You should be proud!

..Cheers! I hope you have a GREAT DAY too!"


So make your own minds up...Make sure you keep your eyes open if you think I am wrong about these people.

OH and you can tell by the HIGH quality of the email how legit this is...lol

Frustration Nation

I'm sure lots of people have experienced frustration at work. Actually, scratch that,,,if you haven't experienced frustration at work then you must be one of those lucky bastards who loves what they do...or you work in porn.

Lately, I am frustrated. I feel like I work alone sometimes. Okay, this morning I literally was. One fellow employee was entering sales rep orders and another was trying to track down the big boss for an important and angry client on the phone. The two others who start their shifts at the same time as I, have appointments and are going to be late to work...so for 2o min I took every last call...as the second shift was trickling in they stood around chatting and getting coffee, laughing and being generally jovial. I wanted blood.

Now I know this is not friendly of me. But when you have a temper like mine...Well.


I am also frustrated because I just got a cryptic email from someone (HE WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED)who says, well, basically fuck you very much and have a nice day...


ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO THROW AT ME??? yah I know the answer to that...bring it on. The day is only 24 hours...how bad could it get? Like I said ...don't answer that.

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an
hour.
...hmmmmmmmmmm. I already feel like banging my head against a wall, so....

i think I'm starting to feel sorry for Will Wheaton again

http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/

Letter to a friend on the other side of the planet

hey there,
So what the hell happened with IDOL jackass!
No updates at all and no one has said anything, I know you told k cause she wrote me about it right away! The thing is, she nor you have said anything since!
Hope you are well, fill me in damn it!!
You done school yet or what??
D

**********************************************

Hey D!

Idol was craaaaazy. I got there at 10am and didn't leave till 8pm. I waited for about four hours to see the first judge. Myself along with four other people crammed into a hotel room (read:low ceilings, carpeted floor) had to sing accapella in front of each other and some dude producer. I went fourth and when I was done I thought I was going to pee my pants cause they tell you to drink tons of water to keep your vocal chords limber (so of course i overdid it...). Little embarassing but I had to ask to pee in the hotel room bathroom. I figured I was done for when I heard the last girl sing. She was good. And then he came out with his little speech about how it never gets any easier to tell people they aren't going to continue, blah, blah, blah. I pretty much counted my blessings and thought, "Well that was fun!". And then he said I'm only putting two people through and those two are Blah Di Blah Blah and Megan". Say what?

So then after the initial excitement wore off I spent the next three hours wating to be called for the next audition. A decidedly scarier audition in a larger room alone with another nameless producer woman and a video camera. Weird people who had finished their audition hung around the doors where we were waiting AFTER they had gotten told their hearts wouldn't be GOING ON, to inform us that they weren't giving up, that they would go to Toronto or Halifax and try again. Good Lord, why? I thought.

So after some major stomach butterflies that felt more like albatross I went in to the lion's den. This unsmiling blonde woman asked me to say something about myself, which was frankly the last thing I could focus on. I was tired and at that moment I realised just HOW tired. I sang. She said "You have a pretty voice. Singer-songwriter vibe. Now show us something with more power." Huh? OK. "Ok, that did show your power, and you have a good voice but I'm not going to put you through. I'm afraid the com[ettion requires very demanding singing." In other words...not enough training. In other words....damn, was I glad it was over. In other words, I was exhausted and didn't really care. See ya!

So when I left the room and informed the uber-strange teenage duo who were about to go in singing "Summer Lovin'" from Grease (grooaan!) that I didn't get through and the very happy (read:gay) teen gave me a big sorrowful hug, I took it...I left the hotel, not feeling bad at all. Amazing really, because I thought I would be upset. Maybe it was enough that I faced my fear. . Who the hell wants to go to Toronto anyway? Sounds like punishment for a job well done. Heh (Can't resist...what was that Leafs outta tha playoffs?)

Anyway, it made my show on the 10th of April so MUCH easier...I really had fun this time...and so did the audience I think. It really was a learning experience. I am glad I didn't chicken out like I normally do. I'm glad I didn't run away. Kind of the new hue I'm thinking of for my life this spring.

Cheers girl....Hope everything is great with you...I hope to see you when you come home this summah!!!



M

Relieved

Hello sports fans. So I'm not the next Canadian Idol and I couldn't be happier.

The audition process was looong, peppered with crazies and performance school sweethearts. When it came time for the first audition I had to pee so bad from all the water I drank I was surprised I could sing at all. There were five of us and then the guy went into his speil about how it never gets any easier to tell people to go home...I thought I was done for...(eternal optimist that I am). But he said he was keeping me and another girl. He then asked me a whole slew of questions and remarked that I had a girl-in-a-band vibe, which was funny since I haven't been in a band since I was twenty. Then after I got my first "go ahead" it was five hours before the next audition. Then the second lady (we'll call her the blonde behemouth) tells me when I am done singing that I have a singer-songwriter vibe and that I have a very pretty voice. I hear a but in her voice even before she tells me to sing my next song. She says I have a breathy thing going on...(all these vibes and goings on...)but that she isn't putting me through but that I should start a band. Second producer telling me I should start a band. Maybe someone is telling me something? Ya think?

Anyway, the experience was very positive and I think some of my friends are more pissed than I am about not going to Toronto. Who wants to go to Toronto anyway? I'm just so glad I did it. Frankly the night before in a rageoholic fit I exclaimed that I wasn't going to do it, that I couldn't...that there wasn't any point. I'm so glad I was told to shut up.

I also now have my show to prepare for in April, which now seems like a much less daunting task. Seems like an fucking breeze, actually.

Hope Sunday finds everyone well and relaxed and rested. peace.

Here I am Baybeh...

OOOOK. Momment of truth. I am on my way to Complexe Desjardins. I know what I am going to sing.

I am terrified and exited and not sweating thanks to some heavy duty industrial strength deoderant. Here goes kids....If you have a minute send me an angel...

Two days...gonna have to turn this mutha out...

Two days. I have tomorrow off to practice and to try and get my nerve up...I think it will be good for me...even if they tell me I suck. And I still have my show on the 10th of April to get me off the pity party couch if it turns out that way.

Am I prepared? I guess I will be tomorrow...all day singin then some retail therapy to find a little sumthin sumthin to wear over my jeans...maybe a hot lipstick.

I have to keep remembering a fortune cookie that I got in high school that I kept in one of those boxes where I keep scraps of useless memories...It said the world will always welcome talent with open arms. Here's hoping I have talent!

Have a great day to anyone who reads this...I could use some good vibes...so send some on!

ONE SECOND AT A TIME

I love Hunter S. Thompson. I discovered him at around 20 years of age and I loved his acid, drunken and pissed-off style. He wrote passionately about politics in Rolling Stone for many, many years. He had movies, with Johnny Depp playing him, made about him. How cool is that? How cool that he fucked the establishment and threw caution and personal safety to the wind? He was my hero and when I finished The Rum Diary, his first book, writen by a then twenty-two year old Thompson, I was awed and envious and aching for a tumbler of rum.

(I very nearly capitalised the word Rum, as if it were a person or a country...Does anyone out there know how telling that is?)

I love Huntter S, Thompson still but I have this pit in my stomach when I think that my hero, tough as nails boy-genious renegade, blew his brains out with a shot gun. He said he couldn't take the pain anymore. Most of the newspaper articles speculated that it was his long suffering with back pain from a surgery he had gotten years before. I know it was booze. And drugs. And years of being a drowning man.

I don't pity him. His ultimate naiveté was that he mistook his anger for cynicism...much hipper, much cooler than fear. Fear and Loathing, people. Think maybe he knew? His opus was Fear and Loathing. Then he went to hang out with Bikers.

Makes me think of some guys I went to CEGEP with, who used to talk about trying heroin. They made a plan on it, these rich kids who spent daddy's dough on Ectasy and raves. I was actually jealous of them too, I wanted to be cool like them and think that doing dangerous drugs was brave.



I ain't giving up my dream that easily. I will not end up living on a ranch alone in the middle of nowhere with a shotgun to my head...So to quote Cypress Hill... "I ain't goin out like that."

Bring on the fucking audition!

Free girl in Paris

Hello sports fans. It's been a weird morning. Just now, the girls at work started talking about American Idol.

Of course I watched it last night.

I am slowly starting to sprout Idol gills, I am living, breathing, feeling it everyday. The pit of my stomach is a torrent of waves, My Brain is permanently locked on THAT moment...the one coming. I will stand in front of judges and they get to tell me if I'm good or not. No pressure, right? Only been more than twenty years of dreams built up, singing myself to sleep, walking with a determined gait and thinking that someday, maybe...

This is getting cheesy. It's fear that's making me think this way. I have to try and remember what James Taylor's brother said (he's a teacher in performance at an American University and of course I can't remember his name...the drawbacks of having your brother be James Taylor, I guess)...He said performance fear can be quelled if you realise as a performer that you are there to ENTERTAIN OTHERS. Yah, course, it helps that you do it for yourself..artistic integrity and all that..but you can't forget the audience...They are the ones that matter. Your fear is personal...tied up in fear of being inadequate.

Frankly, the fear dissipates a little when I think of it this way. Just gotta go and let them tell me whether or not I should bother with this singing thing. I'll probably always do it...But I'd really like to know whether my dream is a sac of shit that I'm carrying around as a crutch...something else I can be angry at if I don't succeed. I hope not. That's all I can do. Hope and try and do my best.


You think this is bad folks...the Idol obsession has JUST begun...



(When should I tell the girls at work?)

Hats Off

At first you said, "It's just a hat", when you could tell I was upset on the phone. I was. I was standing on a frozen street corner half a block away from my kickboxing lesson, tears welling up in my eyes, my throat full of brambles, trying to explain that the metro employee wouldn't help me. He just gazed at me, eyes half-mast, as if I'd woken him from a nap and shoved a piece of paper at me through the half-moon window with a number on it for the Lost and Found.

I'd remembered. I had even some recollection of something; perhaps that same colour, that burgundy, that wine colour falling off my lap as I scrambled to get off the crowded metro car. I went to see the metro employee right away after.

I remembered.

"It's just a hat," you said a second time now sounding more annoyed at me, probably because you think I'm a child and crying compounds that.

The Winter Olympics are taking place in Turin, Italy and today I went shopping at The Bay ( a department store recently bought by an American company)to purchase a warm sheepskin hat with the word CANADA embroidered in red across the front. The tag lets me know a part of the money I'm spending goes to Canadian athletes.

You haven't taken the hat off. You said you might sleep in it. But then the hats were mistaken.

I honestly didn't associate the two hats - for one thing you hadn't worn the hat I'd lost for over a year. It was a forgotten hat. I just thought, since you kept commenting on how nice the hats were in The Bay commercials that maybe I'd get you one. Actually, no. When I left this afternoon to go to my kickboxing class I said I'd stop by The Bay for the new coffee machine we wanted and you said to buy you the hat. I was allowed to have my card today to pay for it because I have been a good girl. Because I have not run off with my paycheck to a bar - to drink and drown, to drink and drown...

I like the hat on you. It looks good - better than I thought it would. It looks nice on you and I tell you so. You say nothing.

We watch a movie after I've made a simple dinner and I cry because the movie is sad, it's about racism and perception and love and hate and tears and hope. You ask me why I'm crying because it's only a movie and you think I'm foolish.

I try and tell you a story about one of the actors when the movie is over and it comes out all wrong and jumbled because I can tell you're not listening. I am distracted by the fact that you never look at me, that the air is heavy with your waiting imaptiently for me to finish and I can't contiue, I fall over my words and then nothing comes out and you say "Uh huh." as if I've ordered a Happy Meal. I want to scream but I decide to storm off and go to bed leaving a "you're welcome for the hat" in the room behind me.

You are standing in front of me, five minutes later, arms crossed and weight on one leg, saying "Why did you buy me the hat, M? Why?". I try to figure out what you are getting at because I know you are trying to make a point but I'm not sure what it is...And then you spit it out.


"Feeling guilty about losing my hat!?"


All the air came out of me like I was stuck with a knitting needle. I hadn't felt guilty! I felt bad that I lost your hat of course - that's why I said I was sorry...But that new hat, the one you were ready to sleep in, was not bought out of guilt. Not at all.

You think you are right. You think it's a guilty hat, a guilty girlfriend. But you are wrong and I'll just sit here crying because you think so little of me. Poor little me.

That's why you didn't say thank you. You thought you were owed this hat. Somebody owed you...even if it was just a hat.

Why'd you have to go and make me feel old?

The other day I got an email from an old friend.

Besides the supreme surprise of the email being so eloquent and moving, I was struck dumb by how much one seemingly silly thing really meant to me. He sold his car.

Not just any car...the most beautiful behemouth machine that man has ever made...the '63 Chevy Impala. As the email went on, its writer getting increasingly more drunk, as he explained that the Impala was destined for some dillhole who wanted to put hydraulics and a continental kit on her smokin body. Blasphemy! My friend says he thinks he is doing something smart, something responsible for the first time in his life.

My relationship with Bruce consisted partly of late night phone calls and me yelling at him for being such a grease monkey polluter and getting scared for my safety when he and Chad did burnouts or went snow bank hunting in winter. Of course there was other stuff... There was the fact that he was the only person who would listen to me in high school. When it came to nasty rumours and me losing old friends that I had known since elementary school because of heresay, he was the only one who told me they were jerks, the only one who made me forget the Heathers for a while. I owe him any residual sanity I had left after high school. I'm not sure if he even knows that.

I hated most of his girlfriends, one strawberry blond hair flipping bimbo in particular from a local private school made my blood boil. I also never really got over the fact that I was never invited out to his cottage with him and the boyzzz (and I know it wasn't always boys). And even though Chad lent me probably every HotRod magazine published since 1982 I was still a million miles away from being mechanically helpful to that car. I never drove her, I never fulfilled any weird fantasies of his by washing his car in Daisy Dukes...But I love that car and I loved that boy.

I think we even sort of tried to "date" once which lasted about an hour because we fought like cats and dogs. We ended up laughing it off, saying we should leave well enough alone. The granola and the grease-monkey weren't meant for each other after all.

I wish I could say something to comfort him about his baby being gone. Apparently the dillhole is picking it up today and I am reticent to call him in case I say the wrong thing. I can't muster the words to explain how much that car, how much he meant to me. I'm not sure there are any words.

My mother's high school boyfriend had a '63 Chevy Impala. And if the slighlty creepy crush my mother had on Bruce could get any more nostalgic, it did when he'd pull up in that machine.

Alas, it is a time gone by and me and life are much changed entities now. But, in some sort of ghostly fashion, I will always remember that car.

And I will never forget that boy.