Do you want to kiss me?

Especially for my friend Tali, who loves my stories of awkward romance.

The year was 1994 when I was in my pick up truck with a very attractive and popular girl, the daughter of a well respected man in the area. I'm not quite sure why we were in my truck -- everything is done on such a whim at that age -- but we had gone to the convenience store or something, and now we were parked in her driveway. Arguably, she was the hottest girl in our classs -- very well developed, pretty , and confident -- but she was not really a member of the hot/popular girl clique. Too independent to be in a clique, she bounced in and out of it whenever she liked.
She had a boyfriend from the rival town, and apparently had a very active sex life with him. (Her boyfriend was two years younger and in my eyes was the king stud of all studs, Greek or dark-skinned, completely ripped, wearing a loin cloth and carrying a sword.) What set her apart from the other hot and popular girls was how carefree she spoke about sex, especially to me. She would talk about her sex life with me like our mothers would talk about gardening or needlepoint. Apparently, I was just "one of the girls". She told me her funny/embarrassing sex stories too, as if I would yawn in boredom if the story were too boring. Anyway, I'd usually just shake my head in admiration, and then high-five her and tell her better luck next time.
So we were sitting in front of her house one summer night, and I was listening to some problems she was having with her boyfriend. I tried to give her advice, but having never been in a relationship myself, it was all regurgitated advice I had heard on TV or read somewhere. After five minutes, she stopped abruptly, looked at me intently and said, "You want to kiss me, don't you?"
Now in retrospect, I should have had by all means taken this opportunity. I had kissed two girls in my life at that point, and I could have learned something. But at the time I was just confused. (Rememer in There's Something About Mary when Cameron Diaz asks Ben Stiller to the prom, and his response was "What? Oh, do you mean you need a driver or something?" Same thing.)
"What? No..." with a scrunched forehead thinking to myself "did I do something to indicate I wanted to kiss her?"
"Yes, you do." erroneously thinking she could read my thoughts. I slowly shook my head "no", and my puzzlement began to turn into anxiety. "Ok, well have a good night, then." she said as she climbed out of my truck. We waved one last time to one another, and then I backed out.
I don't remember how she reacted emotionally. Did she sigh in resignation? Was she angry?
It wasn't a rebuff, it was that it was such unchartered territory simply being in the truck with a well respected, popular girl that it simply never crossed my mind she would want to kiss me, or that I would have the option to kiss her. I remember thinking on the way home that maybe she wanted to serve as my tutor of sorts and show me the ropes. Nice, but then I would have had to expose my complete lack of sexual aptitude to her...
A couple of years later at Michigan State and with a tiny more bit of confidence and wisdom under my belt, she was over at our house for a party, and I kept hoping that after a couple of drinks, she might ask me the question again. I'd try to lock eyes with her and telepathically say "Remember a couple of years ago in my truck??"
"Do you guy care if Scott comes over?," she asked. Scott was her new boyfriend, and the question never came again.

Disturbance at Church

Yesterday I woke up before church, and the only thing I had for breakfast was a candy bar and some cookies. Not that I am complaining, but stores/cafes/bakeries are closed on Sunday, and I really didn't have much of an choice. Although I was perfectly ok with my breakfast selection (I popped a daily vitamin to even things out), my stomach started to feel really gassy on my way to church. The walk was a good 20 minutes, so I figured I got everything out by the time I sat in the pew. The first 30 minutes of the service elapsed without a peep, but that was because I was sitting down and "the pathway was blocked", let's say. When the congregation finally stood up to sing a hymn, before the song began, I let a rip ... completely without warning. I nervously shuffled my foot and SNIFFED, as if I could retroactively muffle it out. Why do people sniff? Why did I sniff? It only drew more attention to myself. Maybe it's just to add a noise to the collection of noises you are "intentionally" making. "Listen to me! I sniffed, which goes perfectly with my feet shuffling performance including one shuffle that sounded exactly like a fart. Just conducting my own little orchestra over here. Maybe I'll incorporate tapping on the pew in front of me..." *TAP TAP TAP*
Or maybe I sniff as a knee jerk reaction to show that it's no big deal that I farted. *fart* ... *sniff* "What are you looking at? I fart, I sniff, I do whatever I want to do in this church... Either way, I'll time the two better next time so that they coincide.