That old-time swoon incident

As I meekly chugged down Theraflu this morning (after two cups of peppermint tea) I remembered I could be feeling a lot worse. I patted myself on the back for forcing down oatmeal this morning. At least that was on crisis adverted.

You see, I used to have this bad habit of passing out. A lot.

I'm hypoglycemic, which means my blood sugar is like a fun roller coaster of despair, especially in the morning. If I don't eat an actual breakfast (as I learned in high school, Marshmallow Supremes do not count as actual breakfast). But there was a time where I didn't quite put two and two together.

Summer after my junior year of high school, I spent two months at a cool Summer College Program up north. I took college classes! I did kooky things like staying up until 4am and ordering pizza late at night! I was the master of my fate and the captain of my soul!

I also started dating the Dude and eating my weight's worth in chicken ramen then, so not all my decisions were quite so mature and adult.

But at the time, man, I was awesome.

One morning the Dude and my new BFF (we'll call her Chicago, one of the only other three out-of-state students) and I decided to get Dunkin' Donuts before class. We trudged in the sweltering 100 degree heat to the main street. I thought being in "the north" waived me from a hot, muggy and buggy summer. No such luck. By the time we got to Dunkin Donuts, after a long lecture from me about how Krispy Kreme is way better anyway (silly northerners), I was sweating and dehydrated and woozy.

And then there was a long line. So I struck my somewhat typical waiting pose and somehow inadvertently locked my knees. We now have the perfect storm of no food, no water, extreme heat and poor circulation. But of course I didn't know this. I had bigger things to worry about: should I order the CARAMEL double chocolate super espresso coffee milkshake or the MINT CHOCOLATE vanilla hazelnut super espresso coffee milkshake? I know, I know, such hard life decisions for a youth. I had finally decided on -

BANG.

A wave of overwhelming nausea and dizziness suckerpunched me out of no where. I almost fell over in line. I staggered to the thankfully single-stall bathroom and immediately felt drenched in a cold sweat. I shook. My stomach twisted and tumbled and the floor spun around me. I laid down on the cool tile floor.

Amazingly, a story involving me face down in a groady donut shoppe bathroom does not involve me contracting e.coli.

The waves of nausea slightly subsided, so I decided to tentatively make my way back to the line. But that whole standing and walking and having any control over my faculties just wasn't going to happen. The dizziness and heat and sickness because unbearable. I called out to Chicago that I was really sick and something was wrong and to get help. I then slid down the wall and fell into a semi-conscious haze.

Cue two kitchen workers FREAKING OUT and running into the hallway, the now hysterically upset Chicago, and a very irritated Dude. Because having your girlfriend pass out in public is SO LAME GOSH. The kitchen workers start yelling at Chicago to get me out of there, calling me unsanitary (rude), shrieking profanities in a different language and generally causing a scene. Chicago calls the program director, hyperventilating, telling him I need to get to a hospital NOW. Dude is hiding somewhere on the other side of the shoppe, not buying weed this time but yet again pretending he didn't know me.

Meanwhile, I'm lolling in some half-awake fog. Still on the floor.

The program director arrives and tells Chicago to go on to class. This provokes complete sobs and shaking, as she can't leave her poor, scrawny (oh the days of being a runner!) defenseless DYING friend. The program director calms her down, sends her and a very compliant dude on their way, talks down the panicking donut workers, and helps me walk outside to what I expected would be just a regular car to take me to the hospital.

Instead, I saw a police cruiser.

Apparently in all the fine print I'd agreed to at the beginning of the program, I'd signed away the ability to ride in a car with anyone who was not my direct legal guardian. Damn you, terms and conditions. The only way to get around this and get me to the hospital was to get me a private police escort. Another thing about police cars - a layperson can't ride shotgun.

I was being taken to the hospital in the back of a police cruiser. Like a criminal on the way to a psych evaluation. All this happening in broad daylight on the busiest street in Delaware.

Such a good personal ambassador from the great state North Carolina.

As we (the program director and I, the policeman leaving after thanking me for not vomiting in his cruiser) waited in the urgent care lobby, the program director decided to call Lady Mum, who was on the drive up from NC to pick me up after the commencement party two days later.

From this I learned how important it is to order news correctly.

"Hello Mrs. W, I'm at Urgent Care with your daughter R. Grace right now... we picked her up when she was unconscious at a Dunkin Donuts... she can't speak to you right now... oh, but she'll be totally okay."

Lady Mum told me she almost swerved off the road at the first sentence.

They took me back and poked, prodded, and tested me for a bit while I was still floating in a stupor. I was too weird-sick-high to even watch them draw my vial of blood, which is usually my favorite part and usually freaks out the nurses. (Dr. Dad taught me well!) Fifteen minutes later, they bring me my treatment.

A cup of orange juice.

"Your blood sugar was really low. And you're anemic. Drink this and don't walk around in the heat without food." Grunt, glare. I was the medical equivalent of slut-shamed. I was a doctor's kid. I should know better. So embarrassed.

All that panic because I couldn't be bothered with an early-morning bagel. Eesh.

And proceeded to have two more increasingly dramatic fainting issues within the next two years. I don't ever learn the easy way. However, I now know I will never be tempted to take heroin. I can get the same floaty exhausted high and brink-of-death feeling if I just skip a couple meals.

The Best Worst Breakup Incident

Back to bloggin and it feels so good.

It was time to break up with my second boyfriend.

I learned a couple things from my dumping the dude incident. Don't ask if he's horribly depressed. Don't believe anything he says. Don't cry. Don't be awkward.

Yeah, still having trouble on the last one there.

This boyfriend, whom we will call Loki for love of all things Norse of course, was a REALLY BIG DEAL. We started dating the day after senior prom. It was *~TrUe LoVe~* or something equally sophomoric. 2gether 4ever.

In high school, 4ever roughly equally 4 months. It was my fun, freewheeling summer before COLLEGE and I was all "mature" and "intellectual" and "moving on." This younger guy (which caused quite a scandal in high school. Dating DOWN? For a GIRL? I am all about breaking social norms, clearly.) had started cramping my style. He couldn't stay out as late. He didn't like the hookah bar. He didn't have a car. Oh, the horror.

I went from no standards to ridiculous unrealistic standards in, what, a year? Oh high school hormones.

So after some incident related to him being unable to attend a really important little speech I was giving, I'd decided enough was enough. I think I wrote out a pros and cons list. I know I cried a lot. This was a REALLY BIG DEAL, after all. But I was resolute. And so the execution date was set.

At Panera Bread.

Ironically, I went on my first date with the Dude at a Panera Bread. I don't go there often anymore, because it is now firmly rooted in my mind as a place of high school heartbreak and romantic despair. But they have some damn good black bean soup.

Anyways.

We were grabbing a bite to eat before I had a meeting for a church youth thing and he was headed out to the beach with his family for a week. We sat down at a high table. I couldn't eat. My face was all red. Moment of reckoning.

"I think we should break up." Okay, see, that was good, I didn't say anything bad. "I mean, you know, you just, things keep going wrong and plans keep falling through and you don't care enough about me and I'm going to college anyways and I mean since you know I think it's not like ummmm..." and then I dissolved into a rambling idiot. No mention of death, though, so that's a tiny victory.

He nodded and said he understood, and sat there red-faced, looking at his food. Okay. Simplest breakup ever. Phew. Nothing awkward about that.

Then Dishwasher Bro came up to us.

Dishwasher Bro went to our high school and was somehow vaguely related to our group of friends. He might have worked tech on a play once? I know he had a gross makeout sesh with one of my friends that left her covered in bite marks in the back of her car. Anyway, he thought we were friends.

"R. Grace! Loki! Ahhh man it's so cool to see you guys. Y'know, I'm really glad you guys are staying together even though R. Grace is going off to college. You're like, my favorite couple ever. You just like, work. An inspiration, yo. I love you two."

Except we had just broken up less than two minutes ago.

Not only was I the cruel girl who had just ended a *~TrUe LoVe~* relationship, I'd also let down all these people who believed in us. Thought we were going to make it. Storybook romance, a love for the ages, all crushed because I wanted to suck face with some hazy nameless college guy in the near future. I made people stop believing in love.

We stared at each other and then him, both bright red. I would have burst out laughing at the ridiculous timing, except I was too busy thinking about how my world was crushed and I was in the throes of hearthbreak and despair and I would never believe in love again. I think Loki spoke up.

"Well, actually we just broke up. Ummm. Just now."

There was an awkward pause, where any sane person would have quickly excused themselves and apologized later. Luckily for this story, and unluckily for me, Dishwasher Bro is not all entirely sane.

"Ahhh man," he said, turning to my just-now ex, "That's so rough. I'm sorry, man. You know how girls are. Terrible. Damn, man, that must be really bad. Sucks. But I mean, she's going off to college so now you've got all that single time. Look, bro, if you want to hang out some time, let me know. Girls, man. Awful."

I'M STILL A FOOT AWAY THIS ENTIRE R.GRACE/GIRL-BASHING RANT.

I now sat there, open-mouthed and publicly shamed as a heart breaking whore. I mean, what about my feelings? I still felt bad. Where was the "you guys are the best couple forever" friendliness and adoration that had been poured out mere seconds before? Now I was a villain, a fiend, lumped in with every other two-timing gutter slut.

Gratefully, it was time for us to depart for our various commitments. We hustled out of the restaurant before my character could be trashed any further and had a tearful goodbye in the parking lot. That was it, then. I was through with relationships. Love was a lie. I was a heart-breaking vixen. Alone in the world.

I started seeing a cool community college boy a week later. He wore shoes that flipped out to rollerskates.

Needless to say, we got back together two weeks later... at least for the last three weeks of the summer. But that's a story for another time.

The Boy in the Band Incident: Part One - No Pants

This actually turned out to be four stories in one.
Two of them involve no pants.

In high school, I had a thing for experimental freak grunge prog rock shows.

I also had a thing for crazy musicians.

With those two sentences, you already know this is going to end badly.

(I also had a thing for boys with, in retrospect, really gross hair. I have since implemented one of my two hard-and-fast dating rules: NO BOYS WITH LONG HAIR. Always trouble.)

The last year and a half of high school I spent a considerable amount of weekends and choice weeknights at this run down warehouse-turned-venue on the outskirts of downtown. I dutifully paid my "suggested donation" and stood to the side with my arms crossed and my head nodding appreciatively to everything from technical metal to freak folk wailing and chants. This seemed like the ideal hang out for a "cool" teenager, as it was mostly pre-hipster college folks. It seemed a different country from my clean-cut, straight-As, high school existence.

I went to these shows with three main friends: one who drove, one who knew how to attract attention, and one who actually knew some of the bands and how to intrinsically "be" cool. And then there was me - both the motivator and the mom. The moderator and mitigator. Such a problem.

So hip, you guys. I am gonna score me some rockstars.

One night toward the end of junior year we decided to stay out SO LATE (until ONE am, crazy, I know) probably because Lady Mom and Dr. Dad were out of town. I felt hella cool in the polkadot dress I'd found at goodwill that my cool friend had chopped the sleeves of off. I think I wore Keds with it that evening. Top of hipster style, I assure you.

The headlining band that evening was a punk rock group from the southwest who went on to... not do much else, from the looks of their facebook page and myspace. They had a temporary stand-in lead singer who was supposed to be pretty good. The crowd was solid and energetic; the beer flowed (and I snuck it away from my friends and placed it on tables, etc. since we were underage! Eesh, so dangerous!) and the opening bands rocked. The combination of these three elements inspired one cool cat to drunk climb on the stage overhang and take his shirt off and spin it around. This sight caused the drunk college hipsta-bros next to us to remark:

"ahhh man what a wimp / he's not even stripping / that's not the way to do it / get naked or get off / rabble rabble rabble."

I laughed and that caught their attention enough to continue ragging on the poor stumbling (and not-well guarded against falling on top of us and snapping my slender high school neck) drunk who was trying to remove his pants to flail them around. Their heckling got louder, until my friend who knew how to attract attention turned and pierced them with an equally come-hither and die-bitch stare and said:

"Why don't you shut up and go show him how it's done?"

I echoed her sentiments, feeling all I-am-woman-hear-me-roar and giddy off of two cigarettes and being out past 11pm until... they did it. I cheered along, hoping for some hot abdominal muscles or, you know, a decently humorous story to awe all my wide-eyed AP-course-taking friends. Be careful what you wish for.

Something about punk rawk, man, just makes boys want to take their clothes off.

So these two even more drunk boys clamber above the stage and goad the lone drunkerd off to the side. They proceeded to rip off their shirts and jeans, windmilling them overhead to the great shouts of laughter and encouragement until... wait, what are they doing? They've put down their shirts... They're taking off their boxers... are they really going to... is that a.... ? Oh. my. god.

EWW EWW OH MY GOD GROSS EWW FREAK OUT NOW.

I shrieked and buried my face in my hands. My friend tried to pry my fingers away from my eyes, whooping along with the crowd.

And that is how I saw my first naked man.

---

To our other side, once the overhead nakedness subsided, another equally enthralling chap engaged us in conversation. He was the roadie for Awesome Headlining Band and bff of the temporary lead singer. Didn't care. He was intoxicated (this a running theme with poserish boys at concerts), a little repulsive, and altogether uninteresting. I mostly ignored him. And then the Awesome Headlining Band came out and I saw the lead singer.

Ba-DING Ba-DING. Two big red cartoon hearts popped up in my eye sockets. My first case of full-bodied rockstar lust.

I was IN LOVE. This boy was beautiful. And he knew how to rock. And his best friend was standing right next to me. Suddenly, I became very interested in everything the best friend had to say.

"Oh my gosh that is so interesting / and you've been touring with them how long / tell me everything about them / oh yeahhh you did mention you were friends with D / ohhh best friends? / ohhh wow cool / so what's it like tell me EVERYTHING / uh huh uh huh / ohhhh the set's over boo"

Miss Emily Post rolled over in her grave from my charming etiquette and conversational prowess.

Right on cue, Lead Singer walked over to talk to his best friend about loading amps or something equally boring. And there I was with my winning smile (probably with scary serial-killer eyes, it took me a while to learn how to tone down my enthusiasm.) wearing my totally cool thrifted dress, and being INTERESTED IN THINGS.

He said something profound (probably: Oh, hey) and I swooned. In the .5 seconds I'd known him I'd fully succumbed to Total Groupie Syndrome* it was baaad. My friends crowded around to chat, keeping the conversation the appropriate level of we're-like-totally-in-college-whatever awesome. I'd completely forgotten his gross friend and zeroed in on every beautiful (and arrogantly pretentious) word falling from his mouth. This wasn't like all of the other bands I'd seen here at the Warehouse. These guys were going to BE SOMETHING and REALLY GONNA MAKE IT. Oh, be still, my heart.

I noticed a shuffling in the corner of my eye.

His drunk friend loudly told some stupid story from an earlier concert, gesticulating wildly with one hand and... undoing his belt with the other? He managed to unhook his belt, mid-story, and started unbuttoning his pants. We stood there in the middle of the Warehouse, actual groupies shuffling around carrying amps, tattooed girls trading alt-rock hookup stories behind us over the haze of American Spirit smoke, and the drunk friend was removing his pants. Nonchalantly. Still telling his story.

I was both horrified and incapable of looking away.

Suddenly, he stopped. He looked down at his pants now approaching his knees (undergarments still on THANK GOD) looked slowly at us girls with gaping mouth and wide eyes, and then to the Lead Singer. He the spoke again.

"Aw man, you gotta tell me when I'm taking my pants off in public. I can't get in trouble for this again!"

He shuffled away, hiking up his pants and muttering curses.

This had happened before? This was a thing? Accidentally forgetting you were removing your clothing... and in front of underage girls, no less? I've read about many types of systematic memory loss, but never in my psychology studies had I seen someone who JUST DIDNT REALIZE HE WAS GETTING NAKED.

And that is how I did NOT see another naked man.

* Total Groupie Syndrome (TGS): Behavior exhibited by typically desperate girls wanting to score with a band member. Nausea-inducing to anyone not afflicted. Symptoms begin with flushed faces, dizziness, uncontrollable batting eyelashes, and excessive giggling. Also earnestly CARING about the band's goals and artistic vision. When not treated with a healthy dose of reality or a well-meaning bitchslap, symptoms can progress to ostentatious flirting, lofty statements and delusions of grandeur and true-love-forever and irrepressible lust. Not to be confused with the even-more-severe "actual love," the onset of TGS is swift, sudden, and may require little or no interaction with the intended target.

(the bangability scale tends to go from lead singer, percussionist?, lead guitarist, drums, and then last and usually least, the bassist. Though now in our ironic, post-hip society, the bassists have suddenly started being in high demand. Thank you, I started that trend.)

---

So does R. Grace end up with her band boy (not likely)? Does the evening end in shambles or hilarity? Will she ever stay up past one again? And how does relationship advice from a chimney-smoke English teacher play into all of this? How does this forever shape our fearless heroine's dating adventures?


I guess you'll have to wait until the next post!


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Post inspired by my jaunt to the Honda Civic Tour last night to see Matt & Kim, MCR, and Blink 182. My middle-school self is still jumping around excitedly. Goodnight loves.