Pancakes

Its been almost a year since the next set of events occurred.  Ihop and Denny’s where having a pancake day to raise money for charity.  If you came in on a certain day, during specific hours, each person could get a short stack of pancakes for free.  You could donate money and the restaurants would give it to save children with cancer or something like that.  It had been advertised well and I really wanted a free stack of flapjacks.

A few days before The Great Pancake Day, I was trying to convince Ben to go with me, cause I didn’t want to go by myself, looking like some kind of creeper.

“Oh my God, I love pancakes!” startled me from behind.  I turned around to face this conversation-interrupting ninja, and come face-to-face with Ash.  She was sneakier than I thought.

“Oh my God, you should come with us!”

My snarky, sarcastic humor was right up her alley, cause she smiled and told me to shut up.  I told her I was serious, our inane testing and games of highly competitive speed giving me confidence.  We where going after a basketball game, Brandon still went to a lot of his High School’s games, to the one at Denny’s.  it was the one on Friday, Ihop’s was the day before.  She had swim that day and the next, and shad she might be able to go, depending on how late the game went.

Ben was pretty quiet through all of our planning.  I don’t think he was as fond of Ash as I was.  She might have been a little too weird for him; she liked to call him Fagol, and I don’t remember why.

Friday nigh came quickly.  The game was forgettable the only thing I remember was Brandon’s high school won.  What I do remember, though, is the drive to the Denny’s after.  Ash and I were texting back and forth, trying to figure out how this was going to work.  We were making a little progress when it all go shot to hell.  Her dad had shut it down.  It was too late, she had practice the next day, and I was some guy he had never met, taking his daughter to a different city for some free brinner.  I would probably be hesitant too if I was in his place.

So it just ended up being Ben, a couple of other friends and myself.  Dang, major fail.

Hey Girl, Lemme Get Those Digits.

Things changed just enough for us to become friends out of class. I got her number. You'll hear stories of how guys will be super smooth when they get a girl's number, or how a girl flirts just right, leading that lucky stallion to ask for her digits. Even now, a year later, I am still impressed with how I did it.

We have all done the thing where we play with our friends phones when they aren't using them. We could ask nicely if we can play their game of bubble breaker, or you could be sneaky and snatch it when they aren't paying attention, texting all the people in the phone book random things. I did the first, she did the second. I asked politely to use her phone so I could play one of her games. Ash, filched my cell when I wasn't looking. So, what we had here, was a cell phone Mexican standoff! I'll give you yours back when you give me mine. No way, you give me mine first, then you can have yours. Ha! In your dreams!

We went back and forth like that for a few minutes, until she was called on to do therapy on some football player. I sat around in the taping area, playing bubble breaker like some goon, when I was asked by Josh, I think it was Josh, to drive him to his car then to the soccer field. He always asked me to drive him because I always said yes. I put the not-my-phone in my pocket and forgot about it.

I made it half way to his car before Ash figured out how to text on my phone.

You have my phone YOU have my phone So? So Nah! You fail! No, you fail You fail at life Thats not very nice Go cry in the corner then :-P How rude! Your mom is rude.

And it went on like that till I got back and made a game out of calling each other failures when we lost at card, messed up on a tape job, or for any reason we could justify, no matter how lame. Some time during that Fail-o-thon, I figured out that I had just gotten her number. I didn't even have to ask, she gave it to me! I was stoked: I got the cell number of a girl I thought, more and more each day, was pretty cute. Bonus! She was just as weird as me. Super, awesome new friend for me!

Tape Socks

You would think things would change a lot because of her being in high school. they didn't; she was still that girl who beat me at speed and poker. I could still look at her binder every time I forgot her name(I'm ashamed to say that happened often). The only difference now was I knew her age and what she was doing after class. High school.

Time went by like it usually did in the training room: card-playing and athlete-taping. To keep our taping up to par, we practiced on ourselves; our mistakes making each other uncomfortable for five minutes as we walked around the room with badly taped ankles, instead of our mistakes breaking a football player's ankle because we forgot a strip.

I didn't really need that much practice with my ankle tape job, so I goofed off with Steve number four instead. Steve got his title by having the most common name in the class; two others where also named Steve. We jokingly said the title of number three was reserved in case another, fourth, Steve showed up. He took it in good spirits and I liked him for it. He was my favorite dude in the training room. That didn't include my best friend of 15 years, Ben. As of right now, it's more like 16.

One day, we where feeling especially mischievous. Anybody would do, we weren't that picky and we didn't really have a plan. Ash became our victim because the opportunity was too good to pass up.

She was talking on her phone with God-knows-who about God-knows-what. She was also sitting on the taping platform in brightly colored socks and shoes. I liked those socks, and I thought I should give her some of my own.

Steve and I asked her if we could practice tape jobs on her ankles. She consented, but , being too busy on the phone, she couldn't take off her shoes and socks, Steve and I would have to do the deed. We took off her footwear and taped her ankles; very routine, nothing unusual. Then, very sneaky like, we started to tape her toes individually. She didn't realize what was happening until it was too late. we had gone beyond the point of no return and we were in control.

After taping each of her toes multiple times, we taped them all together, toes and then feet. She looked like she had two feet in the same cast. Steve and I thought it was hilarious. Ash thought it was annoying. Mildly amusing, but still annoying.

You would think, since no major change happened when I discovered she was a high school student, nothing would change from the tape sock incident. You would be wrong.

What's in a Name?

Things went on like that for a little while. Eventually, I learned her name by figuring out which binder was hers, because asking would have been too easy. Conveniently, it had her name in gian letters written across the front. We had become what I like to call classroom friends. We talked and hung out when we had class together, but other than that, we had no contact. To me, she was just another college student, taking the practicum class on a whim or for a few extra credits.
One day, Brad, one of the other students, asked me to drive him to his class on one of the training room golf carts. the golf carts where officially for the head trainers' use only, taking them and various sport supplies to and from the athletic events around the campus. Unofficially, the students in the practicum class used them to drop each other off at class, their cars and the different food vendors around the school. So it wasn't an unusual thing for Brad to ask or for me to oblige.
As I was collecting the keys and telling one of the trainers I was borrowing the cart, Ash asked if she could get a ride as well. Sure, why not? Ash drove with Brad riding shotgun and I rode in the back. The ride was uneventful: Brad talked to me about stupid things that I only had half an interest in. When we stopped at the edge of one of the parking lots next to the main street, I did what I always do when I'm dropping a stranger off that their car- I tried to guess which car belonged to said stranger. Nothing stood out to me, so I asked where she was parked. at this point, Brad spoke up with the first truly interesting thing he had said all day, "She is going to the high school." The high school across the street? Wow. Uh, ok. I'll let you get going girl-who-I-thought-was-my-age-but-I-now-know-is-still-in-high-school. Your really how old? 17? That's funny, you don't really look it. See you next week.

Blood, Sweat and...Cards?

If you asked her, she would say that we had met in the fall 2008 semester, but I don't remember meeting her then to be honest. She told the story of how I would come into the training room after basketball class (college credit for playing pick up games). She said she asked me whether I needed anything, assuming I was an athlete for the college and not someone who worked in the training room. I brushed her off and went to get myself bags of ice to treat the variety of injuries I get when I play.

She is probably telling the truth, cause that does sound a lot like me after ball. What I remember, however, is meeting her the next semester. Same place, training room, just not right after I ran up and down a court for 2 hours. See, the college offers a class called sports medicine practicum, in it, a student helps out in the training room by taping athletes, hooking them up to muscle stim, doing ultra-sound treatments and other sporty-healy stuff. The thing about that is, the athletes all have pretty much the same schedual: school in the morning and practice in the afternoon. Their practices all started around 3ish, so if you came in during the time period from 10am to noon, there wasn't a whole lot to do.

Being good, dedicated students, the dozen of use just played cards. Thirteen, Egyptian war and poker. Poker was played using rolls of tape that had been used to a point of uselessness; we called them tape ends. The game of choice was almost exclusively hold'em. But Ash didn't know how to play hold'em, and that led to my first ever memory of her: speed.

Speed the card game. It started with both of us being bored. I didn't know her name, and I dont think she cared enough to know mine. She was very competitive and I wasn't just going to loose on purpose because she didn't have something dangling between her legs. I lost more than I won when we played, but I have a hunch that she cheated on some of those games. I didn't really care, it was all good in the training room.

About

Now that I've had a not-so-good night of sleep, I'll explain a little about myself and my situation. I'm a 20 year old male living with my parents in California. I used to go to school full time and work part time, but the classes I needed all filled up this semester so now i'm just taking 2. My work hasn't really picked up much since school started: the hours I am needed there coincide with my MWF class. While my school life has really changed, the biggest difference is my more personal life. Over winter break, the girl I had fallen in love with left me. She had good reasons for breaking up with me after 10 months; i was distant because of school, i wasn't taking my work seriously and i was generally being a jerk. I'd like to think it wouldn't have been so bad if she just told me she didn't love me anymore and made a clean break, but she didn't. She decided to give me a chance to figure out what it was that I was doing wrong and fix it by the end of the semester. I guess she really meant within a month, cause thats all the time she gave me before calling it quits for good.

Looking back now, I can see that the thought of bettering myself for her was the thing that was keeping me going.

Welcome

This is my first time posting something like this on the internet. I used to write in a journal, but i guess i just like talking to people more, and this gives me more unbiased feed-back I assume. Its late for me so I don't feel like writing much; I'm sure I'll have more to say tomorrow. About Ashley, school, work and probably my family.

Good Night.