I am watching MTV this morning while Joey and Monkey Man are hunkered down in our rec room watching The Fantastic Four or some crap like that.
I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I have allowed myself to get sucked in by the third season of Laguna Beach. What am I, like 12 years old? I don't think I even watched the first season. I hated the second season, mostly because I didn't like LC or Kristin. For some reason, though, I am totally sucked into the third season.
I like Tessa and Rocky. Yeah, Rocky is a little bit of a hormonal basket case and she is almost so painful to watch at times it's unbearable, but the two of them just remind me so much of me and my high school years that I can't even stand it. And watching her reconcilation with Alex was like watching a very bad rerun of my own high school years.
I started thinking this morning about this guy I dated pretty much off and on through high school. I think he and I must have broken up and gotten back together no fewer than five times. We met in church - I think he was a junior in a rival high school, I was just a freshman at the "rich kids" school (which was a total oxymoron to have me there because we were by no means rich, we just happened to live in that area). It was like a pathetic version of West Side Story - I caught so much crap from people at my school for dating a "townie" that there were several times that I stupidly thought about breaking up with him just for that reason.
He was a sweet guy - maybe almost too sweet - he was an Eagle Scout, church-going guy, worked two part-time jobs and was an honor roll student.
I was a "good girl" - very good student, went to church faithfully, sang in the choir, belonged to the drama club, the band, the orchestra, and did about a million extra-curricular activities.
But putting us together was like throwing a match into a puddle of gasoline. We were just too different for it to work at all.
And somehow, time after time, we would end up being drawn back together. Over and over. And between reconciliations, inevitably one or the other of us would be dating someone else in our little circle of friends. Very Laguna Beach, even in the 1980's. It was all very dramatic and romantic and tragic at once.
The last time we broke up, I knew there was not going to be a reconciliation. We had been at a youth group meeting and a group of us adjourned to Friendly's for burgers and ice cream in our usual weekly tradition. He and I began arguing on the way to the restaurant because he didn't understand why I had to go home right after we ate. Things escalated, and he ended up hitting me.
That was the end.
He went off to college soon after that - he kept in touch sporadically, and in one of the most ironic chapters of our saga, he ended up marrying someone from our church youth group that happened to attend the same small college he did. Last I heard, he was an attorney up in New Jersey and has two kids.
And sometimes I wonder if he ever hit her. If he hits her. Or if I was the only one that he thought deserved it.
Sometimes I think that I wasted a good portion of my high school years getting sucked back in over and over by him. We had some good times, but most of it was just nonstop drama. But I don't think MTV would have been interested, because we weren't rich enough, gorgeous enough, and there were no mansions, speedboats, or fast cars. Not to mention the fact that we were in New Jersey, and I don't think that his beach house in Point Pleasant would hold a candle to the O.C.
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