FICTIONAL CHARACTER YOU PROBABLY WOULD HAVE ACTUALLY DATED IN HIGH SCHOOL:

Okay, before I start in, I must thank Vashti for her latest blog on what authors are supposed to look like in the imagination of others.  You can find this excellent post here: Vashti Quiroz-Vega. 

On her post, she listed some authors to check out (author pictures versus the genres they write).  It was in this exploration of these people that I have never heard of that I got interested in a post on the blog by Mehitobel Wilson.  Cool name, huh?  Vashti is a cool name too.  I always like the unusual.

I scrolled down Mehitobel’s blog to read a blurb of a few posts.  Then the phrase “fictional character you probably would have actually dated in high school” caught my eye.  This set me to thinking about that, knowing the way I was in high school.  I decided I could make up the ideal fictional character I would have loved to run across back then.

I wonder if I should dare go on, as I was somewhat of a wild teenager, but I guess we all are at times or maybe in our inner soul.  Maybe we never act on the desires because we lack the courage to go forward and explore.  The teen years are hard when we try to find ourselves and many times this doesn’t happen until later, not in high school.  High school is for experimenting and tasting the future of our adult selves.

As many of you know, if you read my other blog, I grew up on a farm and was never in contact with anyone except my siblings until I started school.  Things didn’t really get exciting until I reached my teen years and started dating.  I had a rebellious side back then, and I guess it still resides in the shadows today if I want to be honest with myself.

In my junior and senior years in high school, I used to hang out with some questionable characters.  Of course, things were never questionable enough for me.  I wanted to do something wild.  I think this notion springs from my isolation while growing up.  I was up for almost anything someone suggested.  I wanted to experience life, probably feeling deep down that I missed a lot on the farm.  I eventually took up with some guys who rode motorcycles and am still friends with some of them today.

My rebellious streak included everything that was against school rules.  I made it a priority to break those rules as often as I could.  I wore my skirts too short, causing myself a trip to the principal’s office many times.  I would wear my shirttails out when the policy was to tuck them in.  The shirts had long tails, so my skirts disappeared underneath their hemlines.  I would pack a different outfit for school and change after I left the house, as my mother would never let us out of the house the way we wanted to dress.  My accomplice was one of my sisters, although I was more daring than she was.  But having an accomplice helped out in many ways.  We often skipped school together or missed the bus because we were too busy fussing with our makeup, hair and outfits.  We never ratted on each other because were in it together.

But back to the perfect man, he would be a surfer dude with a tan and long hair.  His daring nature and great smile would pull me in, not to mention his sleek body.  He would be my best friend, and an artist like me, we would talk for hours and dance to rock and roll music and share a joint or glasses of wine.  He would be passionate about the causes of the day because I was.  We would wile away the hours at a protest, if necessary, and hitchhike our way to Woodstock.  Perhaps from there we’d go to San Francisco and stay a while.  I loved that city back then and it was my dream to live in the Haight-Ashbury district.  Of course, some dreams stay dreams.  Maybe it’s better that way.

I never found his kind of guy, only people who were close.  And I never made it to San Francisco either until in my later years.  But I had plenty of adventures as a teen and lived to tell about it, not that I would share any of that.  Sometimes I think the fact that I survived the teens in the 60’s and 70’s is enough.