My neighbor's son has a girlfriend. I've talked to this kid, who's all of about 15 or 16, very nice, and fully equipped with some odd hair choices. The thing is that this kid's parents are totally heavy Christian and this kid's always got his girlfriend wrapped around him like Saran wrap.

It's just so incongruous.

As I was watching her yesterday, obviously showing off her saran wrapping techniques for a 13 year old neighborhood girl, I was thinking,"Shit, was I ever like that?"

The next thought I had was,"Oh, GOD, yes!"

I had a boyfriend, we'll call Sam in high school and I used to go up to meet him at his locker and we'd exchange love notes. I am sure I have all of these somewhere at my parents' house or my mom has long since discarded them, but we'd fold them into footballs and I wrote oodles of really bad poetry in his name and in the name of love in general.

And we necked politely in public because we were both shy. I think his parents made him break up with me because we were both so damned horny and we got busted a few times for being out too late. We used to go on heavy necking sessions in a church parking lot and tell our parents we'd gone bowling. We used to go to this road up to a fire lookout during the fall and spring. We had gone there once and necked a bunch. The second time, we just didn't count on drinking college kids in 4 by 4's tracking up through there in the mud. I was about half dressed and had to scramble to get dressed while Sam inadvertently got our car stuck in the mud when he was trying to hurriedly get his partially removed clothes on and get the car out of the way.

We got lots of polite smirking and had about 10 college guys help push the car out of the damned mud.

I think Sam's parents saw the mud and put things together and told him to break up with me. He gave me some odd excuses for our break up and I was young and didn't get it.

When I had knee surgery about 3 months later, a surgery that he'd had, he came to the hospital to visit me and couldn't hardly keep his hands off me, but I was already heartbroken and on some heavy painkillers, so wasn't at all appreciative.

It took me years to figure out that he had always been in love with me and had had to break up because his parents told him to. (I remember all of this very clearly and it was over 20 years ago!) By the time he came to visit me when I was in my early 20's, I was over him, even though he was clearly not over me.

So as I watched these two kids yesterday, I remembered all that and a batch of other events and remembered how awkward and awful the whole time from 13-20 was. Then in about the same thought, I thought about how glad I am to be married to such a great guy like Mike.

So last night, I was trying to show him how glad I was and I fell asleep! I was feeling pretty bad because in all my years of sexual and semi-sexual activity, I have never ever fallen asleep mid-whapadang. I realized I was falling asleep and we changed what we were doing, but I have been all over that apologizing thing.

He keeps telling me it's okay, but in the face of the Saran Wrap girl, my own torrid teens, and my desire for sleep, I'm feeling really old today.

But fitting into my jeans better than I have in weeks is sure helping!