Girls Have Cooties

My quest began three months ago when I held my baby niece, the Chunky Monkey Jelly Bean, for the first time. However, that doesn't mean I wasn't chasing girls before that. I crawled out of the womb with a lady on each arm, my first words were, "Hey, ladies. Can I buy you a drink?" and it was rare to find me without my face planted on a boob.

     Well, that wasn't exactly true. In all honesty, I was your average child. I was born like any other child, my first words were probably something like, "momma" or "dada," and like any other child, there was a five to ten year span where I thought girls were icky. Though my face on a boob was pretty accurate (What? I was hungry. . .) Eventually my opinion of girls would mature. That happened at about eight-years-old, but I wouldn't like a specific girl until I was about ten.

     In the Autumn of 2004 I began taking piano lessons from a friend of my mom's. I wasn't the best piano student in the world. As a matter of fact, I was probably the worst she ever had. Not because I was bad at it, not at all - I am a very musical person who can play a wide variety of instruments - it was because I didn't take it seriously. I never practiced or learned anything (seriously, to this day I don't know how to read sheet music) and I thought it was cool to do so. "Why?" you might ask. Because I had a crush on my piano teacher's daughter and I was trying to impress her (a word of advice. Being a jackass is not the way to impress a girl. It doesn't matter how old you are.) Anyway, her name was Erin and, at the time, she was the only thing I could think about. I hated piano lessons and she was the only reason why I enjoyed going to them.

     Up until this point she had just been my best friend. We'd known each other since we were both crawling on all fours. But now she was something more to me. In my ten-year-old head, I thought I was in love. I told almost no one, though everyone probably knew. My sisters knew and some of my friends, but I refused to tell my parents. It was embarrassing to tell them and my mom had said many times, "No dating until you are at least sixteen." Regardless, I thought I was in love, so thus began "Operation Get-a-girl." A covert operation to. . . well. . . get the girl.