TOOLBAG TUESDAY

Some people (mom) have asked me how I come up with ideas for this blog. I respond that I try to remember funny stories I tell people in person, and attempt to transcribe these stories without losing the “funny.”

This was the case with the blog entries about my deplorable cooking skills, Catholic School upbringing and anything involving Joy.
I have repeated these tidbits to hundreds of people in real life. Hours of entertainment.

The stories I find I get the biggest laughs from, however, are the ones about the TOOLBAGS my friends and I have dated, because the stories are just so unbelievable.

I’m not talking about horrible breakups or great past loves that were ripped apart due to distance, timing or…um, alcoholism. I’m talking about truly ridiculous stories that I couldn’t make up if I tried.

Saying “train wreck” and “hot mess” would be too polite…too…normal for these people.

Let’s just give some examples, shall we?
My college rooommate’s boyfriend once put a dead baby shark under our house.

We lived in the heart of downtown, more than 10 miles from the beach, and Peter* was crazy, a sportsman, and had a conveniently large vehicle that could easily haul the marine animal.

We were unaware of our rotting guest, and complained to the landlord about a horrible STINK, the kind that could curl wallpaper. Worse than exploded potatoes. He said it was probably a rat, and he would call the pest company to look into it.

The poor pest guy looked so frightened when he crawled back from under the house a few days later to give us the report.

“Ya’ll got a God damn dead baby shark under the house!” he said in a think South Carolina accent.

We let this information marinate for a second, and then all instinctively pointed at Amy.
“Peter did it!” we all said in unison.
“What? No!” she protested, saying Peter would never go to all that trouble just because they had recently broken up.

“OH REALLY? we said. “NAME ONE OTHER PERSON THAT CRAZY!”

We reminded her that Peter beat our front door down one night when we weren’t home, breaking it in half, and he also let the air out of everyone’s tires in our driveway CONVINCED that one of the cars belonged to her new boyfriend.

(Peter actually deserves his own TOOLBAG blog entry. And he will get it.)

In order to catalog my vast collection of seemingly made-up stories, ALTHOUGH BELIEVE ME THEY ARE VERY, VERY REAL, and to provide a little comic relief, I would like to start “TOOLBAG TUESDAYS,” snippets of real life stories reserved for the laughably worst of the worst dating disasters.

Don’t worry, *some names have been changed.

To make things fair, I’ll be the victim in the inaugural TOOLBAG TUESDAY post, and tell you about someone I dated — briefly — during the three weeks I must have hit my head and damaged the judgment part of my brain.

Landon seemed nice enough, and we had friends in common, and he used to work at a bakery and make pies and I thought that was kind of cute.

Things started out normal, with dinner and video games and even some dancing. I also met his entire family (which was a hodgepodge “blended” family twice over, which means his niece is older than he is and his dad’s second ex-wife’s son was at the table.)

The fam seemed to like me and Papa even talked up the liquor he was making that would be ready by a holiday that was a month away.
“Can’t wait for you to try it!” he said, assuming I'd still be around in a month.

I thought Landon had promise, even though he was kind of dumb. I became suspicious about his IQ when he revealed he was no longer in pharmacy school because he failed a drug test.

“Didn’t you think they’d test you in order to be a pharmacist?” I asked.
“Yea,” he laughed. “They even told me they’d test me, but I forgot.”

Despite this information, I invited him over to my house for a Sunday Funday birthday party for my former roommate.
He met all my friends at the party, who had known OF him, since we had DATED for three weeks and I HAD EVEN MET HIS PARENTS.

So, there he was — officially introduced — eating all the brunch food and birthday cake and beer I had paid for, when I noticed he and his best friend were talking to my two best girl friends awfully…close.

I’ll admit I was playing host and bobbing from group to group, and hadn't seen him for a half-hour.

“Um….he’s not that stupid to hit on someone else at our party,” said my twin sister, Joy, on the way to get more beer. (This, friends, is a bit of foreshadowing.)

“But he’s talking to Maggie really closely!” I said. "Maybe I should be worried."
“He’s probably just being Steven’s wing man or something,” Joy said.

When I returned to the house after the beer run, I found the foursome still in one-on-one conversations, so I did what anyone would do — I put on some music and started dancing with him to Michael Jackson.

He soon turned his attention (properly) back on me, and I felt foolish for thinking foul play. The party turned out really well, and Joy and I high-fived about it and everyone drank themselves silly.

The next day, I had a smile on my face at work despite a terrible headache, and I was counting down the minutes until lunch.
Right as I was getting into my car to find the greasiest burger in town, I got a call from Maggie.

“Hey, I just wanted to let you know the guy you’re dating is a total douchebag!” Maggie said.
“What?” I asked.
“Yea, Landon asked to be my friend on Facebook this morning and he got my phone number from my page and just asked me out on a date.”

“What?” my voice raised two octaves.
“Yea.”
I foolishly gave him the benefit of the doubt.
“Maybe…you misunderstood?”
“No," Maggie said. "I said to him, ‘aren’t you and Jenny dating?’ and he said, ‘no.’”
My hangover switched into overdrive. OH HELLLLL NO.

I yelled something about him to Maggie that is not blog appropriate, thanked her for being a friend, and called Landon immediately.

“HEY!” I shouted when he picked up. “WHY ARE YOU ASKING MY FRIENDS OUT ON DATES??”

“Woah! Woah!” he said. “I see what’s going on here.”

“Oh yea, WHAT?” I asked in a fake polite voice, cocking my head to one side. “WHAT. is going on here?”

“You just like me WAY more than I like you….”

My jaw dropped.
“NO!” I shouted, making it a loooong, almost upbeat no. “That is NOT what’s going on here!”

“Well, apparently I’m like your BOYFRIEND or something.” (he used the word “like” a lot.)

“NOOOO!” another long, upbeat no. “You were MY DATE to MY PARTY though.”
“OK, WOAH. I think you girls are just being really dramatic,” he said.

“I’m being dramatic? How about you??? Asking my friends out, OH MY GOD, I brought a CREEPER as my date to my own party!” I said. "How embarrassing!"

“OK, OK, I don’t think I’m like…a creep,” he said. “I just don’t want to be anyone’s boyfriend.”

“YOU’RE NOT MY BOYFRIEND! YOU CAN GO OUT WITH WHOEVER YOU WANT!” I screamed. “MY FRIENDS AREN’T INTERESTED IN YOU!”

“THIS IS NOT HELPING MY HANGOVER!” I said sternly, and then I hung up.

For the rest of the day, Landon word-vomited me varying text messages either saying 1.) this was all a misunderstanding 2.) my friends and I are “gossipy dramatic” girls 3.) that I wanted him to be my boyfriend.
I did not respond.

I gave him 24 hours to apologize and then, naturally, deleted him as my Facebook friend. (Which really pisses off 25-year-olds.)

“OH, WE CAN’T EVEN BE FACEBOOK FRIENDS?? THIS SUCKS,” he wrote the following morning, in all caps.
I laughed aloud.

“It sucks that you made me think you were a nice guy.”
“I am a nice guy. You just wanted more than I did.”

I laughed aloud, again.
“Wrong on both counts,” I replied. “Deflate your ego. I never wanted you to be my boyfriend.”

“Don’t be mean,” he finally said.

I think he could use a nice dead baby shark under his house.

-Jenny