TOOLBAG TUESDAY

I was too busy watching Jerry Springer after school to bother with after-school specials.

But I get it: Lessons for impressionable youngsters about staying in school and sex and drugs and being honest and keeping your nose clean with good-looking actors who were probably in their 20s.

(Too bad I was too enthralled with who’s having an affair with a midget...who’s really their sister.)

Um. Anyway.

Richard, this guy my friend Haley went out with three times, could have been the star of his very own after-school TV special: how to be a cliché toolbag when a girl won’t sleep with you.

I’m pretty sure they covered this exact theme in order to show girls how mean and bratty boys can get when you don’t give it up....so...NEVER. GIVE. IT. UP.

It makes sense, then, that the first night Haley and Richard met, they acted like middle schoolers.

Or are you never too old to make out with someone in the back seat of your roommate’s car on the way home???

Richard and Haley were both in their late 20s and had met at a bar and danced a salsa and seemingly had a connection.

Thinking back, Haley said Richard said all the right things and made her feel like the only person in the world. (Suspicious. Ha)

They ended up at her house and while they sort of hooked up they didn’t DO IT, although Richard was literally begging her, and he was really sexy.

She didn’t want to seem trampy. And, ahem, it was that time of the month.

The next day, after dropping him off at home, Haley got excited about a potential relationship with him.

He was cute, a good dancer and they had talked all night without finding each other annoying.

But then Richard only texted her at 2 a.m. for the rest of the week.

Haley looked at her phone the next morning and frowned. She had been staring at her phone all day, why couldn’t he have texted at 2 p.m.?

The next weekend she invited him to a party hoping they could dance again but he sat there bored and then spent the entire time trying to get Haley to go with him to an empty bedroom.

Do what??? Haley asked. Are you retarded?

A few days later, Richard finally called her during daylight hours.

“Come over for dinner!” he said.

Dinner! So cute!

Haley was as excited as a schoolgirl...in an after-school special.

Yet when she got over to his house, there was no dinner cooking. No delicious smells.

Richard was on the couch drinking a beer, and didn’t even offer her one.

Regardless, they started making out and he told her that he couldn’t stop thinking about their hot-and-heavy hookup from two weeks earlier.

“Like, I haven’t stopped thinking about that for a MINUTE!” he said.

Haley, on the other hand, had been thinking about how well they talked and laughed and danced together.

Typical. Humph.

With still no mention of dinner, Richard suggested they go to his bedroom, but Haley said naw, man.

“Oh, so that’s it?” Richard said, annoyed. “This is all that’s going to happen here?

He was starting to run out of all the perfect things to say.

It was ironic because maybe if Richard had actually made a delicious dinner then he’d have gotten some.

But instead Haley left, feeling OH SO cheap.

Not surprisingly, Richard hasn’t called or texted since that night. Not even a 2 a.m. text.

For the first week, Haley kept checking her empty inbox and feeling depressed.

Maybe he hadn’t been with someone in awhile and he was just overly eager! She cried at dinner, mourning the potential she had for them. Maybe he just thinks I’m THAT irresistible!

“Wait, are you talking about Richard (insert last name)?” asked a friend’s boyfriend, who was at dinner and overhead.

“Yea,” Haley responded slowly. “Why.”

“He was my friend’s roommate. He brings home girls every weekend and brags about it.”

OH.

Well thank God I didn’t sleep with him! she said.

(P.S. when a girl thanks God that she didn’t sleep with you, you’re a toolbag.)

Yet despite that unattractive news about Richard, it was all Haley needed to hear to, uh, change the channel.

No more after-school special!

She deleted his number and never cried over him again.

-Jenny