Every day I write the book...Chapter One!
9/16/2003 12:57 PM
After writing about my first love (found in the pages of a discarded magazine) some people have said that they wanted to hear more on the past women in my life. So ladies, here it is a tribute to all of you through no fault of your own ended up in a relationship with me and how I fumbled and flustered my way into my wonderful wife. Let me be the first to say to all of you...I'm sorry.

Let me first say...I know crap about love. Any advice you may glean from the this post you should promptly write down on small piece of paper, shred into tiny pieces, burn, and bury the ashes in a 4x4 hole 6 feet deep. My concept of love and relationships was mostly found in television and the comic books I read. So to say I had a skewed vision of it would be accurate. Also a basis of "love" as a concept could be found in overhearing the hours of Journey and Barry Manilow songs my sisters would blast throughout the 70's. Which basically gave the impression you didn't have anything going on unless there was a special someone in your life. Listen to any of those songs there are 3 categories of the...1) Why can't I find love. 2) I’m in love and the world is perfect! 3) She just broke up with me and I'm miserable. Now I'm not saying the issues I had with relationships can be directly traced to Steve Perry and Barry Manilow but I'm just giving some background on the EPIC importance that I placed on love at an early age. But as with most things in life there’s a bit of irony. Thanks to a twist of genetics and poor fashion taste in general. I was a dork! A nerd...etc. After my research, through television you had to look and be "cool" for the ladies to like you. I looked in the mirror and what I saw was a train wreck. I wore giant glasses (to my moms credit. I had to because they were cheaper and I broke my glasses about every 8 minutes). Until the high school years my hair cut was Bobby Brady cum bowl cut. I had no idea of fashion outside of wearing baseball hats and flannel shirts...and we’re not talking Pearl Jam/Seattle grunge-cool flannel. We're talking Barney Fife in the woods flannel. I place the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of my sisters. Where were they during this debacle? They have pretty good fashion taste...were up on the times but they let this abuse happen. They knew full well no girl in her right mind would be caught in the same zip code as me. J'accuse! So there is your background on the mess that I was when I entered the world of middle school. The first women in my life were my girlfriends only by the fact of location or that my friends told me I was in a relationship. We open the book with Tami Kukowski. Tami sat in front of me in 6th grade. Follow the alphabetization...Kukowski-Ladish. So you could see that it was destiny that we should be together. Plus our lockers were next to each other. It would be the beginning of a precedent. I also learned early that love and hate were 2 emotions that ran very closely. Because even though I had a huge crush on Tami the only way I could make my feelings known was to tease her...constantly. Tami, if you ever stumble across this page...I 'm sorry for any damage I caused your 6th grade report card. Tami got in trouble a lot for basically telling me to "shut up". After 3/4 of the year had passed I decided that it was time I made my intentions known...that I had designs on Miss Kukowski. She would see past the train wreck of the boy and see the heart of the warrior/poet inside. Well maybe she wouldn't...I gave her a little statue of a collie (she liked collies...I had done my homework) as a present. It was for either her birthday or Christmas. I can't remember. Se in return sent me my first "girl note". It read:

Dear Jared,
Thank you for the gift. You are one of the sweetest boys in school.
Sincerely,
Tami

Hmmm...a lot of information here. I thought I should bring in an outside consultant. Craig Weimann was called in for evaluation. Craig was my best friend at the time and his "experience" with women was about the same as mine. So you could see why I wanted his input. "Well...she says you're sweet and she wrote 'Sincerely'...we should look that word up in the dictionary and see exactly what it means". Excellent...I can see why I called him in on this. We may be able to catch her in some type of technicality and I can finally figure out what the hell Journey thinks is so great. We looked it up..."1. Not feigned or affected; genuine: sincere indignation. 2. Being without hypocrisy or pretense; true: a sincere friend. 3. Archaic Pure; unadulterated.". We looked at each other then back at the dictionary and REREAD it. "Man...I think this is good" said Craig. In retrospect it has all the warmth of a thank you card from a distant relatives wedding. But alas, I was unsure and when I am...I do nothing. And that’s what I did...She did ask me to dance with her once at the Valentines Day dance. It was the most glorious 3 and a half minutes of my young life so far. Robert John sang "Sad eyes". The school year ended. And so did my crush. They had to because there was the 7th grade. I'd have a new locker near new women. I may even have conversations with them this year. Let me know if this bores you or if you want me to continue. Your feedback is always welcome here Rad World. Sometimes its even read.