brainwander

I heard "The Rock Show" today and it made me think of high school dances. Where that song would come on, everyone would yell for like 4 seconds, then everyone would shout the words as they bounced up and down and called it dancing. I liked dancing. I got a little crazy, and when the Matrix fad hit the nation I invented a dance move based on the Bullet Dodge slow-mo scene. In sync with the music I would flail my arms and arc my back until I got as low as possible, then I would catch myself with one hand, and in a smooth motion I would push off the ground and be back on my feet. I loved that move. Once I did it without looking behind me, and my head hit the back of some girls ankles. My friends teased me about getting a look up her skirt, but I didn't see anything. One of the ones who teased me about it was Stephanie. I knew her from way back in 7th grade. She was pretty cool, I had a crush on her at one point and I would hang out with her after school telling my parents I was going to the library. I was caught one night because I lost track of time and came home after sunset. That's when I started wearing a watch. I could never figure out which wrist to put it on, though. I'd think "I'm right handed: I should put it on my right". But then I couldn't simultaneously use my right hand (to write, for instance) and simultaneously look at the time. So I ended up strapping it tightly to my left wrist, because I couldn't stand it being lose and spinning around on my wrist. I developed a horrible wristwatch tan and the nickname Clock Boy. At some point later in junior high (I'd guess 8th grade), Stephanie's life began going crazy. She claimed to have married AJ McClean from the Backstreet Boys in an internet chatroom. Nobody believed her, but she called herself Stephanie McClean. After that died down, she met some other guy over the internet, a high-school senior named Nick. Nobody ever met him, although she would IM us a school photo of the boy she claimed to be dating. Nobody ever saw a picture of them together. Then, when their relationship went sour, he became obsessive and controlling. She had broken up with him, but he wasn't about ready to leave, and he would show up at her house uninvited. One night she IM'd me asking for help -- he had hacked into her Hotmail account and couldn't get it back. It wasn't that bad of a hack: it seemed he had just figured out her password. It was hard to use Hotmail because, at the time, you couldn't have 2 computers logged into the same account at one time, so everytime I logged on I kicked Nick out, and vice versa. It took about 30 minutes of trying before I knew where to click fast enough to log in and change her password before he logged in and kicked me out again. But that's the only proof he existed. Which could have easily been her fucking with us. I have no idea what happened to her.