The Summer of 1998 was also a very memorable summer. It summer before my Senior year of high school. Over the past year had decided that I was going to go to college and become an orchestra musician. I spent hours at a time cooped up in my room practicing my horn. This meant no time for drama. I quickly realized the superficialness that was Katie and Michelle, dumped them, and did my own thing. In the process of emancipation from dramatization, I hung around a new circle of friends.
I had known Jessica since we were wee high to a bugs eye, but I never hung around her until after our show choir competition in King's Island. She, like myself, was obsessed with band and choir, so we got along famously. I really appreciated Jessica for the way she expressed herself. She was (and still is) into anime, and used to go around school proclaiming that she was Sailor Moon. Looking back on it, no wonder it looked like we were constantly high our senior year.
Anyways...
I had started hanging around Jessica and her circle of friends, which included Meghan-yet another drama queen which I eventually grew intolerant of, Sarah-one of Meghan's friends...we ended up just basically ditching Meghan, and Heather-the most interesting human being I had ever met.
I still kept in touch with Katie. It sounded like things were going great for her in NC. She was getting ready for her senior year, and most importantly thinking about college. If memory serves me right, I think she had a part time job at an ice cream shoppe and started dating a guy who from what I heard, treated her very nicely.
At the beginning of the summer I really started to miss Luke. After all, who knew if I would ever see him again?! As I recall, he had even broken it off with Kim to go study music at some private college in central Ohio. I thought he was finally coming to his senses.
I eventually got a part time job at the local Arby's slinging roast beef for middle America's proud families. I didn't hate or enjoy my job. In fact, Meghan was also hired around the same time, so we bantered at eachother, gossiped about school, and our fellow co workers.
One afternoon while we were working, we decided to make plans to head to the local Italian/American festival to go see some fireworks. She said that she would get a hold of Jessica, and call me once she was able to convince her to go.
That afternoon I raced home to find out that my mom had schedualed hair cutting appointments for the both of us. I was excited because I had a plan for my pain in the butt shoulder length hair. ....
I got it chopped off. I mean short....Like two inches all over short. It was one of the greatest haircuts I've ever had.
When I arrived home my dad said that Meghan wants me to meet her at her house around 7 to go see some fireworks. I was so excited to show my friends my new look. For some reason I felt that something exciting was going to happen tonight.
That evening I picked up Jessica, and we headed to Meghan's house. Jessica loved my new hair du, while Meghan well....Meghan was Meghan...and Meghan was a bitch. Just as we were leaving the door, Meghan's mom had offered Jessica and myself some lipstick to put on so the boys would catch notice of us. Jessica and I rolled our eyes at eachother, and headed out the door with Meghan in tow.
The second we got there we all were starving and wanted to pig out. We ordered everything from baked ziti to cannolis. As we were pigging out, Meghan got the bright idea that we should go and play bingo. It sounded innocent enough. We all chipped in $7 each and got a card. Ironically enough we ended up winning.
With all of our lucky success, we decided to have a hand at some of the games the festival had to offer. We ended up winning two fishies which we appropriately named "Abbot and Costello" from a dopey looking carnie freak.
"Oh crap," Jessica said as she looked at her watch. "We better head over to see the fireworks.
We rushed over to the near by park to try and get a closer view of the fireworks. Meghan had yammered how she wanted a lemonade. Jessica and I decided to wait for her a couple of paces away from the lemonade stand. We saw all kinds of funny people. We saw some people from a local radio station, some idiots from school, and a duface skating on rollerblades. For some reason, Jessica and I really got a kick out of Mr. Rollerblades. I mean, why in the world would you randomly be skating around with all of these people around?
Jessica and I began to make a game out of "look at the stupid people." We were daring eachother to go make faces at people and try to vibe them out. It was then that Jessica came up with the ULTIMATE dare.
"I dare you to go and talk to him," she said pointing.
She was pointing at Mr. Rollerblades. What in the heck was I going to say to him? He was just the random idiot skating around. Like I say, I am never one to turn down a dare, so....
"So are you having fun skating around?" I said to him with a huge grin on my face.
"It's not bad, It's kind of hard to get around all of these people."
Meanwhile Meghan had caught up with us, and I had Jessica in stitches. She couldn't believe I actually did it.
"My name's Ryan," he then said.
"Hi, I'm Alison, and these are my friends Meghan and Jessica."
As we all sat there and exchanged pleasantries, the fireworks started to go off in the sky. Ryan was telling us about how he lives right around the corner and skates over here to see the fireworks every year. He then noticed my hair.
"Why do you keep your hair so short?"
"Well, actually I usually don't, I just cut it today," I answered.
"Well, I like it," he said
"Thanks."
Just as the finale started to fire off, Jessica expressed panic about having to get home, so we got up to make a bee line for the car.
"Aren't you going to give him your phone number," snarled Meghan.
"Oh yeah, I guess so," I then answered.
I honestly thought about giving a phony number. I mean, I didn't want to date him. He had a gotee and looked to be about 22. I was only 16. I ended up writing my real number, not even thinking that he was going to call.
"See you later, Ryan," I shouted as we walked away.
"Bye girls."
The whole way home we giggled about the freak on the roller blades. They then began teasing me saying what if he called. I doubted that he would. I mean, what would a what-looked-to-be-22-year-old want to do with a 16 year old?