Meet the Penguin
I hadn’t planned it that way, but the store where I
worked provided me with a pretty active dating scene. A 20 year old has needs and therefore he
dates. By the end of my college freshman
year, I had two short-term relationships through the store. My first girlfriend, Sue, was pretty and had
a decent body, but she was not much of a talker. She had no opinions, no hobbies, and not much
to contribute, except she was pretty. She
was about an 8 (on a 1 to 10 scale), but that only goes so far. I got tired of being the sole entertainment
when we were together, so I just stopped calling her. She eventually dated another guy from the
store, and I was off the hook.
The second girl I dated, Linda,
had more to offer, wasn’t quite as good looking, but had huge breasts to make
up for it. Not that she was a butterface
by any means, but maybe a 7 rather than an 8. She eventually went away to college, we wrote back and forth for a while, and then we lost touch. It turned out to be a good thing in retrospect because I later heard she developed a drug problem, but I digress.
And there was that one girl I
really liked who was constantly having problems with her long-term
boyfriend. I was obviously the answer to
her predicament. She didn’t see it that
way. And on the flip side, there were
the girls who rated 6 or lower. They
were OK to flirt with, but you didn’t want to be drunk around them in case one
started to look good when you were worked up and buzzed. If anything happened with one of them, you’d
have a lovesick chick following you around thinking she was your
girlfriend. And then you’d have to lower
the boom. I’d seen it happen to other
guys at the store, so I knew it was a situation best avoided.
We had a group of partiers at
the store and could occasionally find someone of age who would buy beer for
us. When that happened, Friday night
after work became party time. We would
usually end up at someone’s house or if it was nice out, we had an outdoor
party spot in the woods. I obviously
couldn’t host such a party in my dorm room, so I went out of my way to treat
other people’s houses with utmost respect and encouraged others to do so.Aside from the people who worked in my store, there was one girl of note named Barbara who worked in the mall record store. Her hobby was cute boys. Barbara was short and a little chubby, thus she was given the nickname “penguin” by her friends. On a scale of 1 to 10, she was about a 5. Barbara always liked boys who were way out of her league, and in the mall she knew where each one worked. When she was on her work breaks, she would make her rounds in the mall, visiting and chatting up the cream of the mall. To her credit, she was a great conversationalist, so no one would tell her off, plus she was basically harmless. And I suppose once in a while she got lucky.
I met Barbara, or rather she met me, when I was a new employee. One night I was unknowingly working with one of the guys on her “list.” I got on her list by association and began getting frequent visits of my own. I was into new music and she worked in a record store, so we always had something to talk about. Fortunately at that time, I was dating one of the girls at the store, so Barbara never asked me out. That was her move—make friends with a cute guy, then ask him out. But if the guy was taken, she stayed friends because couples were always breaking up and she figured she might have a chance at a later time. It took me a few months, but by being observant and talking to others, I had her figured out.
Record store customers were not immune either. Cute guys entered the store at their own peril. I would bear witness to good-looking boys leaving there with Barbara as their new best friend, while average-looking boys would be left alone to shop in peace.
© 2014 Rip Skor
No comments:
Post a Comment