Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat – Bonnie Carriles

February 13, 2007

This is a Valentine story which is appearing in special treat because of the length.  I shall be using special treats throughout the contest to help bring the contest to an end sooner.  Do not forget to consider the special treat entries as part of your contest selections.  Thank you.

Today, I present to you Bonnie Carriles, who becomes writer # 408, for Storytime Tapestry.  Please email her and let her know how much you enjoy her story and don’t forget to welcome her to our family.

My First Love

Bonnie Carriles

My 7^th Grade year in Intermediate school would bring more than just education within a curriculum, it would bring me much more than I would have ever imagined.

I was so excited for the first day of school because it would mean that this was my last year until progressing to Jr. High School which was such a big deal.

I had gone to school with most of the kids in attendance that year since I had been in Kindergarten so I had no fear going in and high expectations of an uneventful year.

Little did I know that just wouldn’t be the case.

The first few weeks of school were pretty uneventful and I was settled back into the routine the 2^nd day of school. The second week of school was when it all began.

I noticed that there was a new kid at school, a kid I had never met before and just knew that he was not from Virginia. He was very tall and was brown. I knew he was not African American and would later find out that he was Mexican.

In my school, most of the students were Caucasian and the rest were African American. He became the first Mexican that I knew of to attend our school and like the Mexican Food in America, he was also authentic and this rarity contributed to him being popular among the female population.

For some reason that day, I noticed him popping up everywhere and by the end of the day, it turned out that he was in five out of my seven bells. The only two bells that we did not share were English and he took Art instead of Music. It seemed odd to me that no other student in the school shared almost the same schedule as mine and I expressed that to my mom who was a teacher assistant at my school. She said “Wow, that is odd, and I know who you are talking about. He is in my English class.” She didn’t seem pleased.

Eventually, I would come to find out his name the next day in P.E when our teacher told us that we would be learning how to square dance. I was utterly mortified and was even more mortified when Mr. Miller said “Bonnie and Robert are paired up.”

I was trying to figure out what was in Mr. Miller’s mind when he paired us up because we must have been the oddest couple there. He was almost 6 feet tall to my 5 foot stature. Not having the guts to refuse, I walked onto the gym floor and we began to dance.

Wait, did I say dance? Robert literally swept me off my feet. He was throwing me around like a rag doll and to add insult to injury, he was laughing and enjoying himself while I was praying for it all to end. Finally, it did end and I left the gym floor thinking what a jerk he was. I took a seat next to one of my best friends named Tina and no sooner than I sat down a kid we knew named Dirk walked up to Tina and said “Hey Tina, do you know who Robert is? He wants to know if he can have your phone number.” She happily obliged. At this point, I was really not interested in boys and didn’t care much about them but Tina, even though she was younger than I was, she knew more. She had some experience and I was used to boys approaching her all the time and felt that it was because she was the only girl in 7^th grader who had a C cup but at the same time, it didn’t bother me.

Before I knew it, Tina and Robert were boyfriend and girlfriend. I think that when they became a “couple”, Robert had it in his mindset that since I was her friend, it gave him a free pass to harass me and he did just that. He would begin throwing things across the room at me, passing notes, and often he waved his hands in the air to get my attention. He annoyed me and when I would try to ignore him, it would only get worse. He was very persistent but at the same time, when he was absent from school I found myself unusually bored and anxious for the day to be over with and didn’t really understand why I felt like this.

One day out of the blue, I received a phone call from Robert. He said that he had gotten my number from Tina which I thought was odd and I was curious so I stayed on the phone with him just talking about a lot of nothing. By almost the end of our lengthy conversation, he mentioned that he had broken up with Tina because it was me who he really truly liked. I was speechless and didn’t know how to react.

The last person who had told me this was a guy named Johnny when we were in kindergarten and he only said that after he hit me over the head with a plastic frying pan. He explained his actions by stating that he hit me because he liked me so really, I was waiting to be hit but, I didn’t know what with or how.

Somehow before the conversation ended, he asked me to be his girlfriend and I didn’t know why but I said yes. After I hung up the phone, I was excited, scared, and a little freaked out. I remember screaming inside my head “I have a boyfriend! I have a boyfriend!” After my few second celebration dance, something hit me and it wasn’t a frying pan. It was my conscience. Worried that Tina would be upset; I bolted out of the house and went to Tina’s to talk to her about what happened.

I went up to her bedroom and said “Hey, Tina, how are you?” and noticed that she didn’t seem fazed a bit. I told her that I heard that she and Robert broke up. She said “Where did you hear that from?” I told her “from Robert. He called me a little while ago and told me.” She told me “Why in the world would he say something like that?” I replied by telling her what he had told me, “He said he wanted to be my boyfriend and I said yes. But, I didn’t know he was lying…” and I began defending myself when she interrupted by telling me that

“This could ruin our friendship”. I was upset and we ended up deciding that revenge was defiantly in order.

With that, we came up with a plan. Tina called up Robert and told him that she wanted him to come over the next day and he said that he would. Robert must not have realized or was never told that we were neighbors so this worked to our advantage.

The next day when he came over, I stopped by unannounced and by the look on his face, I would say he looked shocked to see me there but his actions told other wise. That is when we started questioning him about what he did and why he did it. He annoyingly would not answer our questions and all the while kept smiling at us. I got so upset that I told him that I wanted to slap him and he made the mistake of telling me to go ahead.

I slapped him right across his face…just like in the movies. I took off still steaming and unlike the movies, it was not going to be ok. I was annoyed, mad, and even more hurt that he was playing games with me.

Later on that night, I spent the night with Tina and Robert was among one of the conversations we had. She had decided that she didn’t want to be Robert’s girlfriend and told me I could have him. I assured her that I no longer wanted him and I didn’t know what the heck I was thinking anyways.

After that, I confided in Tina, telling her I jumped the gun because I was so excited to have had a boyfriend. I wanted to know how she was able to get boyfriends and came to the realization that boys were now becoming a frequent in my though process. Well, not boys so much but Robert, even though I didn’t want to admit it to Tina, or myself.

She then offered me some advice about make-up and hair and together we decided I should do something with my “do”.

The next day I begged my mother to take me to the salon to have something done to my hair. Previous to this, she had always cut my hair and usually ended up screwing it up so badly that I ended up looking like Elvis Presley. I protested her suggestion to cut my hair and pleaded with my father to have him make my mom take me to the salon, and he did. So, the next day I went to have my hair done and with the stylists help, we chose a short cut with a rat tail, which was the big fad of that time. I was even able to convince my mother to allow me to get it bleached blonde and being put on the spot by the stylist who said “It’s the latest look among teens!”, my mother paid the extra 20 bucks to have it bleached. I left thinking I was hot to the touch. All the boys were going to like it and Robert will mad at himself for doing what he had done. I was so excited to go to school the next day with my new look that I could hardly sleep.

My “hotness” was confirmed by my friends and even some other irrelevant boys but I had heard nothing from Robert and assumed that he was wallowing in his sorrows…sucker! Turns out, I was wrong.

By the time I got to 6^th bell, I knew he couldn’t avoid me because I sat right in front of him so when I got to class and all he said was “What’s up?” I was kind of shocked at his lack of attention. The next thirty minutes went by without a peep from Robert which was highly unusual when he tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around and saw him waving my rat tail in front of my face that he had just cut off. I was upset, my mom was upset, and I don’t even know how he felt about it after the fact because he was just adding things to my Things I hate about Robert list that I had compiled on a piece of paper in my desk drawer at home.

The next couple of weeks Robert would continue to annoy me and I would continue to ignore him in school and I would refuse to take his calls at home.

He would call my house and I would often reply, “I am not home if it is the faggot.” Now, this word to me at the time had no meaning. It was just the closest thing to a cuss word that sounded bad. I am ashamed of myself for having used this word but in the minds of children, sometimes they say things without knowing the true meaning of the word.

My sister also picked up on this nasty, rude word and would express it when he called. “Bonnie, faggot is on the phone for you!” Heck, I don’t even know if she knew his real name but this was a payback to me of coarse because I always liked to get on the other extension when her boyfriends would call and burp the alphabet.

On Thanksgiving, Robert called me and I finally decided to take his call. He apologized to me for what he had done and I apologized for leaving my handprint on his face (I hit him pretty hard). We had a really long conversation and he asked me to be his girlfriend again and being the sucker I am, I said yes. In this conversation, he had mentioned to me that his birthday was coming up and I told him that was awesome and that I was going to be getting something. He sounded so excited and I was excited too.

That weekend, I begged my mom to take me out to use some of the money I had saved up. She wanted to know what I wanted to get and where we I wanted to go. I told her that I wanted to get a gift for my friend Robert whose birthday was coming up. She replied by saying “The boy who sleeps in my class?” I chuckled a little and replied by telling her “yup, that’s the one.” I could tell she wasn’t happy about it but my dad convinced her to take me out to the mall.

It was an ugly day outside and the rain was not letting up. We were listening to the radio and laughing about a bumper sticker that was on the truck in front of us that said “If you love something set it free. If it doesn’t come back, hunt it down and shoot it.” Little did I know I was just seconds from actually touching that bumper sticker.

The guy in a truck behind us lost control and slammed into the back of our Chevette. We ended up being sandwiched between the two trucks. Both me and my mother broke the windshield and I also sustained a knee injury when my knee hit the dashboard and the button got stuck. It was ugly, scary and my mother seemed to be the most injured. She had put her arms across my chest in an effort to better protect me. She was crying and worried about what my dad would think and I was in a daze.

After the emergency crews took us to the hospital we got released to go home. Both me and mom had concussions and I had stitches in my knee. The doctors demanded that we rest for a week. No work, no school. The slept through the first few days and still swear to this day that my mother gave me something other than St. Josephs because I didn’t even know what day it was when I finally woke up. The last couple days, I tried calling Robert and talking to him but I would either get no answer or his mom would say he wasn’t there and he wasn’t calling me back.

Monday I returned to school and he asked where I had been and I asked him the same thing. I then explained that me and my mother had been in a car accident and that was why I was not at school all last week. I further explained that I was going to get him a gift when it happened and how sorry I was that I missed his birthday because I figured that was what he was really upset about.

A couple of weeks later while me and my mom were at the mall I bought a little white bear from the Hallmark store (my favorite store). I couldn’t decide on anything other than a stuffed animal to give to Robert for Christmas because I still didn’t know him all that well. When I got home I was excited about what I got him and couldn’t hold back from mentioning that I had got his a Christmas present when he called the next morning. I told him that I would give it to him the day that school lets out for the Christmas break but he said he couldn’t wait that long. He wanted it, and he wanted it yesterday.

He then suggested that we meet up and hang out for the day. I was scared and petrified. We really had never been around each other outside of school and I didn’t know if my parents would allow him to come over.

I suggested that we meet somewhere and we decided that we could meet at my old elementary school which was where we distinguished was the mid point between his house and my house and we could exchange gifts there. We then agreed that we would leave in about 5 minutes. I rushed to get dressed and pretty, grabbed his gift, and hauled butt out of the house screaming to my mother that I was going down to my friend Tina’s house. She called out to me to make sure I was back in the house before the street lights came back on. I thought to myself that it would be no problem because it was only 2 p.m.

I got to the school first and froze while I waited there for Robert and a few minutes later he arrived.

He gave me this huge hug that I will never forget. He grabbed me up, held me tight, and picked me up off of my feet. I could feel his strength as he held me and I loved it.

I presented him with his gift and he said he liked it and he must have because he kept playing with it and making it dance for me. Thinking about it then, I thought about how juvenile that was of him but he was always such a silly person but thinking back on it now, I wonder if he was nervous too. It didn’t occur to me then that someone with such strength could be scared too.

We talked a lot and Robert would try and grab me and hold me any chance that he got. I would pull away. Not because I was shy but because I was frightened that I would make a fool of myself somehow because I didn’t know what I was doing.

The street lights came on and I knew I had to get home but at the same time, I didn’t want to leave Robert. I wanted to stay there with him forever. But, I couldn’t and I knew if I didn’t get home than I would be in big trouble and informed Robert that I had to get home before my dad got home from work. I also decided to poke fun at him and told him “I thought that this was a gift exchange. Where is my gift?”

The next thing I knew, he was kissing me. I was freaking out but my mind kept telling me to calm down and not blow it and the other part of me was thinking about how gross this was but at the same time, I was enjoying every minute of it.

We kissed a few more times and I ran home as fast as I could. It almost seems as though I flew that day because I just remember running across the street until I was sure that I was out of Robert’s sight and happily running with a skip in my step all the way home.

I tried ducking into the house quietly and ran straight up to my room to sit on my bed and ponder the events that had just taken place when my mother pushes open my door and starts screaming that she knew that I was not at Tina’s house and she wanted an explanation. I told her that I met Robert up at the school so I could give him the present that I had gotten for him. I assured her that we just hung out and talked for a little bit but she wasn’t having it. She told me that I needed to go to bed.

I had no problems with it. I was exhausted from this emotional whirlwind. I was but a leaf in a tornado and I was physically exhausted.

As I slept, I began dreaming. I was an older person in my dream and it was as if I had grown up. My mother was in my dream telling me that Robert was no good for me and I was heartbroken by every disapproving word that she spoke. But, unlike in life, I had the guts to stand up to her and I told her “Well, what you think doesn’t matter. I love Robert and I am going to marry him someday!”

When I woke up, I felt kind of ashamed of myself for thinking about marrying Robert. After all, we had only just begun dating but, who knew that in the end my dream would really come true?

Bonnie Carriles

KrazyB73@aol.com