VDRC: HdM DC BRE OCT 18

[cmbarton]

This is a tale of a teenage hopeless romantic and the spectacularly failed attempt to win the affection of an elusive blonde beauty named Jessica one Valentine’s Day in the mid-90’s.  The cigar I’m smoking while I write this is the Hoyo de Monterrey Double Corona.  Why this cigar?  How does it tie-in to the story?  Geez, I don’t know.  I’m not as good at this as some of my fellow Friends.  Uhh, let’s see ... I’ve never had a HdM DC aaaaand I’ve never had a blonde.  There!  That’s the best you’re going to get from me.

 

Anyway, back to Jessica.  She was tall, blonde, funny, she had a big smile and big ... Double Coronas.  See what I did there?  I’m getting better at this.  We shared a class together my Junior year of high school and a few weeks of awkward teenage flirting had eventually rewarded me with her phone number.  I’d call her, usually late at night after my parents and sisters had gone to bed and no one was around to remind me in my adulthood what I sounded like on the phone talking to a girl I desperately wanted to think I was funny yet profound.

 

Things were going pretty well for a time but the couple weeks before Valentines Days we had hit a plateau.  Our friendship wasn’t going to the next level and I thought Valentines Day would be the perfect time to break through stalemate, declare my love for her, become high school sweethearts, graduate, travel the world together going to strange and distant lands where we don’t speak the language and laugh at all our follies together, buy a big house on an evergreen-lined suburban street, have a couple of beautiful children, and generally be the envy of all our friends and neighbors who wonder how we keep the fire going after 50 years.  Maybe I was getting ahead of myself.

 

The night before Valentines Day, a Friday, I planned it all out.  I would wake up early Saturday morning, drive to the store to pick up flowers, chocolates, a stuffed bear, and a card, then drive in the pre-dawn hours to her house where I would strategically hide all the gifts around the garden outside her house.  Then I’d drive home to call her, giving her hints to the location of each gift ... with the last one being the card with the holy grail of words to show my true feelings written on the inside, “I love you.”

 

The plan was perfect ... except that Friday night while out with my buddies, horsing around town, I had tripped, fallen, and broken several bones in my right foot.  When I say broken, I mean ... completely snapped in two like a graham cracker.  Oh yeah, the HdM DC ... first half is giving me loads of graham crackers slightly dipped in milk chocolate, an improvement from the wet hay I got on my cold draw.

 

Now, I didn’t know I had broken a bunch of bones in my foot.  Sure, it hurt like a handful of broken shards of glass were bouncing around the limp bag of flesh and blood that was my foot ... but I had no idea that I’d actually broken it.  Nevertheless, I was undeterred.  I WAS going to see through this epic Valentines Day surprise.

 

The whole routine went nothing like what I had imagined it would.  Getting up at 4am, foot swollen up like a small melon,  stumbling down the stairs of my house and getting behind the wheel of my car was excruciating.  Every acceleration and  brake on my way to the store felt as bad as you would imagine driving with a broken foot would feel.  I’m walking around the store, severely limping, swaying from side to side down each aisle like a drunk hunchback of Notre Dame.  I collected the gifts, thrusting myself and my handfuls of Valentines Day commercialism to the counter of the checkout with so much force they all went flying out of my hands across the counter.  I paid the gentleman behind the counter, who was equal parts shocked and amused at the scene, and jumped in the car to Jessica’s house.

 

Once there, my foot fully swollen and a now dark hue of purple, the scene was not any better than at the store.  I was convinced a neighbor would call the police on the drunken man stumbling around garden of the sweet young girl’s family’s house in the early morning hours before the sun had risen.  Luckily, this part of the plan worked.  Each gift hidden and ready to be discovered by Jessica in just a couple hours.  Thoughts ran through my head on my drive back home–what if the sprinklers turn on soaking everything, what if Jessica finds them before I’ve called her, what if she’s not even home because she had a sleepover at a friends house or her family went out of town?  I was committed to the plan and I had gone this far already ... on a broken foot.

 

Once home, I limp past my now fully awaken family wondering where I’ve been yet still wishing me a Happy Valentine’s Day.  The looks on their faces as they watched me literally crawl myself up the stairs to my bedroom to call Jessica was likely priceless.  There I was though, staring at my phone, ready to make the call that would change my life forever.

 

“Hello?” She said groggily.

 

“Jessica!  It’s Chris.  Happy Valentines Day.”  I was still huffing from my trek up the stairs.

 

“Oh ... is it?  Oh yeah, it is” she said with little to no enthusiasm.

 

“Yup!” I said trying to brighten her mood. “Do you want to play a little game?”

 

“Uhh, what kind of game?”

 

“Just go outside it’ll be fun.”  

 

“Okay ...” It was one of those okays where the y is drawn out such that it’s obvious the speaker is not okay.

 

The next 15 minutes, I’m walking her through her garden to find each cleverly hidden gift and each time I’m getting, “Oh thanks” or “cool.”  Definitely not the response I was hoping for.

 

Then, the card.  She opens it, pauses for what seemed like hours while she read it, before saying to me, “I have to go eat breakfast now.”  

 

She hung up, and that was it.  That ... was the last time Jessica and I ever spoke.   Monday in class, she didn’t speak to me.  Later that week, while the rest of the class is signing the cast around my foot after the surgery to reconnect all the bones I had broken, she passes on the chance to write her name or anything at all.  Then, a couple weeks later, she stops coming to class at all.  She decided to graduate early and go to college instead of sticking around school for her senior year.  I’m still pretty amazed how quickly she dropped off the face of the planet.  It was as if Scotty had beamed up her to the Enterprise in orbit around Earth waiting for her to complete her secret mission for the Federation.  And if you got that last joke, you probably understand now why I wasn’t fighting off ladies in high school.

 

The second half of the HdM DC is giving me orange peel in addition to the milk chocolate.  Smooth and creamy all the way through.  

 

Happy Valentines Day.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Delightful read - and a good review to boot. Think I need to pick up a few HDM DCs. Thanks!

[KnightsAnole]

Nicely written! Fantastic smoke too, that one looks delish.

[RDB]

Fun writing. Boss Level self-deprecation!

[cmbarton]

12 hours ago, RDB said:

Fun writing. Boss Level self-deprecation!

Haha!  Thank you, sir!!

[TheMonk]

Great read, well done!