Failing to Seal the Deal

Year: 1994, 1995
Place: Prince George, BC; St. Albert, AB
My age: 16, 17

This is actually two different events that illustrate the same theme, hence the two different years and places. These aren’t the only instances of this happening, but they are two of the best examples.

Puberty, as it usually is, was unkind to me. From ages 12 to 14, I went through a very awkward physical transformation that saw me grow horizontally more than vertically. I had been a skinny, athletic child, and my first few years as a teenager were the opposite of skinny and athletic. It didn’t do much for my confidence, and made my childhood shyness seem mild in comparison. I drew inward, and melted into the background. I went mostly unnoticed in junior high school (instances of being noticed will be featured in future postings) while living in Edmonton in ’92 and ’93.

When my family moved to Prince George in the summer of 1993, things changed. I started coming out of the awkward stage of puberty. At the time, I still thought I was an ugly fatso, but upon review of photographic evidence from the time period in question, I now realize that I was hunky beefcake. I give credit to three things: 1) I spent the summer living fast-food-free with my grandmother in rural Nova Scotia; 2) I was riding a bike everywhere; 3) Record snowfall in Prince George that winter saw me shoveling snow over a pile that was a good two feet taller than me every day.

The change was more than physical. My social life was different, too. There were two wards of the Church in Prince George, and the youth in these wards were very tight-knit. They accepted my sisters and me into their group of friends immediately, and I was forced out of my withdrawal. Somewhat, anyway. I was still known for going in my room, turning on crappy music (this was pre-Weezer), and reading for hours on end. But when I wasn’t reading (or playing Doom), I was hanging out with friends. It was common for us to play basketball, which should probably be listed as a fourth factor of my weight-loss, but I’m too lazy to go back and change it.

Wow, I really need to get to the point. The important facts from the rambling you just finished reading: I was shy, I was good-looking but didn’t realize it, and I had a healthy social life.

I had a huge crush on a girl (note: I’m not going to use the real names of the girls I write about in this post. I doubt they’ll ever read this, but if they do, I don’t want them to be embarrassed). We’ll call her Wilma. Wilma was a chronic flirt, and she had big boobs, so it’s no surprise that I, a shy 15-year-old raging with hormones, developed a crush on her. Nothing ever developed with her, mostly due to the missionary who started dating her, so my eye wandered whenever she wasn’t around, which was often. By “wander” I mean that I had a minor thing for every pretty girl in northern British Columbia. There was one girl, though, who stood out. She stood out so much that I am absolutely positive that I could have made her my first girlfriend if I had only tried. Let’s call her Angela. (By the way, I use a certain logic coming up with these names, but for me to explain it would give away their real names, so I’ll just appreciate my own cleverness on my own. Also, you would have had to read the novel I never finished writing for one of the names.)

Angela was a year younger than me, so she didn’t really show up on my radar right away. She was cute, and I always thought so, but Wilma had most of my attention for those first few months in Prince George. After the whole missionary fiasco, Wilma didn’t come around as much. She wasn’t a member of the Church, and her boyfriend had been one of the missionaries teaching her. (Thumbs up, Elder! The cynical saying is “flirt to convert” not “enter into a romantic relationship to convert”.) Anyway, enough about Wilma. In the spring of ’94, Angela and I actually became friends instead of just two random people in the same group of friends. When our friends got together, we’d gravitate towards each other. There was never any big moment when everyone else would turn to us and say, “Wow, look at those two flirting!” Instead, there were a lot of little things. At a church activity during dinner, we splashed some water on the table and had a low-key water fight that involved us getting our fingertips wet and then flicking the water at each other. At a service project, we sat down in the grass facing each other, each grabbed a short stick, and had a very unenthusiastic sword fight. Little things like that. Most importantly, we made each other laugh, and we were very natural with each other. All I had to do was up the flirting just a little bit and put forth the slightest effort and I could have started dating her. Instead, I inexplicably did the opposite. The quality flirting we had been doing stopped abruptly, and I was the one to blame. One memory that stands out in my mind happened shortly after the sword fight. I kept catching Angela looking at me from across the room with a look on her face that seemed to say, “What gives? Why isn’t he talking to me?” I don’t know, Angela. I don’t know.

I saw Angela again years later when we were both living in Edmonton in 2001 or 2002. She was looking hotter than ever, and we made eye contact at a dance. She smiled at me, and I started over to strike up a conversation, hopefully pick up where we left off six years ago. I got within a few feet of her when my ex-girlfriend intercepted me and started talking to me. I never saw Angela again.

In the summer of ’94, my family moved from Prince George to St. Albert, Alberta. The St. Albert ward had a tight-knit core group of youth not unlike Prince George that accepted me right away. I kept losing weight in St. Albert, too. Since my school was far from home, and I didn’t have a car, I rode my bike every day. I spent roughly an hour on my bike every weekday. I also grew to my full height somewhere around this time—an impressive 5’8”. I was at my best-looking in 1994 and 1995 (see picture on the right). However, I was still pretty shy. Case In point: in the winter of ’95, one of the girls in my group of friends (we’ll call her “Beatrice”) started to go out of her way to be near me. Instead of sitting with her family, she’d sit with me at church. When a group of us were at Tim Horton’s, I stole her cousin’s seat next to her while said cousin went to the washroom. When the cousin came back, I was going to be a gentleman and let her have her seat back, but Beatrice refused to let me leave. And, just like with Angela before, we made each other laugh. The obstacle here was my shyness. There was a second guy involved, another one of my friends. He and Beatrice had a past together, and they were still on good terms and there was the chance of them getting back together. It came to the point—and I realized this as it was happening—that she seemed to be waiting for one of us to make a move. I kept chickening out and chickening out, and on the day that I decided I was going to make a move, Beatrice and, oh, let’s call him Conan, had started dating again a few days previously.

Beatrice and Conan got married a few years later while I was on my mission. The mission where I didn’t date any of the teenage girls that I taught. Also, now I’m married to the best woman in the world, so none of my missed opportunities as a teenager matter.