my latest interview got me thinking about how people get to where they are in a current state. for instance, this lady interviewing me was one of the few people i've met who's in a project coordination role and doesn't have her PMP (project management professional certification). if anything, it gave me hope for the future of not needing to get a PMP designation.
the interview also let me think about the question "so tell me a bit about yourself" and the next 3 minutes out of my mouth are about the last 7 years of my life that i spent in school. but, there was also a social aspect to that which i failed to mention. it's not quite meant for an answer to an interview question, but i haven't poured my little heart out in a blog post about relationships for awhile.
here's 3 sort of interesting dude stories from my teenage years that have changed me. and really haven't changed the way i think about dudes.
oh, and these are all real names. because i remember names and not faces. and hell, if any of them actually read this (but i haven't talked to them since i was a teenager), i want them to know it's me and they were.. well.. them.
1) "andrew"
i met andrew one summer in line at warped tour. i was maybe 14 or 15. he was this tall, skinny dude from the GTA. either me or the friends i was with in line started talking to him and his friends. eventually, i ended up getting separated from my friends and ended up hanging out with andrew. he didn't say a whole lot to me in line and i'm pretty sure i spent more time talking to his friends instead. when gates opened for warped tour, i waited around for my friends but couldn't find them, so i went off with andrew and his friends.
i had a set of bands i wanted to see and told andrew. apparently, the ones he wanted to see weren't on until later, so he accompanied me to see a bunch of my bands. i remember thinking that he was kinda neat but i wasn't sure if he just wanted to hear some music. we hang out watching my bands for a few hours and then head back over to the main stages to see one of his. he says he's tired and sits down on the grass. a couple of his friends pass us by and stop to say hey. suddenly, he grabs me and makes me sit on his lap. uhm, okay. that was unexpected. his friends mention that we're missing stuff happening on stage. he says something along the lines of that he doesn't care.
cool, so this dude wants to cuddle. or something. i'm confused but just go with it anyway. his friends leave and we're just sitting on the grass, me on top of him. we don't say anything for awhile. the more i sit on him, the more i realize that this dude is way too skinny and he's super uncomfortable to sit on. so i made a break for it and stood up. a few seconds later, i see one of my friends in the crowd and she sees me. she walks over to me with this gnarly looking tattooed dude. they talk to me for a second and then start making out in front of andrew and i.
i look away and look at andrew, who's also looking away from me. he looks back at me, smirks, and pulls me closer to him. i didn't know what to do so i just kissed him. it was weird. he kept holding onto me but didn't try to kiss me again. i'm confused. i let it be. after the band ends, he says he saw one of his friends leaving in the crowd and was gonna go see them. i told him that was cool and i'd be waiting there because a band i wanted to see was the next band on stage. he says he'll come find me in a bit.
never saw him again. no idea if he was serious about coming back to find me or if he just couldn't find me. we didn't exchange numbers or emails or myspaces or anything. not even last names. it's possible that the kiss was just so bad he didn't want anything more to do with me. hell, at that age, i had barely kissed anyone. or maybe he just wanted to cuddle me and hold me. i don't know. i didn't really care. the whole ordeal left me feeling weird and it took me a long time to make a first move on a dude again after that.
2) "evan"
evan was a friend of my brother's. when i started grade 9, he was in grade 12. he was the muscley, bro, football player and someone i wasn't sure why my brother was friends with, considering my brother was and still is this small, skinny, quiet boy. even in grade 9, the "bro" and "football player" were not my type. i'm about as surprised as you are from this story.
several of my brother's friends seemed to be obsessed with me and i don't know why. it was an ongoing occurrence and i was one of the few niners that seemed to know almost every grade 12 in high school. evan and i had our strange encounters throughout the year but nothing that interesting to mention until one day, he stopped me in the hall and asked to take me out. wait, this bro wants to go on a date? hey now, i've seen a lot of movies -- i know how this ends up. i'll be honest, i wasn't nearly as cute as i am now. but come on, i was 14. i didn't know any better. but i never took him up on his offer.
at the end of the year, we get yearbooks and i see him by himself one day in the hall. i get him to sign my yearbook, which reads something along the lines of "it was great knowing you but i only have one regret: that i never got to take you out." he may have signed his number, i can't remember. so, what the fuck?
you'd think the story ends there. but it doesn't.
that summer, a friend and i are going through yearbooks and she tells me that she knows evan's sister. the thing was, i also knew evan's sister. but the sister didn't know i was interested in her brother. my friend tells me to add his first name, last name on MSN and see what happens. so i did. low and behold, it worked. we end up talking for most of the summer and into the beginning of the next school year when he started college. i felt so young and naive now that i was crushing on a dude in college. then, in another significant turn of events, i make friends with a girl in class who says that evan is her next door neighbour.
and because i was super creepy back then (and maybe i still am, but that's up to your judgement), i kept making excuses to hang out with that girl. or be around in that general area. one night in november, i'm walking by his house with some friends and his car is in the driveway. and for some reason, we go knock on the door. he's home. this is weird. he invites us in and we sit around watching tv in his basement. evan gets me to sit on his lap. uhm, okay. we watch tv some more and then leave shortly after. i hug evan goodbye and then he kisses me out of nowhere. one kiss. i should've known better.
man, i was hooked. i never saw him again but he got me good. i tried talking to him every day. i pretty much emailed him every other day talking about stupid things in my life and occasionally he'd reply. seriously, i hate myself for being that needy and ridiculous. but i was 14. i didn't know any better. eventually, he stopped replying and i cried for days. i guess i had hoped that i'd be kissed again. i wish i could just go back in time and slap 14 year old amber in her face sometimes.
3) "stewie"/"matt"
preface: i grew up in a small, tourist town that was a booming beach in the summertime. my summer hobby was walking around to various campsites and cottages to make new friends and get given free beer to drink for something to do from these tourists. in exchange for beer, we would regale these tourists with stories about how terrible the town is and/or makeout with those dudes that gave us beer. keep this in mind as you read on.
you may have noticed that this dude has 2 names. it's because i couldn't actually figure out what his name was, but he answered to both. this story is probably the best dude story i have from my teenage years and he still crosses my mind a decade later.
i met stewie one summer during wakestock. i was 15. a friend and i started talking to a group of tall, muscley, surfer-esque dudes after one of the wakestock concerts. several of them were cute looking and i took to one of them immediately. the one with some kind of a tribal tattoo and "stewie" tatooed on his arm. one of the other dudes in the group asked my friend how old she was and she told them she was 16. this kind of put off some of the dudes because they were older. now, you see, this particular summer was different. normally, if someone had asked my age, i would've told them that i was 15. but my friend and i had decided to try something new and said that if anyone asked, i was 18 years old. i know. it's cruel and i'm setting myself up for trouble. so when stewie asked how old i was and i told him i was 18, he smirked. he then told me he was 23. yes, okay, i've always had a love affair with older dudes and this was no different.
once pleasantries and ages were discussed, we moved onto plans for what to do. the group of dudes were staying at an awful campsite, so my friend invited them all back to her place. we drink heavily through drinking games and have a rad time. as night rolls around, a bunch of us travel back to the beach and shops. stewie and i walk into one of the tattoo shops. we're both drunk as fuck. he offers to buy me a tattoo. being local, i knew every tattoo artist in the shop and all of them were looking at me wondering where i had picked up this drunk dude. stewie and i stand there looking at the wall of tattoos to choose from and he's convinced we're both getting matching frog tattoos. luckily, a tattoo artist came over to us and said they don't tattoo intoxicated people, like us. thinking stewie was actually going to be super pissed, i braced myself for some kinda mouthy backlash. instead, he shrugs and says something along the lines of "yeah, this probably isn't a good idea" and walks out of the shop. cute AND chill? jackpot.
we head back to my friend's place and watch a movie where stewie and i makeout for a bit and fall asleep cuddling. at like 5am, my friend is waking us up to get the dudes out of her place before he parents come home. haha. i share a kiss with stewie and exchange numbers/emails even though i had basically assumed i would never see him again because he lived out in buttfuck nowhere and i had lied to him about my age but had yet to tell him about that.
maybe a week goes by and i don't hear from him. again, a shot in the dark, i send him an email with my number and MSN again. almost immediately, he responds and we talk on and off for the rest of the summer. he calls my house many times just to chat and tell me his crazy party stories, like how he was at some party and next to the toilet was this giant hunting gun or something. the more i talked to him, the more i felt bad about lying to him because here was this great dude who called me a few times a week and wanted to get together again even though he lived far away from me.
school starts up again in september and we're still talking on and off. i believe he had a job of some sort where he lived but he was travelling a lot for it. it had been a few months now since we had been talking and my 16th birthday was coming up. i wanted to invite him to the party i was having for it but i didn't know how. and i felt bad.
about a week before my birthday, he's chatting to me on msn. i think in my msn name it said that my birthday was soon or i had mentioned to him before that i had an october birthday. so he started talking to me about it. he asked if i was going to be 19. i told him i wasn't going to be 19. then he asked if i was going to be 18. i uh, told him no. then he asked if i was going to be 17. and i uh, once again, had to tell him no. after many minutes of silence on both our parts, i told him i was going to be 16 years old.
and that was the end of that. he went offline and i never heard from him again. believe me, i feel terrible because y'know, making out with a 15 year old when you're 23 (turning 24 a couple weeks later from the makeout day) isn't the best thing. and i'm truly sorry for lying to him and keeping it from him for so long. it just sorta sucks since we got along so well with the age difference. maybe i was just mature. who knows. but i find it hard to believe that he believed that i was 18 when i'm nearly 25 now and still get ID'ed for booze most places. and when i was 15.. i looked 15. there was no question about it.
the hilarity of my life never ceases to amaze me. and it continues to amaze me as time goes on.
