Attention 15yr old girls! Wan't to impress a boy? Let me tell you how.

After I finished 6th grade my family moved to a small mountain community high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  (Population < 50)  My mom had been hired to teach at a one-room school house. (Cool, huh?)

The community was tiny but we had a little bit of everything.  There was a great playground, bike trails and a gym with arcade games.  There was silly neighbor feuds and we even had a town drunk. The community had the best halloween trick or treating EVER and our BBQ’s and Christmas parties were the best on the planet.  

Those years living in the high Sierra Nevada Mountains are some of my favorite.  

One summer in particular, was truly memorable... 

I had just got my first job.  I was working at a camping resort near our small community.  (I was 15)  My brothers were working away from home, and my mom was taking classes in the nearest city, about a 2 hr drive away.  She had taken my younger siblings with her, and had put them in summer camps at the college where she was attending classes.  This left me and my dad at home.  We would both head off to work early, then after work we'd fish at the nearby lake.  It was a great Summer.

During that time, one of our neighbors had a cousin from San Jose come to visit.  He was 17 and I had a silly crush on him.  His name was... I can’t remember. There wasn’t anything great about him... nothing at all.  He had shaggy hair that came down to his earlobes and he wore a lot of tank tops. The only reason I liked him was because he was new and he was there.  The only other boys in our community were his constanty stoned cousin, the awkward home-schooled boy who lived next door, and my brothers.

I had no idea how to get his attention.  

I had just chopped my hair off after the “Skunkhead” debacle.  (See the Blog entry From January 4, 2013) My hair looked a lot like his, chin length and kinda scraggly. There was part of me that strangely thought he would like me because we had similar hair... totally nutty on my part.

After spending the day working, I would come home and devise plans to get his attention.  My first attempt was playing the radio loud.  I figured that he would walk by, hear my awesome tunes and automatically fall for me.  This didn’t work, obviously. 

I would ride my bicycle around the neighborhood with my headphones on.  Plugged into the walkman that never worked, ‘cause we never seemed to have batteries at home. This is what I thought would happen... he would see me, in my cut off jean shorts and oversized t-shirt, rocking out to my make-believe music and say “Who is that girl, her hair looks like mine! I must meet her, we will marry some day”

It is funny how the teenage brain works.  We are stupid when we’re young.

The best and final attempt was to display my bravery.  

My siblings and I had spent many afternoons jumping off the 2nd story balcony onto our trampoline (Only when my mom was away from home, of course)  So, I pulled the trampoline over to the side of the house, then took my place on the railing of the balcony.  Hoping that he was looking out the window, I jumped off...  

I had done this dozens of times, it was great fun.  We had perfected the art of “balcony drops”.  My brother David was the best.  

...this jump didn’t go as planned.  I hit the mat and for some reason shot off at a weird angle like a projectile...  

If you have ever seen the The Office episode entitled “Safety Training” (season 3 episode 19), you can get an idea of what happened.  Watch the scene where they drop the watermelon onto the trampoline, it shoots off and hit a car.  That is pretty much what happened to me, minus the car.

...I flew, for what seemed like 30 mins but, I am sure it was more like 2.5 seconds.  I almost completed a full 360 degree flip when I landed on an inflated snow-tube.  I have no idea why there was an inflated snow-tube in our backyard during the summer, but I was glad there was.  I laid there for a while, trying to decide if I was alive... I was, and completely unharmed. Suddenly, I was terrified that my plan had worked, that he had seen me flying across our backyard like a giant ping pong ball with a poorly chosen hair cut.  Thankfully, I was wrong.  Nobody saw, and nobody knew.  I got up, quickly pulled the trampoline back into the usual place and went inside, glad that the snow-tube had saved me from my stupidity.  I pretended that nothing had happened and waited for my dad to get home so we could go fishing.  

That was the last time I ever jumped off the balcony.

I found out later that the boy whom I wanted to notice me, had already gone home to San Jose.  He had been gone for most, if not all, of my attempts at getting his attention.  I think it worked out for the best.