When I was 16, I started working at Hardee’s. My first year there, someone suggested that
it would be fun to do a Christmas gift exchange with all of the employees. We had a little get together at the
restaurant a few days before Christmas.
One of the supervisors, Sandy, thought it would be funny if her gift was
one of those R-rated decks of playing cards where there was a semi-naked (or
naked) lady on each card. If she was
hoping to embarrass someone, she hit the jackpot when I picked her gift.
I was the most socially awkward nerdy person there, and
everyone got a big kick out of it when I opened up the present. To make matters worse, sitting across from me
in the booth was the girl I had a huge crush on, along with her cigarette
smoking, baseball playing, cool car driving, Tony Danza lookalike boyfriend,
Vernon. They were all having a big laugh
at my expense. (For the record, I did
get the last laugh on Vernon. 6 years
later, his ex-girlfriend and I got married.)
When I got home that night, I hid the cards under the seat
of my dad’s station wagon that I was driving.
When mom asked, I made up some reason for not getting a present in the
exchange. I didn’t feel like recounting,
and adding to, the embarrassment of the evening. Later that night, after mom went to work, I
brought the cards in to look at them. I took
the time to put all of the cards in order, ranking them from the one that I
would least like to have as a girlfriend (Starr) to the one that I would most
like to have as a girlfriend (Heather).
Then I put them back in the box and hid them in my closet.
Years later, when visiting my folks, I went down
to my old room in the basement and found the cards, still tucked away in the
closet, along with three SI swimsuit issues and a Penthouse that I had pulled
from a burn barrel behind the gas station. The girls were still in the same order, and my tastes hadn't changed a bit.
