This week's underlying theme has been girls from my high school. More specifically girls from high school who wouldn't date me. To be fair though, with only two exceptions, that describes pretty much all of them.

It all started at the airport. 0200 at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, my friend Brian was there to meet me. Brian, whose brilliant, beautiful, and currently far away girlfriend lives and works in Honolulu, cuts short his conversation to greet me. Knowing the ins and outs of maintaining a relationship over long distance( and that's really the on the deal on thelong distance thing. Not much growth or development, but plenty of maintenance) I send him off to reestablish contact and proceed over to where the luggage will be unpacked at a positively glacial pace because all but one baggage handler was sent home at 0015 when the airport closed.

There stood Tara Richards as beautiful the day I met her in the ninth grade( this time however without the skinned knee and black eye( apparently due to a softball incident but I noticed that the other girls treated her with a level of respect that may have been mixed with fear so I to this day believe that the story was some type of secret all girl cover up)). I had always had a little bit of a crush on her. She had always been civil to me, and occasionally even talked to me like I was a worthwhile human being. Now here she was eleven years later standing in front of me, greeting me warmly and talking about the time in between.

So friendly in fact that the boyfriend that she is here to pick up starts giving me the eye. I briefly wonder whether the jealousy is self inflicted (he is a cheating bastard and assumes everyone else is), mutually inflicted(the relationship just isn't that stable and he doesn't feel that confident in his position), or her-inflicted( she's cheating and he allows himself to be a victim). There is a part of me that wants to toy with the guy, leave him in a quivering state of jealous rage. That's the part of me that still has trouble dealing with the misery that was high school.

Instead I changed the subject to my wife and immediately copped a beta-male posture and countenance. I'm turning into a nice guy, I really am.

Then after the burial fiasco I took my eldest boy to his karate class. I sat near to yet another girl I had a crush on in high school watching her daughter in the same class. She wasn't nice to me when I finally worked up the courage to talk to her back then. This time I couldn't remember her name, not that it mattered. She spent the entire class avoiding eye contact of any sort.

She did still look good. However,( and this is the kind of thing that brings joy to my petty and small minded heart) she did not look as good as my wife does and my wife has had three times as many children.

Then the crowning point of my trial by former fellow high school classmates. My wife is invited to a tupperware party. A tupperware party with one of the most popular girls in school and one of the smartest(she beat me at chess, but date me, not on your life). I had to resist the temptation to beg my wife to spend the evening bragging(and probably lying) about what a perfect husband I am. Still I hope she made some subtle mention of me. I wanted them to see not only that I have this beautiful, wonderful wife/mother of my three perfect boys but also that she enjoys being married to me. Petty, definitely, but I didn't beg, I didn't even mention it. I know my wife loves me and is proud of me, and if she felt like telling them about it she would and if not she wouldn't. The fact that she feels that way is enough for me.