One time I drove to a bar to meet a girl. Today’s methods of communication: the internet, smart phones, texting- have drastically changed how we interact with each other. As it was, I don’t think I’d ever spoken to this girl in real life; we did a lot of online chatting and at one point I must have gotten her phone number too because we also texted. It’s kind of strange thinking back because now I’m not even sure how I “met” her; friends of friends through a social networking site seems like the most likely culprit. Regardless, I thought she was pretty and nice and based on her internet persona, her interests were a lot like mine. There were times that I dropped hints that I was interested in her but I was never quite sure that she reciprocated; my gut feeling was that I was friend zone material. A lot of us guys, even when we know that we’ve been relegated to the “just friends” category, still labor under the romantic delusion that the girl in question will rethink her position and decide that they want to give us a try. I’d been drawn into that before and by this point, my cynicism was outweighing my naivety. Still, there was a little part of me that wanted to see what this girl was all about; after all, we’d still never met in person. One night I decided to see what would happen.

I don’t remember the specifics of the night in question, only that we were texting back and forth and I must have said I was bored and didn’t have any plans. She told me she was going out to a bar she liked and that I should come out. At first I laughed it off; bar culture was and still is not my thing. Besides, it was getting a little late and the place was roughly an hour away. Then I started thinking…..you know, why not? What else am I going to do tonight? Just go and see what happens. If I looked at the whole situation intellectually, like I was only going as a subject in my own social experiment, then I had some emotional barriers already set in place to deflect any embarrassment if things were awkward. Fuck it.

The drive southward was long and dark and gave the two warring factions of my brain plenty of time to debate on whether or not I believed my own bullshit; one arguing that I was expanding my horizons by taking a chance, and the other smugly insinuating that I thought I had a chance with this girl and I was getting my hopes up for no reason. Neither side won and it really didn’t matter because within the hour, I was sitting in the parking lot. I stared long and hard at the steering wheel before I got out, wondering why something like this was so hard for me to do. I walked slowly down the opposite side of the street to try and gauge the situation but when I saw the bar and the crowd, I still got that first-day-of-school feeling of trepidation. I self-consciously bumped my way through the buzzing throng of smokers and fresh-air-getters, tried to muster up a half cocky, half bemused expression, and ventured in.

It was around 10:45, the bar was packed, and I wanted to run. Luckily, the girl was near the door and waved me over. She gave me a hug and I told her it was nice to finally meet her; we chatted a bit but it quickly turned awkward because A.) we JUST MET and B.) my abstinence from alcohol at the time and her knowledge of it prevented the natural line of conversation in a bar, “so, you want to get a drink?” Again, I lucked out that she was with a friend who was also nice and we were able to strike up a conversation, too. I met a couple of their other friends and slid into their social circle amidst the music, clinking glasses, and boisterous voices. The two girls then wandered off and left me standing with two guys whom I’d just met. The smug side of my brain shrieked in triumph, AH HA, YOU FUCKING IDIOT! THERE SHE GOES, ALONG WITH HER CUTE FRIEND, LEAVING YOU STANDING HERE WITH TWO ESSENTIAL STRANGERS, LOOKING LIKE A COMPLETE ASSHOLE! The rational side attempted damage control, and I was able to get a bit of conversation going with the two guys, who weren’t jerks or anything, I was just WAY out of my fucking element and sinking quickly. This wasn’t a social experiment and I wasn’t some quirky character in a movie that could throw around a couple of witty one liners and win everybody over with his charm. I tried to keep a smile on my face but truth be told, I was nervous, tired, and perturbed at myself for having the personality that I did. I found the girls again and after a little while, said my goodbyes. I couldn’t have been in the bar longer than an hour.

There isn’t a moral to this story. I never did decide if I went for fun/ excitement, if I thought I had a chance with the girl, or if it was a mistake. I’ll tell you one thing, on that ride back it sure felt like a fucking mistake. All I wanted was to be home and in bed, not psychoanalyzing the night or going over the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ for miles upon miles of dark highway. I honestly can’t say I wish it didn’t happen because you have to learn about yourself somehow. If you over think every single situation preemptively and talk yourself out of things, are you really learning anything? I mean yeah, it could definitely suck. You just read a story that laid out a blow by blow ass-whipping of my confidence. I just said there isn’t a moral here; what I meant was there isn’t a right or a wrong. Just remember that regardless of the lesson, you need to be a good student.

The things that stay with you tend to be important

Here is a story I remember from my childhood, one that must have been significant to me considering how clearly I recall it when it seems so trivial. The story begins on Easter of my thirteenth year. I received a pair of sunglasses as a present in my Easter basket; round, mirrored lenses with a skull printed on the outside of them. I thought they were great; photographic evidence of my perceived coolness exists in one of my parents’ photo albums: me that morning, wearing them in my pajamas, grinning like an idiot. Now, as hard as it is to believe after I just revealed my taste in sunglasses, this was the beginning of the age when I became aware and conscious of how I looked. I started to develop a preference for certain clothes, I liked my hair combed a particular way, my sneakers had to be the right brand. I don’t think I was conscious of this process occurring, I was being stretched between the world of a kid and the world of an adolescent and at that age, you don’t discuss and plan different changes going on with your mind and body, they just happen.

One of the biggest enemies of my budding sense of physical appearance was the bicycle helmet. It was truly a multi-faceted enemy; it made my head look gigantically bulbous, messed up my hair, and definitely didn’t convey a grown up look of style to my peers. I abhorred this helmet and rode off without it whenever I could, but the threat of grounding from my doting mother if I was caught always loomed in my mind. Many epic parent vs. puberty battles were waged over the donning of that stupid fucking bike helmet. Little did I know that a helmet and sunglasses would set the stage for a seemingly minuscule interaction that I still remember vividly, roughly fifteen years later.


My main (only) source of income at this age was mowing the lawn of some family friends, the Klockes. Mark and Constance owned a big house on East Ave and in the summertime, they paid me $20 to come and mow the grass. Even though the work was easy and the Klockes were really nice people, it was far from my favorite outside activity. The bike entered the equation as my mode of transportation to the job and with it came the dreaded helmet. My mom’s badgering to make sure I got to the Klockes every week ALWAYS came with this infamous line shouted from the kitchen window, “…AND DON’T FORGET TO WEAR YOUR HELMET!” I would grit my teeth as I opened the garage and practice every new, colorful curse word I picked up in the hallowed halls of Springville Middle School.


In early summer I rode up Main St to East Ave to the Klocke residence, to fulfill my obligation and earn my “paycheck.” That particular day I was wearing both the helmet and the skull sunglasses. Now, cliques were being born and deviant behavior was escalating as I moved through grade seven and into eighth. As I rounded the corner of Franklin and Main and proceeded up the hill, a group of kids that personified both were coming down the other side of the street. This fledgling “stoner clique” didn’t so much scare me physically as they did emotionally. For some reason, I had a fascination with acceptance from this social group and I didn’t know why. I was as straight-laced as they came at that age; great grades, loved reading, the D.A.R.E. program poster child. Why I wanted kids like this to think I was cool is something I still wonder about. As soon as I saw them, I immediately scrambled to grab the sunglasses off of my face, almost falling off my bright yellow ten-speed in the process. I was TERRIFIED of ridicule for the glasses that, just three short months ago, I had been so proud of. I couldn’t do anything about the helmet and I silently cursed my parents again for caring about my physical well-being so much. As I pumped my way up one side of Main St and they sauntered down the other, I heard cat calls; the clearest one I remember in all of it‘s juvenile, creativity-lacking glory: “Heeyyyyy, Haag-it faggot!” I pretended I didn‘t hear but I’m sure my burning face belayed my embarrassment. I overheard some one in the group I was apparently cool with tell the heckler ‘no man, Haag is cool…,” but the damage was already done to my puberty- distorted psyche, as evidenced by the fact that I’m writing about it as a 27 year old.


This story is relevant in my life today because I finally wised up and started wearing a helmet while riding my bike. I no longer find romantic the possibility of splattering my brains all over a City of Buffalo street because some driver neglected his blind spots. Without realizing the apparent significance at first, I also coupled my old arch nemesis with sunglasses mainly because squinting my way through a long ride tends to ruin the experience. On the day that I combined the two, I involuntarily flashed back to that moment of reckoning, when I received one of my first lessons in what it’s like to be the brunt of a joke. I’m not going to lie; for a second, I felt a flash of apprehension in my chest. That feeling was quickly burned away by anger and bitterness. I can’t believe I let some one intimidate me into being embarrassed of something so stupid; my sensitivity was preyed upon and I was ushered into the initial stages of an angry, depressed state of mind that I struggle with to this day. I look for any silver linings, thinking “well, maybe these experiences made me into a person who is more sensitive towards others feelings. Maybe this is why I’m a social worker, helping others who need it and defending them against unfair treatment.” Whichever way I look at it, one thing is for sure; it opened my eyes. It stole the blinders of childhood from me and life’s innocence along with it.