An oldie, but a foodie

July. 1999. My crush's birthday.

Like any other 14 year-old girl spending her summer awaiting freshman year of high school, I logged into AOL late one afternoon to chat with the girlfriends I abandoned the previous summer in Milwaukee. I also wanted to make sure I was online just in case my #1 crush from down the street logged on. We'll call him Chris.

So there I am. Online. Minding my own business. I hear the door opening on my buddy list, and see that Mongoos15 is now in the house. I glance at the clock, and decide I will IM him in 5 minutes. IMing him any earlier than that would make me look far too desperate, obviously. Here's how the conversation went:

LM114: Happy birthday!
Mongoos15: thanx
LM114: how has your day been?
Mongoos15: not bad
LM114: did you get any good presents?
Mongoos15: uhh....chok cake
LM114: oh cool, I love chocolate cake
***conversation continues, then dies off***

Hmmmm chocolate cake. While delicious, I thought it was a little weird that of all things, he was telling me about the cake. My excitement drowned out any logic, though, and I didn't give the response much thought. Like most girls I knew then, I saved the conversation in an e-mail so I could show my sister, and any of my girlfriends that weren't online at the time later.

Within an hour, I showed my sister the conversation. It wasn't until this point in my life that I realized how dangerously close the "F" and "G" buttons are on a standard keyboard. Instead of asking my crush if he received any GOOD presents for his birthday, I had actually asked him if he got any FOOD presents. The horror of this realization was only exemplified by the fact that being nearly 5'6", I was weighing in at about 200lbs despite my attempts to go to Weight Watchers with my mom. So my 14 year-old prior fat self had just asked my biggest crush if he got any food for his birthday. As if I was hungry, and needed some. As if SO many types of presents are given on birthdays, I only needed to know about the food situation. I can only imagine what he was thinking at this moment, but since I probably appeared like an abnormally hungry person to begin with, asking about cake certainly did not help my efforts to win him over.

Tragically embarassing at the time. Endlessly amusing since.