Help Me Pick Up the Pieces.

Your time is valuable. I understand this.

But I need your advice regarding something that happened today. Seriously, I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t need you to unleash your hounds of wisdom upon my tender pink meat of ineptitude. 

Here’s what happened: 

Every morning, I drive my fourteen-year-old daughter to middle school. Usually, by the time we've come within a couple blocks of our destination, the roads have already become clogged with cranky chauffeurs and their pubescent offspring. 

You know how school zones are supposed to work, where the speed limit is twenty when children are present? We’re implored to gingerly maneuver our vehicles through the clouds of Axe body spray and foggy-eyed adolescence as America’s future shuffles into the building with neon Cheeto fingers and the raw funk of pituitary promise. 

Yeah, not at this school. It’s an all-out “I’ve-got-six-minutes-to-get-to-work-if-you-get-out-while-we’re-moving” mentality. Cars stop in the middle of the street; kids dart in front of you, brushing your hood with scuffed clarinet cases. This three-minute taste of the Apocalypse is overwhelmingly the most dangerous part of my day. 

This morning, we’d just entered the hot zone and had elevated to alert level Orange, similar to the Bush-era system, yet not stupid and ineffective. 

I wasn’t driving fast, which is probably why we didn’t collide. The Honda minivan was pulled over, its front wheels pointing toward the street. As I juked slightly to the left to pass, the vehicle abruptly accelerated into my path. 

I leaned on the horn and stomped the brakes, our rusty minivans jerking to a stop and forming a “V” in the middle of the street. The driver’s eyes locked onto me. She scowled and pulled away, exhibiting a gesture possibly only recognizable to the indigenous herders of Lapland.

Oh yeah, plus we knew this person.

“Oh, my God, Dad. That was Chrysanthemum (not her actual name).”

“Sure is,” I said. “Chrysanthemum needs to look before she pulls out.”

I wasn't sure how to feel. I was embarrassed yet certain the mishap was her creation. My daughter and I have known her and her daughter for five or six years, yet until this morning hadn’t been on the viewing end of her axe murdering face. Regrettably, that one wasn't on the old bucket list.

So what the hell do I do now, get her a freaking Starbucks card? Nah. 

After pondering my choices, after jotting out T-charts and crunching numerous cost/benefit analyses, I’ve whittled my options down to the following:

1) Apologize. Maybe I was driving a tad bit aggressively, and therefore am partly responsible for the near miss (Or, as George Carlin once said: “That’s not a f—-ing near miss. That’s a f—-ing near hit.”).

2) Do nothing. Act as if it never happened and distract Chrysanthemum with a smothering bear hug next time I see her. People love my hugs, you know.

3) Egg her house.

I’m leaning toward a combination of 1) and 3), but I’ll hold off until I hear your suggestions.

The Enchanting Kiss of My First Girfriend.

"So, what's the deal, man? Did you kiss her yet?"

"Yeah, of course I did," I lied.

"Where?"

I lied again. "You know...over there...behind the portables."

"When?"

"Um, like...last Wednesday...maybe before that." Lie number three.

"Decent. Good deal, bud."

It was the autumn of 1976, I was fourteen years old and she was my first girlfriend.

Everything happened so quickly. I saw her at a high school football game or in the hallway or something and told my friend Jeff that I thought she was cute. Actually, I probably said something like, "See that girl over there? Her name's Stacy (not her real name). She's such a fox."

Before I could say "bubbling hormones," word had gotten back to me that yes, Stacy liked me, too. Angela, a girl in my social studies class, had reached back and grabbed the PeeChee off my desk and returned it with the words, "Tim + Stacy = Luv4Ever" scrawled right between the three white dudes running track, the two white dudes playing football and the one white girl playing tennis.

As Angela slid it across my desk, she whispered, "She'd totally go with you."

"Go with me where?"

"Ha, you're so funny. Here's her phone number. She wants you to call her tonight." Angela turned back around and started playing with her hair.

But I wasn't joking. I hadn't spoken a word to this girl and now we were going together. And I had to call her—tonight.

In those days, "couples" enjoyed a status that soloists did not. In the parfait that was junior high society, securing a girlfriend meant rising from the chunky, lifeless depths of the Jello-O parfait to the wispy clouds of full-fat Cool Whip which laid claim to the top stratum and enjoyed a panoramic view of its world.

Couples were invited to skate parties and special cafeteria tables. They held hands and walked through the pungent straw-covered mud of the Fall fair, eating corndogs and slurping down cotton candy with a faint FFA show pig aftertaste.

I liked that idea. But Lord have mercy, this boy was terrified.

When I called her later that evening from our lone phone which offered slightly less privacy than O.J.'s Bronco, I had to censor each statement to align with the protocol of both this strange girl and my mom, who pretended to be watching All in the Family.

From the moment Stacy's and my arranged marriage ensued, I became fully incapacitated. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. Before each nightly call, I would examine myself in the bathroom mirror to ensure that my hair was nicely parted and feathered. Come on, now, you have to look good on the phone, right?

After a week spent adapting to a humming bird's heart rate and splotches of stomach acid which leaked out of my ears and onto the pillow each night, I resolved to up the stakes.

I would kiss Stacy, goddamn it.

My friends had been pestering me into further detail of our couplings, and I was weary of constant fabrications. So I planned.

I would do it when she walked me to a pre-season basketball meeting after school, which fortunately was to be held in one of the portables, nestled on a semi-private area of the school's periphery.

Had I kissed a girl before? Absolutely. But this was different because she was my girlfriend—we were an item—this had to be passionate.

I'd seen some of the other, more experienced boyfriend/girlfriend combos kissing before they parted ways and it was no Ward Cleaver peck on the cheek. This was full-on, twenty-second Hollywood-style tonsil tango.

And I was scared shitless.

Nonetheless, I was determined to freaking kiss Stacy by the freaking portable before the freaking pre-season basketball meeting. I felt warning signs of cardiac arrest as we slowly made our way toward Coach Hofeditz's classroom—clamminess, dry mouth, a heart which now simply heaved like a huge giblet stewing in a crockpot of adrenaline gravy—but I slogged on.

Ironically, I chose a moment when we were actually speaking to each other to make my move. Most of our conversations were sparse, but this one was actually gathering steam when I cut it off like scissors to a skin tag.

My head lunged at hers, similar to JFK's head after the second gunshot, clumsily jerking and angling. Her alarm apparent, I nevertheless smothered her mouth with mine like a honey badger to a mound of termites.

No other body parts touched except our mouths. I eventually disengaged with an unnatural glitch slurp sound, trailed by a string of ropey saliva which eventually severed and slapped against my chin.

We separated and spoke a few words to each other, none of which I remember since our bodies had each entered a protective state of shock. I slunk into the portable, dazed and highly traumatized, yet finally cognizant of the legal term, "temporary insanity."

She broke up with me the next day, so I threw away the PeeChee.

Stacy, wherever you are, I have but one wish. Years later, on your wedding day, when you married the man of your dreams, my greatest desire is that the minister did not lean forward and announce to your new husband:

"You may hug your bride."

Ever said something stupid? I haven't.

Have you ever said something stupid...I mean, really, really stupid?

Yeah, I haven't, either. I've never said anything like:

"You look super tired today. I mean, you look sort of like you've been working hard. I mean, mornin' to ya!"

"Remember when you used to be thin? I mean thinner. What I mean is, remember when we were younger?"

"How many months pregnant are you? Oh, I see.Well, are you thinking you might someday want children?"

"How old is your son? Oh, sorry. How old is your daughter? You know, my daughter used to be mistaken for a boy all the time, too. Not that yours is mistaken for a boy all the time. Anyway, how are you?"

I've got many more examples of idiotic statements I've never made. Thank heavens that the good Lord has blessed me with that filter which catches my moronic thoughts before they make their way into audible goodness for the recipient's lucky ears. I'm trying to decide which impulsive sputterings are more potentially damaging-those made to our spouses or those made to our co-workers.

At work, our statements, if severe enough, can be escalated to a human resources level, where everything is documented and can result in embarrassment, reprimand or even termination. The stakes are high, and we need to be ever-cognizant of what we say and to whom.

For instance, I know to which guys in the restroom I can say, "Hey, man, try to hit the urinal, mmmkay? Or else bring a tennis court squeegee with you next time," and which guys I must keep my dirty thoughts to myself. I know to whom I can say, "Come on in. I know the elevator is really crowded, but, lucky for you, I brought my special personal elevator lubricant. Put some on and squeeze right in."

At home, the consequences of our insensitive comments are eternal. My wife can cite every ignorant, mean, ridiculous or stupid remark I've ever made. She can pull it out of nowhere. "Remember right after I'd given birth to our first daughter and we drove home. Remember?" I always know what's coming at this point. "I was as fat as a cow," she continues, "and the woman next door was sunbathing in her bikini, and you just looked at her and said, "'Whoa'. Just that one word, 'whoa.'" The only reason I remember is because I'm reminded of it every year on my daughter's birthday.

Every time I blurt out an insensitive sentence, I think, "Okay, that's it. I've exhausted my arsenal. I'll never do this again, because next time, I'll wait one second, just one, and the impulse will have passed." Wrong.

But wait. Hang on just a minute. I almost forgot, I've never said anything stupid.