In the Village of Near Misses

[resonant]

So my lovable puppylike ninth-grade boyfriend just got in touch on Facebook. He's living on a farm some miles outside our hometown, and his only neighbor is ... my pharmaceutically enhanced yet endearingly goofy twelfth-grade boyfriend.

If they could get Wonder If He Knows He's Gay Yet and Epic Love, Epic Daddy Issues out there, it would be a whole little colony of my teenage mistakes.

The spouse once said to me, "I don't know why your parents are always so nice to me," and I said, "That's because you haven't met the boys that I could have ended up with."

Comments

[fanofall]

That is so great that they're all moving to one area so you can just avoid that one place like the plague. It's like your own version of the Hellmouth! :-D

[resonant]

So far it's the two I still like out there. Maybe the other two have located a Hellmouth elsewhere!

[kinetikatrue]

... is it wrong that my first thought was 'that's the set-up for a fic, right there'?

[china_shop]

Me too! Hee!

[resonant]

Um. I'm a little frightened to discover that I can now imagine a High School AU of my own life.

[kinetikatrue]

I admit I was seeing futurefic involving previously teenaged characters (see: most Breakfast Club fic, for instance) rather than a stright-up HS AU, but I totally read and love either.

(Alternately, you've got yourself an 'original' novel. *g*)

[azurelunatic]

Oh wait, "Wonder If He Knows He's Gay Yet" and "Epic Love, Epic Daddy Issues" are separate entities, and not the story of the 9th grade and 12th grade boyfriends' love affair in progress.

*sits corrected*

[copracat]

I was kind of hoping for that, on first reading.

[lexin]

I hadn't worked that out until you said. If I hadn't read the comments I'd never have worked it out.

[isis]

And me as well!

[copracat]

Shippers gotta ship!

[fullygoldy]

X2 - It took a second read to figure it out, but I have only been vertical for 20 min.

[resonant]

Oops -- no, those are two other guys; I should have been more consistent with my naming conventions and called ninth grade The Meatball and twelfth grade Doctor C.

[copracat]

Ha ha! Yes, My exes parents didn't mind at all that I was a woman as I wasn't any of her previous boyfriends.

[fullygoldy]

you know, I might mention this tactic to *my* daughter...

[resonant]

It wasn't until college that I realized that the set "have interesting minds" didn't have to be exactly the same as the set "wild as a rat in a coffee can."

[princessofgeeks]

LOL

[resonant]

I don't understand people who ask writers, "Where do you get your ideas?"

[elynross]

POGO. YOU HAVE A POGO ICON.

Yeah, the post itself was really funny, but POGO. <3 *g*

I have a bunch of old, battered Pogo cartoon books that were my Dad's, and somewhere I have plastic figures of Albert and Porky. \o/

[resonant]

Ooh! A fellow fan! I have those battered books, too, and I'll see your Albert and Porky figures and add Pogo, Churchy, and Owl! (Porky's the rarest of those figures, you know.)

I've been thinking about this frame as an icon for years, but try to imagine going through all your Pogo books looking for that one frame. It just happened to float to the top while I was packing for the move.

Another one I hope to find and see if it's icon-able is "I tole that pup dog and I tole him. Don't chase cats, is what I tole him."

The kidlet and I agree that Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye reminds us strongly of Churchy La Femme.

[elynross]

Yeah, I don't know why we only ended up with those two. *g* But yay, Porky! And heeeeee, about Renner=Churchy.

I can only imagine hunting for the picture. Although now I want to reread, I haven't in... I can't remember how long. If I do, and I find that one, I'll let you know.

[kinetikatrue]

And yet another fan, introduced to Pogo by my father and his parents. And entrusted with an entire six figure set when my grandparents were downsizing their possessions:

[resonant]

Dad tells me these were prizes in soap flakes, or something like that. My Churchy's hands have been chewed on by a kid. at least I hope it was a kid.

For a while my father subscribed to two newspapers: the morning one to get the news, and the afternoon one to get Pogo.

Are you both Southerners? The spouse (a Californian) tries to read Pogo but can't understand what the characters are saying.

[kinetikatrue]

I'm from Maryland, which makes the answer to your question yes ...and no. But my dad was raised in the Philadelphia area and his parents were from Pennsylvania/New Jersey, as well, so, overall, we don't provide further comforting evidence, I'm afraid.

But, yes, the Pogo figurines were an Ivory Snow soap flakes giveaway from 1969, which my grandparents glommed onto because they loved the strip so much (though it's likely they were already using Ivory for the washing). None of mine have been chewed on, but they all have signs of wear and a few seem to have picked up what look like ink-stains at some point. Still, they're pretty damn awesome and I feel super lucky to have them. *g*