I remember we used the alias “Bert” to talk about my best friend’s 6^th grade boyfriend “Ben.” We felt like secret agents. She can recount—from my shirt down to my shoes—what I was wearing on the day of my first kiss. She knows because the outfit was hers.

We have known each other for more than half of our lives, which means we have witnessed every awkward haircut and change in screen name, and all the different breaks: the skin breakout, the family breakdown, the bitter breakup, the agonizing heartbreak. She was there to get me tissues when I teared up in class after a run-in with my ex-boyfriend in the hallway. I came to her house with pint of Chunky Monkey after she found out her crush was moving to Missouri.

This winter break, we came together in my parents’ kitchen and laughed over how painful those minor heartbreaks felt at the time, and how silly they seem in retrospect. My ex-boyfriend is still wandering the high school hallways, working on graduating, and her crush in Missouri now plays for the other team.

Acting on a playful indulgence, or maybe something deeper, we recalled and wrote down, one by one, each of our boyfriends and sort-of-boyfriends and barely-boyfriends. There was the impulsive artist who said “I love you” and took it back the next day, the emaciated poet who found someone new in less time than it takes for milk to curdle, the detached engineer who introduced me as his “friend,” the gargantuan football player who had a thing for feet. We relied on each other to fill in lacunae of our romantic memory—the men we tried to forget, the boys we had actually forgotten. The historic exercise took us all the way back to our middle school mini-romances, where things got blurry, and our hair was a lot frizzier.

The last boy on my list was Sam, whom I had a crush on in the 3^rd grade because of his budding chivalry: he agreed to trade his pizza school lunch for my lifeless PB&J. The next day, he asked for his pizza back, and I cried and told him I had already eaten it.

We looked over our lists, comparing notes. She reminded me to add the Indian guy who told me kissing his ex-girlfriend was like “kissing my mother.” She crossed out the boy in 8^th grade who would only talk to her on his GuitarBoy555 screen name, because neither of us could remember his real name. Read More »

So last week while talking to my male friend about red flags that send guys running, he touched on girls being crazy bitches. Because that is what all men say: they don’t like girls who are crazy bitches. I personally believe that guys think every girl is a crazy bitch (they throw the term and judgement around so easily), so I wanted to find out what this guy considered crazy.

Please note: I went a little crazy talking to him, so I apologize if I ruined it for the rest of you. I take full responsibility for my actions and am going to let all men know that I do not represent our entire gender. And, boys, I’m normally cool as a cucumber – when I’m medicated with caffiene and chocolate – so don’t run! Read More »