ratbastid

Yeah. And the consequences.

I'm extraordinarly good at manipulating people. It's something I really have had to come to terms with, because MAN, if I want to get my own way, I'll get it, you'll never see me coming, and you'll think it was your idea. I'm that good. The people closest to me (read: lurkette and our very closest friends) know all about it at this point, and it doesn't work so well on them anymore, which is a GOOD thing.

The worst thing I've ever done... Wow. I've done some shitty stuff.

A couple things stand out. The summer after my freshman year in college, I cheated on lurkette. I was home, away from her for the first time, we'd dated all through the year, and there was this girl I worked with who I went home with one night. That's not the bad thing though--I mean, that's bad, but it gets worse. I lied about it to her. I kept it as a secret for years and years. And for all those years, it weighed on me. I thought about it literally during our wedding. Any time she was jealous of me, it was right there. I maybe went a day without thinking about it, but for sure I didn't go a week without it. Finally, after we'd been married nine years or so, I couldn't live with it anymore and told her, and told her the agony I'd had myself in. She forgave me, and I literally haven't thought about it since that conversation except maybe three or four times when I've posted something about it here or told someone about it. It's completely gone for me.

And then there's this. I'm not sure I've even told lurkette about this.... I still feel like shit about this. I'm 9 or 10. I'm at summer camp. There's a dance, and it's fun (sort of... I was, mysteriously enough, fairly popular at this camp, and I was totally on guard against my old unpopular self showing up, so there was some stress from that). At the end of the night, one of the counselors, a cute blond girl, announced that the dance was over and it was time to go back to our cabins. I thought I'd be cute and throw this paper airplane I'd just made at her. I called out her name (I've blocked this memory so hard I can't even remember her name), she turned around, and I threw the airplane. It flew straight from my hand as if it was on rails, and hit her right in the eye. She screamed and held her eye, and I ran away. The next day was the last day of camp, and I avoided her (while surrepticiously looking to see whether her eye was okay, which I ultimately wasn't able to determine) until my parents came for me.