Most, if not all, high school relationships occurred solely over the telephone. There really wasn't much time in school to do anything that constituted a relationship besides hallway activities that usually ended with you running separate directions at the first sign of a teacher like a bank heist gone bad.
I remember being nervous when I used to call girls, not because I was afraid to talk to them, but because I was afraid their parents would answer. Calling a girl who didn't have her own phone after ten o'clock was a crap shoot. Sometimes the parents wouldn't even answer the phone because once your kid hits the teenage years you just assume the phone isn't ringing for you. But if they did answer you either got the really cool parent who just put you on hold or you got a congressional inquiry. Who is this? Why are you calling my house so late?
In hindsight, the good parent was the one who asked a million questions. One girl's mother talked to me for an hour before she gave her daughter the phone, but after that she never had a problem with me calling. The worst were the girls who actually had a father. (That didn't come out right.) I never had a father answer the phone who didn't hit me with the Morgan Freeman Lean On Me anger. Why are you calling my house? You smoke crack don't you? It kills your brain cells son, it kills your brain cells!
I'm gonna be that kind of father.
Whenever you did get to talk to the girl, it was always the same formula. Either you, her or both of you were listening to the radio. Ninety percent of the time The Quiet Storm was playing on the radio and you talked about the most random things. I still can't understand how I spent so many hours of my life in silence on the phone while both of us watched the same TV show together.
You still there?
Yeah baby I'm here.
Okay. I thought you fell asleep.
Naw. I'm not even tired yet.
I don't have a clue what kids do nowadays since they have texting and cell phones. Back then, cordless phones were a luxury most didn't have so you showed your love by staying on the phone while the other person went and ran errands around the house.
I gotta go take out the trash. Hold on.
I gotta use the bathroom. Hold on.
(Black girls) I gotta go wrap my hair. Hold on.
Remember how every couple had a song? Whatever was playing on the radio at the moment you two formally declared that you were a couple turned into your song. And since most relationships only lasted about two weeks, chances were that the same song was in rotation when you started talking to someone else. K-Ci and Jo Jo's All My Life was my song with four different girls. One girl told me that Tha Crossroads (Bone Thugs N Harmony) was our song.
GHETTO!
Eventually the love faded, you lost interest or you just moved on. Thus began the period of...calling me and instead of saying something you just put the phone up to your CD player and play me a song. I broke up with a girl once and for the next three days there was a fifty percent chance that when I answered the phone I was gonna hear:
I know you're going. I can't make you stay. I can only let you know I love you anyway. And if the road you take leads to heartbreak somewhere down the line. If someone ever hurts you or treats your heart unkind.
*Click*
I hung up. Of course the next day you'd see black magic marker scribbled over her notebook where she once wrote
Her Name
-N-
Ordale
2 Gether
4 Ever
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