Thought of this with the new topics of the day and remembered it when I posted a sort of coming of age tale in the other thread.
I love coming of age stories. Especially now that I'm older. There seems to be just an innocence about them. Kids going through adolescence, trying adult things and then perhaps facing the consequences. Freaks and Geeks, The Wonder Years. The Sandlot is my favorite. The tobacco on the carnival ride. Squints kissing Wendy. We've all been there.
One of my coming of age stories is probably more American Pie than Wonder Years.
I was 16 and my girlfriend missed her time of the month by 2 weeks. She told me if she gets to 3 weeks we have to get a pregnancy test and I have to go with her to buy it and be there when she takes it. Longest week of my life. Checking with her like 5 times a day. "Did you get it yet? How about now? Call me if you get it. I didn't hear form you. Did you get it and forget to tell me?"
3 weeks come and we bite the bullet and go to Safeway. She's looking them over and every time someone comes down the aisle I turn around like I'm looking at cold medicine or something.
She picks out the test she wants and we go to checkout. I'm following her and she picks the checkout line with no line. I look up and the guy working the register sits like three seats away from me in Biology class. We're not friends at all, never talked before, we just sit 10 feet away from each other every day. She puts the test on the belt and without hesitation I put the divider behind it and grab a candy bar and put it down as if to say, "we're not together."
So she calls me a bleeping bleep, smacks me in the arm with the divider, the guy rings it up, looks at me as he gives me change, chuckles and says "looks like someones going to have an interesting night." I could have punched him in the face.
We go back to her place. Unbeknownst to me, her mom knows what was going on the whole time. Her mom knew we had been active, knew why were going to the store, sits with me in the living room for the whole 3 minutes my girlfriend is sitting in the bathroom waiting for the results to show up. Longest 3 minutes of my life. Absolute silence. Fearing the worst.
Turns out she wasn't pregnant, thank god. She got it the next morning. Her mom told me before she left the room, "be lucky I'm the one that found out and not her father. Let's never speak of this ever again." Her mom knew because she put her on birth control which ended up screwing her cycle up, hence the scare when 3 weeks went by.
Next day in biology class as we're leaving, guy from Safeway walks up and says "everything good?". I'm like "all good, very relived." He's like "....cool." We never spoke again.