Regrets? Nah. Vengeance? Heck yeah!

Aug 22nd 2007
Karen HawkinsWhen Goddesses Fall To Earth

39 Responses to “Regrets? Nah. Vengeance? Heck yeah!”

1. Lori on 23 Aug 2007 at 12:06 am #

   Oh heck yes! So with you on that. My guy and I were “just friends”. Our parents were good friends. You know how that goes. Ick. But I actually got my moment when 20 years later, he said to a mutual friend (with whom we both still keep in touch), “I wonder why Lori & I never got together. She was hot back then.” Hello?! I’d have cut off my right arm to get together with him in high school. Dumbo.

2. twolilhahas on 23 Aug 2007 at 1:12 am #

   I’d love one of those moments with my ex-husband. I’d love for him to eat his heart out!

3. Stacy ~ on 23 Aug 2007 at 5:44 am #

   Oh sure there were actually a few of them LOL. The most memorable one was the dratted “friend” who never looked beyond that. His name was Jeff. Him and his family would come over to our house and we’d hang out, or we’d go swimming at another friend’s house, and we always had fun, but he never “saw” me. Then my family moved, and we lost touch. I have no idea where he is now. Oh well, his loss LOL.

4. Patty L. on 23 Aug 2007 at 7:09 am #

   Of course, there is always the one “friend” that you wanted but he didn’t know you existed beyond friends. I remember hanging out with him and talking about the girls he liked and the guys that I likes and I all I wanted to do was lean over a kiss him. LOL Obviously, I didn’t do that or I wouldn’t be blogging about it now.

5. gannon on 23 Aug 2007 at 7:18 am #

   Actually, my high school crush, the one who was “friends” with me in high school–well, there was a kiss or two in there!–is now my husband!! His story is that he didn’t want to get involved in high school because he knew he was going off to the Naval Academy…blah, blah, blah! I was two years younger, and in major crush mode. Who cared if he was going away to school, I was interested in the here and now!

   Anyhoo, long story short, we dated other people, and during my sophomore year in college we ran into each other during Christmas break–started dating and we were married right after I graduated from college. Nineteen years later, we’re still going strong! I always tell him it took him awhile to see the light and realized that I was “the one”!

6. cail on 23 Aug 2007 at 7:32 am #

   oh gannon, you’re so lucky.

   i’ve got one of those from college. we were ‘friend’ but i was totally crushing on him. eventually i told him i had feelings for him, and although i had dropped big hints for years, he had no idea and it had never crossed his mind.

   a while later he showed up at a party my friends were having with his new girlfriend. she wasn’t cute, and he had gained weight and started to bald. made me feel much better.

7. gannon on 23 Aug 2007 at 7:38 am #

   “a while later he showed up at a party my friends were having with his new girlfriend. she wasn’t cute, and he had gained weight and started to bald. made me feel much better.”

   Cail, that would make fell better, too!

8. gannon on 23 Aug 2007 at 7:39 am #

   Hello, feel, not fell! Need more coffee, obviously!

9. Caren Crane on 23 Aug 2007 at 8:31 am #

   A resounding “yes”! But my big high school crush was not a friend. He was this very smart uber-jock who played football, did field events during track and wrestled. Ended up getting a football scholarship somewhere in the Midwest. He was very quiet, which made him mysterious, and he had dark hair and eyes, which was rather unusual where I grew up. Fact of the matter is, he probably was quiet because he had nothing interesting to say. More than likely, he got fat as he got older.

   I was two years younger, not athletic, not a cheerleader or mat girl (wrestling cheerleader). I was, in short, nobody in high school. I was first violin in the strings ensemble and a member of the Latin Club and Quiz Team, for Pete’s sake! Beyond nobody. *g*

   I would love to have the limo moment in front of *that* guy!

10. Lisa H on 23 Aug 2007 at 8:36 am #

    I must definitely say YES! So many of my old boyfriends tried to reconcile after we had broken up and I would love them to really kick themselves for dumping me.

    But there is one in particular who was always very kind, who in a teenage hormonal induced insanity period I broke up with. I have heard from friends he still carries a torch and I might carry little one myself, but I would love for him to see me at my best, not to gloat, just to make my best impression.

    Of course if I ever ran into Johnny Depp, I would want him to see all the benefits a woman who weighs over 120lbs can offer him!

11. Karen Hawkins on 23 Aug 2007 at 9:06 am #

    Ohhh, the Friend Who Did Not Know is a very special limbo-hell for those of us who suffered from that particular situation. You WANT to say something, but then worry about losing the friendship. Very tricky!

    I would LOVE the slo-mo moment at my high school reunion. I wonder if we’ll ever have one? Though I wouldn’t mind having one in front of Johnny Depp or Hugh Jackman or oh, any number of hunky guys! I wanna be the It Girl just once!

12. Karen Rose on 23 Aug 2007 at 9:09 am #

    I had a couple of major crushes in high school before I met DH. I did meet up with one of my first high school boyfriend a few years later, when I was in college. He’d been a shallow, troubled man who only wanted to date “cute chicks.” (Which, after I heard him say this, made me decide that although very cute himself, was not worth the investment of my time.) Anyway, when I met up with him a few years later, he’d married a woman that was very sweet, but not a “cute chick.” He’d finally grown up and she was very good for him. She and I became friends and I never told her that I’d briefly dated her husband when he was a shallow jerk.

13. Karen Rose on 23 Aug 2007 at 9:14 am #

    KarenH - I was the Friend Who Did Not Know for one of my guy-friends in HS. This is actually an interesting story and I developed it into a plot for a novella I wrote for my book HOT PURSUIT (12/04). This guy (not a shallow jerk) I’ll call “M.” M and I were great friends and in the same Spanish class. We had life altering conversations on politics, religion and love. Many times we’d argue and I’d stand on a chair to get in his face. He was 6′4″ and I am 5′0″, LOL.

    Anyway, fast forward a lot of years. I was with DH cleaning out our storage locker and found my old HS yearbook and there was a letter from M inside! A letter I’d never seen. My first love letter, dang it, and I never saw it! He’d written it in the 11th grade and put it in my yearbook. It basically said, “I think we have something special” and “I love you” etc.

    I never saw it, so I never said a word. M dropped Spanish first week of the 12th grade and took trombone or something. I never knew why. (cont)

14. Karen Rose on 23 Aug 2007 at 9:15 am #

    I never knew why until I read the letter. I feel so bad! I felt like a total jerk-wad. But I truthfully had no idea. If I saw him at reunion, I have no idea what I’d even say.

    Of course in my novella, it all turns out happily.

    In my own life, I met DH halfway through 12th grade and lived HEA

    I hope M did too.

15. Ronlyn on 23 Aug 2007 at 10:00 am #

    I can’t think of anyone from highschool that I would want to impress if I saw them today. I have had a couple random encounters when back visiting my parents where I’ve run into someone and I guess I did impress them enough to chase me down. (I had a bit of the absent-minded brainiac thing going on in school, and am a bit more pulled together now.) Once I was at a gas-station and ran inside to get a soda or something. As I was leaving this man was coming in. I honestly didn’t even look at him…until I got into my car and was starting to leave and he came flying out of the station waving his arms for me to stop. LOL. Gotta admit, that felt good. Especially since I didn’t even recognize him at first.
    Another feel good (sort of) moment came just last year. My DH asked me if I knew a guy who had just transfered to the area, who happened to be from my hometown. I have a highschool girlfriend who lives here so she and I dug out a yearbook and found the guys name.

16. Ronlyn on 23 Aug 2007 at 10:02 am #

    cont….
    once we saw him we remembered him. Anyway, he apparently told my DH that he’d had a crush on me in highschool but never approached me.
    ummm, ok. I saw him later at a company BBQ and he made a comment about how I was even more “beautiful” now. (enter inner dialogue *snort*) I really had no idea what to say to him, so I re-introduced him to my husband. LOL.

17. zambonigirl (zambi) on 23 Aug 2007 at 10:30 am #

    I was a late bloomer in that respect. No guys really caught my interest. I was in the band, I went to the football games and had my friends. It was a miserable time for me, but I mostly would just rather never see anyone from there ever again.

18. Claudia Dain on 23 Aug 2007 at 10:30 am #

    There was a guy in my high school who was cute, but not my type, plus I was dating someone else at the time. Anyway, the gossip was that he liked me. Nothing at all came of it. I think this was in the 10th grade. By 12th grade, oh yeah, he was adorable! He was dating someone, I was dating someone…and, honestly, still not my type.

    Fast forward…he married his high school sweetheart and was elected state senator…and got divorced.

    If he decided to fall down flat in a fit of longing, slipping on his drool, watching me climb out of the limo, I wouldn’t mind!

19. twolilhahas on 23 Aug 2007 at 10:48 am #

    I love all these stories. Especially the happy ones! I married my high school sweetheart, too….he’s now my ex-husband. Sadly, nothing I could ever do was good enough for him, but being young and in love, I didn’t realize it for a long time. He’s impossible to please. We’re divorced now and I’m still tongue-tied and self-conscious around him…I’d love for him to be standing by when I stepped out of the limo…preferably with loads of money and a really hot stud-muffin on my arm. lol Ok, I guess that takes the sweet out of it…and makes it straight vengeance. Oh well. He’d still find something wrong with my dress or weight or car or something. That’s just how he is.

    Karen Rose…I love your story! Makes me want to go check my yearbooks! lol

    There was a really hot guy in high school that all the girls had major crushes on. He never had a girlfriend though…not during HS. Which was nice for us dreamers. lol I hear he’s balding now. haha

20. Suzanne Enoch on 23 Aug 2007 at 11:11 am #

    I actually did have one of those moments. Well, kind of. No limo. I was working at the Mercedes dealership, and had just had my fifth book published. The showroom had a high ceiling, and we’d called to have a lift delivered so the janitor could change the lightbulbs up there. So the delivery guy comes upstairs to have the gm (my boss) sign his p.o., and it’s a guy I used to have a crush on in high school. We’ll call him “K”. He recognized me, though he was from the “soc” group, and I was one of the nerdy “brains”. I SO wanted to laugh when he said, “hey, I thought you were always going to be an author”, and I said “I am one.” Heh heh. The only thing better would have been if I’d been writing full time and he’d come to change my lightbulbs. *g*

21. dbrown3400 on 23 Aug 2007 at 11:37 am #

    I was always a good “listening post” in high school, esp. for two of my best friends and study partners, shall we call them Mike and Mark? They would answer, too. We would study calculus before a big test and I also babysat Mark’s little sister. Mike was the 6′ 2″ blonde, blue-eyed jock, but a really nice guy and Mark became a heart specialist just like his dad.

    I had a steady boyfriend that they both knew and thought was a snob, which he was, and I helped them with their gf problems. It was a great friendship but I always had that little thought niggling in the back of my mind — what if I were a “girl” friend instead.

    But things have a way of working out. My now-ex, five year-old Meredith, eight month-old Jessica and I went to my ten year high school reunion in high fashion. A style the poor kid from Tulsa never thought she would achieve.

22. dbrown3400 on 23 Aug 2007 at 11:42 am #

    Mike wasn’t there but Mark gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and I knew then we got more from our friendship than we would have from a boy-girl relationship. Especially after I introduced him to my family and he said, “You did good, Chief.”

    Chief db

23. dbrown3400 on 23 Aug 2007 at 11:44 am #

    Suzanne, that’s a great story. But, we had “soc brains” at our school. I know first hand.

    db

24. dbrown3400 on 23 Aug 2007 at 11:44 am #

    *g*

25. Karen Hawkins on 23 Aug 2007 at 1:03 pm #

    Wow. These are INCREDIBLE stories.

    It’s so cool, too, when you get to prove yourself. Ronlyn, I laughed so hard when you added, “so I re-introduced him to my husband.” VERY slick!

    zamboni, my daughter didn’t meet anyone she wanted to date until she was ready to graduate, so most of her ‘wish it was different moments’ are about college and her friends/acquaintances there. She says the same thing — she took the friends she liked with her to college, and has no use for the others. No reunions for her!

    Karen Rose, that’s so wonderful you could use the story in one of your books. (Btw, I’m looking forward to getting DIE FOR ME next Tues!) That’s so bittersweet.

    Suzanne E, maybe you should call his company and have them change the bulbs in your Star Wars Room. Then he could see you at home, working, typing, and generally being writerly.

    Chief db, glad you got to meet up again with your old friends — well, one of them, anyway!

26. Nicole Jordan on 23 Aug 2007 at 1:17 pm #

    Oh, gosh, there are tons of people I would love to have glamorous limo moment with, lol! Actually more girls than guys. I remember this one particular witch in 8th grade… Does that make me a bad person?

27. Karen Hawkins on 23 Aug 2007 at 1:24 pm #

    Lol! NO, Nicole, that does NOT make you a bad person. It makes you delightfully human. We all want to show Those Who Scoffed how very wrong they were. Take THAT, witches of the world!

28. Ellen on 23 Aug 2007 at 1:39 pm #

    Gee Karen…The revelation for me, is that the only people I want to watch me climb from the Limo (like Ms. Hawkins / NOT Ms. Spears) are those mean girls from high school. You know the one’s I’m talking about; they would admire your new blouse and then bat their eyes innocently when they said, “But didn’t it come in a better color than that!”

    Furthermore, they were the ones who would show fake sympathy over my bubble butt (Twiggy Era / pre JLo, of course) when we would get ready for gym. They would also tell me to wear nude lipstick, “because my full lips looked a bit ethnic.”

    However, under the category of What Goes Around…I saw two of these girls in the city. One of them had an ass the size of a minivan, and the other had injected so much fat into her parakeet lips, she looked like Edward G. Robinson.

    Mwwaaahhaaahaaaha

29. Sabrina Jeffries on 23 Aug 2007 at 2:46 pm #

    I just want to know what HAPPENED to the guys I dated in high school. Since I went to school overseas, I immediately lost touch of the people I went to school with, unless they were fellow missionary’s kids (none of whom I had a crush on). I dated this one guy who was a genius and well-built and played the clarinet and sang, too. Multi-talented. I’d love to know what happened to him and to the sweet photographer I dated my freshman year, but I’ve never managed to turn them up in any google searches. I just want to know what happened to them.

    Same thing with a lot of my girlfriends from high school. One of them I THINK became a concert violinist, but I can’t be sure.

    The limo moment is not really going to work for me, though. I’ve gained a LOT of weight since high school, so that proud moment wouldn’t exactly go off. *G*

30. Ellen on 23 Aug 2007 at 3:46 pm #

    Embrace those well deserved curves, Sabrina! You look Fabulous! (Just make sure it’s a stretch limo.)
    lol
    E

31. Ann in IL on 23 Aug 2007 at 5:34 pm #

    Me too, me too…………..I’d have to do the limo thing three times or try to get three “better than me” people in one place.

    An old boyfriend who called after twenty five years to ask why I had not married yet and wanted to know if I had gotten fat and ugly. Ummm I don’t think so………..

    An old boyfriend who made me think we were looking at diamonds and house plans (which I bought) for US, but dumped me and married someone else……….on the day we picked out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    A highschool girlfriend who became too good for the rest of us after she graduated from Law School.

    Oh yeah, count me in. I’m so ready.

32. Karen Hawkins on 23 Aug 2007 at 5:54 pm #

    Ellen, I’m with you on the Mean Girls. They deserve to be showed up. High school really can be a mean place. My son was telling me some of his every day challenges the other day and all I could think was, “I’m so GLAD that’s not me any more!”

    And Sabrina, notice I said the ’slo-mo and gorgeous in a limo’ … I would have to lose some weight before I did the limo trick myself! Even a stretch limo!

    And Ann, I can’t believe your #2! He married someone on the same day you two had picked out? That man deserves to see you coming out of a limo looking fabulous and THEN he deserves for the limo to back up over him oh, three or nineteen times.

    Sheesh!

33. twolilhahas on 23 Aug 2007 at 7:01 pm #

    OMG Ann! Those are terrible stories! You deserve a limo moment for those. I’m with Karen. Send that limo to back over #2, but don’t miss #1 too!

34. Ann in IL on 23 Aug 2007 at 7:30 pm #

    Yeah………..I sure can pick’em.

    No wonder I’m still single at 54. But I think I made the right choices.

35. Kelly Ann on 23 Aug 2007 at 7:54 pm #

    I had a huge crush on A*** from 4th grade through 12th. When we were in 5th grade he did go boating & snorkeling with my family & I to an island about an hour boat ride from our home. He was a football player, smart & hunky! He was always nice to me, but we were never more than friends. I thought when we graduated he would go to College and marry some ditz but he ended up working in the local hardware store, unmarried. I haven’t heard anything about in him in the last few years, but I was very disappointed that he didn’t turn out to be all I wanted him to be. I would love to be rich and slender & beautiful getting out of that limo - eat your heart out! And My arch nemesis - Stacy; she was evil & made my life hell from 3rd grade on, I would hope she was there too! Maybe as my limo was pulling up it would hit a big mud puddle and splash her!

36. Santa on 23 Aug 2007 at 9:48 pm #

    Both my junior high and high school crushes who didn’t know I was alive despite receiving love notes from me in 5 languages are fat and bald. My DH whose eye I caught the first week at college has a full thick head of salt and pepper hair.

    Not that I’m bitter or anything. I’m just sayin’.

37. FreshEChelle on 23 Aug 2007 at 10:05 pm #

    So many great stories, so many painful stories. The dreamboat I pined for knew I was alive, he just wasn’t that excited about the fact. The guy who I thought was a really nice guy who would always be a really nice guy is still a really nice guy. We recently reconnected at our reunion (not romantically). It was great to catch up with him. He said some things that really elevated my self esteem and he still does - a group of us get together sometimes. Sadly, for me anyway, I must say his girlfriend is really nice too. Did I mention she looks like me? And he that he told me that before I met her? Anyhoo…….Karen thanks for the shout out and the fun topic.

38. J Perry Stone on 24 Aug 2007 at 8:00 am #

    If I tell you about that boy who kissed me when I was almost 14, then called me up the morning after to say it was the biggest mistake of his life and how I suffered for three years after that and didn’t allow myself to openly like anyone in HS, much less date … then I might just get mad again.

    So yes please … send the limo over here … and some fake boobs, a hairdresser, some restylene injections, some hot clothes and I’m good to go.

39. Karen Hawkins on 24 Aug 2007 at 8:52 am #

    Ann, there’s nothing wrong with being single, especially when you consider you might have accidentally ended up with one of those jerks! The single friends I know have are accomplished and happy and have a ton of friends, but prefer to live alone.

    Santa, ah yes! The best revenge is to Live Well. Think about that the next time you run your fingers through your dh’s thick hair!

    FreshEchelle, thanks for letting me use your thought as a springboard! There are some AWESOME stories on here, both good and bad. It’s cool about your might have been guy — and that he married someone who looks like you! Wow!

    J Perry, I’ve seen you. You don’t need any of those things. You’re beautiful. All you need is a limo.