School's Out 4EVER Blogfest - Manic Panic & Battleship

As part of Sommer Leigh's blogfest, I'm reminiscing about something that happened just after I graduated high school. Check out all the blogs in the blogfest here and add your own high school memories.

We were dyeing my hair green, but Krissy insisted I hadn't bleached my previously black hair enough. I was wearing one of my dad's white undershirts over my regular clothes, a tartan dress with a pleated skirt-awesome thrift store find-fishnets and army boots (Doc Marten's were for wimps, we'd say.)

This was taking place in Liz's house because her parents were out of town and my parents didn't know that. I had my head over a large yellow chip bowl, trying not to drip electric green Manic Panic onto the nice hardwood floor, as Liz and Krissy decided if the color had taken, if my scalp would always be green, and what tattoos they should get.

"Hey guys."

Liz and Krissy turned to greet whoever it was who'd shown up at the door. I tried to crane my neck to the left without causing hair dye catastrophe. Through my drippy algae green hair this is what I saw:

My husband and next to him, his girlfriend clinging like ivy.

I didn't know he'd be my husband. I remember, really clearly, thinking, "Boy. Girl. Together. Weird cardigan" and going back to trying to squeegee the rest of the dye out of my hair. I later found out that my eventual-mother-in-law bought Tim his cardigans at the Gap. Tim didn't much care what he wore, and if she bought those funky, early 90's cardigans that were way too long and baggy for him, he'd put them on.

After Tim and his girlfriend left, we went to the Ramsey diner and ordered cheese fries. The reactions we got from the patrons and the waitress decreed that my hair dye had been a total success.

Tim says he thought of me ever since that first time he saw me. Even though he had a girlfriend, even though my hair was green and slimy.

I didn't really remember him at all. When he showed up a week later to Liz' 90210 party, then when he called me to see if I was going to the next 90210 party (it was an ironic kind of thing, apparently), I didn't think much more than, cool guy. My radar was so set to find the next Nick Cave look alike that wasn't a jerk and an alcoholic (did that already), that I never thought about Tim that way.

But he turned up, again and again. And we'd talk and be silly. He is the kindest, funniest person I know and I somehow got that into my thick, dyed-green skull. A miracle.

Later, Tim asked me out on a date to the IHOP. He brought Battleship and we played after pancakes. He beat me again and again (he still does) and I didn't mind (still don't). When the waitress came over the fourth time to refill our coffee cups, I got up to go to the bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, "Take off the lipstick."

That night we kissed and started dating. We only stopped dating in 2000 when we got married.
October 14, 2011 will be twenty years since that night in IHOP.