"Get Rid of Her"

When I was about fourteen years old, I began dating a girl named Leslie.

Now, Leslie was a nice girl, but, as it turned out, she was looking for something permanent, and I was just interested in being a kid. When she began to talk about "when we are married..", it sort of freaked me out a little bit (..and me just wanting to ride my bicycle, sneak in to the movies, and go to gung fu class! Married?! Me?! What the FUCK is that all about?!! I'm friggin' FOURTEEN!!).

I was a bit of a late bloomer as it was, but this was just too much for my brain to deal with. I wanted to break it off and be done with the whole thing, but had no clue about how these things were done. Being me, I did what, over the years, has become a sort of a hallmark pattern of behaviour for me; I went to the library to see if there were any books on the subject. There was, in fact, a book on relationships which was directed at teenagers!! Perfect!! This was precisely what I needed!! I took the book out and hurried home with it where I proceeded to memorize the paragraph on breaking off a relationship. It said something about getting the other person alone, not doing it over the telephone (which, at the time, to be honest, sounded like a terrific idea...), explaining that it wasn't working out, and that it would be better to see other people, blah-blah-blah... it seemed to make sense, and I thought it would work swimmingly! To my mind, at least at the age that I was at the time, it seemed infallible. How could you find fault with the logic?? It was written by an author for Pete's sake.. how could there be anything wrong with something that was in print?!?!? Right? [Snort!]

I diligently memorized the whole damned thing, word for word, and practiced it in front of the mirror, until I had all of the gestures and inflections exactly right (or at least right as far as I was concerned... (( by the way, if you haven't figured out just how unprepared I was emotionally for any sort of romantic relationship simply by reading these last two paragraphs... go back and read them again! )), and then I screwed up my courage to meet with Leslie and let her know that it was time to move on...

The next time I saw Leslie, I avoided the kiss that she attempted to plant on me when we first met, and explained that I had to talk to her about something.. her reaction sort of caught me off-guard (in retrospect, I wonder if she thought I was going to propose!). I walked with her to a spot where we could have some privacy, and I began to recite my perfectly memorized paragraph on breaking up. I went through the whole schmiel, ending with, "So.. I've made up my mind, and it is time for us both to move on and close this chapter".

I waited for her to explode and begin hitting me or yelling or crying, but that isn't what she did. What she did do was completely unexpected, and caught me utterly off-guard; She simply said "No".

Bear: "Excuse me?"

Leslie: "No."

Bear: "Ahh... No, what, exactly??" (Completely baffled...)



Leslie: "We aren't breaking up."

Bear: (Blank mind... no thoughts... circuits are overloading..) (In a strangled voice -) "We aren't?"

Leslie: "No."

Bear: (Seconds of confused silence (I was completely unprepared for this reaction!... then;) "But.. I just broke up with you.." (Isn't it nice of me to helpfully point this out to her, as though she was ever so slightly mentally addled??)

Leslie: "No. You didn't. You can't break up with me. We'll never break up. You are going to stay with me forever!"

("Come and play with us, Danny... for ever.... and ever.... and ever... and ever!")



Bear: "Um. No! We are broken up, Leslie! I'm not going out with you any more. I want to be a kid! I don't want to get married. I don't want to go steady. I'm only fourteen!"



Leslie: "No."

Bear: (Beginning to think that four out of the five voices in her head may be planning my demise....) "Um... I gotta go..."

Leslie: "Can I have a kiss goodnight?"

Bear: (Dumbfounded) "Did you hear anything that I just said to you??!"

Leslie: "No! Kiss me!"



Bear: (Talk about an ice-water enema!) "..." (Turn on heel... walk away... very fast... holy shit!)

Leslie: (Creepily cheery bright shiny voice...) "I love you!"

Bear: (fuck!)

So... needless to say, this didn't really work the way I had run it through my mind... I avoided Leslie like the plague, particularly after she began to cry hysterically in the hallway in school in front of about 300 people, which made me feel like utter shit, and a complete lowlife, and which also assured me that my decision to break up with her was a well-thought one.

She left me notes. Well... she plastered every surface that I frequented, or was likely to frequent with notes, actually... she left me presents... she called continuously... even after my mom asked her to stop, told her to stop, demanded to stop, freaked out on her and threatened to cut her still beating heart from her chest and eat it in front of her... (okay... I'm lying about that last part... but, my mom did ask her to stop calling after 10:00PM. My mom liked Leslie quite a bit, and I secretly thing that she thought I was a bit of a shit for breaking up with her... they were both insane, and as fellow sufferers of severe mental illness, were able to communicate telepathically and conspire against me... I have no proof of this... but I know they were on the same side.)



So, after months (months!) of this. Months of me avoiding Leslie, or running in to her and feeling incredibly awkward... school finally ended, and the summer began.. blessedly. Leslie quit hanging out in front of my door (She would get up extra early and stand in front of my door so that she would be there when I came out to go to school!), it was all finally done with... or at least it appeared so. As the weeks of early summer wore on, I saw and heard less and less of Leslie.

My mom was at work one day, and my younger brother (I have two.. this one is five years my junior - he was about nine years old at the time - the other one was about a year old, and my mom dropped him at a babysitter on the way to work) and I were home alone. At the time, we were living in a garden apartment, on the upper floor, which was located on a semi-main road. Since it was summertime, and hot, we had the sliding glass door to the balcony open to allow a breeze to cool the apartment down. It was my habit to sit out there and read, or just watch the world go by. I was just about to step out on to the balcony when I saw Leslie peddling like mad on her bicycle, and obviously heading towards my house!!

"ShitFuckBastardCrapBollocksFuckShitFuckFuckFuck!!"

My brother just happened to be sitting right there in one of the arm chairs that was near the sliding glass doors at the time, and I said to him, "Get rid of her and I'll do your chores for a week!"

Brother: "Two weeks!"

Bear: "Deal!"

He shot out of the chair, graceful as a comet, and in a low blur, moving like a gazelle, headed towards the back of the house, where our room was located.

(What the F....?!)

I headed back there to tell him that he would actually have to answer the door.. but as I reached the door to our room, he was headed back up front, and moving fast! Good enough for me!

I was just closing our bedroom door, when I happened to glance at him and noticed the wrist rocket sling dangling from his hand... !!!



Bear Thought: "I wonder what he's going to do with ..... OH SHIT!!"

I bolted down the hallway, through the dining room, and rounded the corner just in time to see him let go with the slingshot... I heard the low 'thunk' of the surgical tubing as it snapped back to its original length, and reached the spot where my brother stood. At this point, I was just about on the verge of a stroke!

... just in time to see Leslie's head snap back, her feet fly up, and to watch her, as though in slow motion, topple off the back of her bicycle, which was moving at perhaps 20 miles per hour... her wooden soled Dr. Scholl's clogs (hers had the white leather uppers) flew in a low arc through the air, and landed on the street beside her scant milliseconds after she hit.. rolling and bouncing along the asphalt. The bicycle, now riderless, continued on for a few yards, before swerving, jumping the curb, and crashing into a fence, where it fell and lay on the ground... wheels slowly spinning...



Bear: (Wide eyed, and able to hear my blood pounding in my ears... absolutely incredulous at what I had just witnessed... though I have to admit it was a singularly perfect shot.. he caught her smack between the eyes... with a small lead fisherman's clincher weight. -- It can't feel that good to get nailed in the cruller with a lead sinker, though... and that was one hell of a fall!!)



"HOLY SHIT!! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO??!! ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE!!! WHY'D YOU DO THAT!?!?"



Brother: "You said if I got rid of her, you would do my chores for...."



BEAR: "ASSHOLE!!! I DIDN'T MEAN THAT YOU SHOULD KILL HER!!! OH, FUCK!..."

Utterly panic-stricken by now, I blasted out the door, down the stairs, out the front door and down the street at a run... I ran to the spot where Leslie was lying in the road, and asked her whether or not she had been killed.

Leslie was crying, and had the beginnings of what I knew would be one hell of a mouse on her forehead. She had road-pizza all over her arms, legs, back, face, head, chest... shit, she was scraped to all hell.. bits of road were embedded in her skin. She had a fat lip from bashing her mouth on something as she fell, and her nose was bleeding. One of her toenails had caught on something, and was sort of hanging off... she was an absolute mess.

I thought I had felt like shit before... Now I REALLY felt like a jackass.

I helped her to her feet, collected her sandals, and took her by the only undamaged part of her arm...

"C'mon inside, Leslie, we'll get you cleaned up..."

Through her tears, she nodded, and limped alongside of me as I guided her into the apartment where I cleaned and dressed her injuries as best as I was able.

When we first entered the apartment, I was just guiding her to a kitchen chair, when my brother rounded the corner, and with the most innocent look on his nine-year-old face, in a tone of utter and complete surprise and concern, said, "Oh! Leslie! What happened??! Are you alright?!!"

I was so taken aback by this hitherto unparalelled level of deceit that I simply gaped at him for a few seconds, with my mouth hanging open... I could not believe what I was hearing from his mouth!! He had just shot her in the head!, and now here he stood expressing his undying concern for her welfare... the duplicitous, wicked wee bastard!!

After we got poor Leslie cleaned up and bandaged, I went outside to retrieve her bicycle. The rim of her front tire was badly bent, and the chain was broken. That bicycle wasn't going anywhere unless it was pushed or loaded onto a vehicle. So it looked like I was spending the day with Leslie. Great plan so far... oh, man.

I called my mom at work to let her know what had happened. (I left out the part about the slingshot. Leslie was under the impression that a passing bus had kicked up a pebble that subsequently struck her in the head, and neither my brother or myself were overly inclined to disabuse her of this belief.. so we more or less just left it at that...). My mom asked to speak to Leslie, who began crying again once she heard an adult's voice on the telephone. My mom understandably felt terrible about what had happened, and invited Leslie to stay for dinner, offering to take her home afterwards. Leslie called her folks, told them what had happened, and explained that she would be staying at my house for the entire day, and then for dinner.

My brother, at this point, pulled me aside and enquired whether I planned on doing any of his chores for his valiant attempt at getting rid of her... at which time I began describing the various tortures that I was conjuring up for him.. and he wisely decided to hightail it out of the house... leaving me completely alone with Leslie.

Sigh. Welcome to Bear's world.

The day pretty much went exactly the way one would think it would go under the circumstances... it utterly sucked for me.

My mom came home, cooked dinner, and for some unfathomable reason, insisted on referring to Leslie and I as "You two lovers". I was secretly planning to do her in at that point... though I never actually acted on any of my plans.

To cap off the day, during dinner, my mom made some quip about me marrying Leslie one day and living happily ever after. This went straight up my ass, as I just knew it was going to completely revive this whole friggin' issue... and I made a smart assed comment back at her. (My mom didn't put up with this type of shit from us, being Scottish, and stern, and authoritative by nature...) She suggested that I recant my statement and treat her with the appropriate level of respect. My countermove was to offer a helpful suggestion to her that she mind her damned business regarding my love-life, or lack thereof, my marital status, who I was seeing, who I no longer wished to see.... and pretty much everything about me that didn't involve my school work or cleaning my room... her calm response was to plant a plate of Beef Stroganoff in my face.



In front of Leslie. Nice!

And so, not for the first time in my life... and certainly not for the last... I heard the resounding 'click' as the wheels of cosmic justice turned another notch and resolved the imbalance of injustice in somebody else's favor...



...obviously, it began to dawn upon me, there are probably better ways of handling these sorts of situations!