What Are The Odds?

Teenage boys are idiots.

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I speak on authority as a former teenager myself. And as the father of two future teenage boys, I shudder at what their unformed prefrontal cortexes will be capable of.?

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And it’s this teenage male stupidity that set me on a course I could have never imagined, and led to a reunion I hoped would never come.

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Back when I was a junior in high school, my confidence was quite low. In myself. In my athletics. And with the ladies. Which is why it was so out of character for me to work up the nerve to ask out Andrea (name changed) out to Winter Formal. I thought she was cute. I didn’t know her well, but I didn’t have a date so there was nothing to lose. To my surprise, she agreed.

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I wasn’t prepared for her to say yes, but once my shock wore off, I suggested we exchange phone numbers to coordinate our plans for the dance, and to maybe go out once or twice before the formal event. This was right before winter break, so I had a couple weeks to connect and meet up with her while school was out.

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Despite my optimism, she never picked up the phone over the first week of break. And, looking back, I left way too long and uncomfortable voice mails that probably made her shy (or run) away. While I thought this had inspired her to avoid me, I would learn (much later) the likely reason.?

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One school free winter break day, I was coming home from a round of golf with my pops when we stopped at the mailbox and he had me reach in to get the mail. There was a large package addressed to yours truly “from Andrea.”?

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“Well, open it up! Isn’t that the girl you are taking to the dance?” my dad asked.

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Without waiting to get out of the car or inside the house, I eagerly opened the package. Its contents led me to one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life. Staring at me, and my dad, were two or three 10 year old…Playboy magazines.?

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“She seems, um, interesting.” My dad chimed in.

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I somehow didn’t think too much of the “package” and went about the rest of my winter break. Still with no response from Andrea. Once school was back in session, she didn’t seem like talking to me much, which was odd for someone who had agreed to go to a dance with me. The night of the Formal was not much different. We went out as a group, she barely spoke to me, and by the end of the night my tiny shreds of confidence had been shattered, and I was left wondering as often happens with the dance of courtship:

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“What did I do wrong?”

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For the sake of brevity, I’ll save the details of the next few months, but it involved a deepening level of depression, a total loss of control on the pitcher’s mound, and a lost baseball season that had me pining to leave my environment. Fortune would send a recruiter (non athletic) from the University of South Carolina to Tucson, and eventually lead me to 6 years in Columbia.?

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On one of my winter breaks, I was playing poker with my high school buddies when the subject of Andrea and the great package came up. I reiterated how puzzling it was to get one from her, and even more puzzling why she was so cold to me. That’s when one of my knucklehead friends piped up:

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“It was probably because she got the same package ‘from you”

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There was no poker face that night. My jaw was on the table. It turns out my friends were all in on this prank. I explained to them the dark road it led me down, and how it destroyed my confidence with girls for years. I pleaded with them to tell me why they had done it.

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“We, um, were bored and, um, thought it would be funny.”

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Oh well, dumb males being dumb. End of story, right? This was a few years after the incident, and at this point, my options were to move on or reach out to Andrea to set the story straight.?

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I chose to move on. But fate had other ideas.

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Because nearly 20 years after the great Playboy swap of 2003, I was picking my son up from his new daycare. And wouldn’t you know who was walking out with her son?

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Andrea.

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Tucson, for a decently sized city, is very, very small.

That night at home, I could hardly get the words out to my wife, explaining that “The girl from high school. From formal. The pornos. Her son’s in Jake’s class!”

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There was no more hiding it. But when is a good time to bring up such an awkward incident, especially at a place for children?!

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What did I do? I did what any self respecting man would do.

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“Cassie, you have GOT to talk to her about it!”

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I’d let my wife do the work. But daycare is an awkward place to have such X-Rated conversations, and parents are often in a hurry. While I had reintroduced myself and she had remembered me, but not remembered that (or at least brought it up), the timing never worked out to let the truth be known.

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That was, until a few weeks ago. I was traveling for business when I got a text from my wife at 8:32 AM, just before boarding my flight:

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“Andrea knows the truth!”

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I immediately called and got the debrief, and as things generally go, the monster in my head was worse than reality. She had “blocked” that memory out, but did recall when Cassie brought it up. She then said how “I knew it couldn’t have been Cory.”?

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The next week, I got to speak to her in person, and also apologized for the deed that…I didn’t even do. Again, she said it was no big deal.

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But for me, it was a big deal. It was a life changing event that I had no idea about, nor control over. And I think it is a great lesson for all of us.

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No, not that leaving illicit material in your date’s mailbox is a good idea.?

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But so much of fate is out of our hands, everything that happens to us will ripple through life when we least expect it.

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Oh, and young boys are morons. Unthinking, non-consequence caring morons.?

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