How I met Gareth

How I met Gareth

The road to Gareth is a long and convoluted one that starts out nowhere near the person in question and makes you wonder how the heck are you even going to get to him, because you probably need to borrow money from him and he’s the only one responsible/shady enough to have huge wads of cash on hand.

That sentence sort of got away from me there…..let’s try again.

As I may have mentioned before, Gareth is my roommate. He is also my very best friend, which is why we can stand living together without resorting to murder and cannibalism.

Or to feeding each other to Larry.

Looking back, I realize that I met Gareth because of three totally unrelated facts about my life as a sixth grader.

• 1.     My Music teacher was a prick

• 2.     My middle school had no drama class/club, and

• 3.     I had trouble with math.

Stay with me, this is going somewhere.

Well, with my math grade in jeopardy, perhaps from lack of a creative outlet due to my dropping out of Chorus because of said prick teacher and having no drama class to enroll in, my mother sought out a math tutor for me. I didn’t resent it; in fact, I rather liked going to see her after school once or twice a week. She was a nice lady, and teachers have usually ways liked me.

So the two of us got on fine, and one day I mentioned to my math teacher how I loved to sing and act, but could do neither because one road led to prick-y-ness and the other was a depressing dead-pool of lies and nothingness.

Thanks a lot public school budget cuts

I don’t remember why I told my math tutor those things. They seem very unrelated to math and math-like accessories. I realize now that she was not unlike a helpful NPC, directing my life in a preferable, if a bit random, direction.

Not that kind of NPC. The other kind

Anyways, she told me about Instantaneous Theater, which lead to five years of mind-exploding fun and hilarity. It was one of the few things that I allowed to influence me while in mid-teenage mode. Until very recently, all of my friends were people I had met via IT and I now have an incurable love of show-tunes.

This may or may not be a good thing

But anyways, we were talking about Gareth. Gareth did not actually participate in IT at the time, it was his brother who did. However, Gareth would sometimes come and operate the stage lights for the performances, so I sort of vaguely knew him by sight.

Three years passed with this being the extent of our relationship.

Then high school came. I wasn’t feeling overly confident about going to high school. From everything I had heard, it sounded terrible. That, and according to my older brother, they flicked pennies at freshmen and I did not want to be flicked with pennies. I don’t know why pennies seemed so terrifying at the time. They just did.

Because Abraham Lincoln is the stuff of nightmares. That’s why.

Then Xande, the director of IT, suggested a charter school that her kids had gone to. A charter school is like a regular school, except you get to sleep in as long as you like, go to class in your pajamas every day, get to choose between onsite classes, homeschooling, or taking class at the local college. The onsite classes rarely have more than six students at a time. So when I say they are like regular schools, I actually mean they are nothing like regular schools.

And it just so happened that Gareth and I ended up going to the same charter school. Even then, we may have never truly met had it not been for the fact that my onsite Spanish class took place right before his onsite Physical Science class. I mean, I didn’t even know anyone in my graduating class; this school was not made for the social butterflies of the world. But we sort of knew each other from IT, and there was a twenty second period between classes where I was coming and he was going. So what did we do? Strike up a conversation? Nod politely and mumble something that sort of resembled pleasantries? No.

We meowed at each other.

Pictured: Gareth and I, age 12 and 15

We spent an entire semester meowing at each other in passing. Here is how a typical conversation went.

Me: Meow

Gareth: (thoughtful look) Meow

Me: Mrow?

Gareth: Meow (decisive nod)

Nary an actual human word exchanged. It seemed that we were both just too weird for fate to bring us together in a decisive fashion.

Screw you, Fate, we’re going to make this as difficult as possible

Finally, finally, October came, and our mutual friend BT invited me to come to a re-enactment fair with her. She was selling some crafts that she had made and was piggy-backing off of the booth owned by …wait for it… Gareth’s family.

Gareth and I were the only ones who had nothing to do at the fair other than hang out with each other. And so we did. Having fun, we decided that we should hang out more. Because we are both lazy sods, nothing came of this. 

At this point, I would like to point out that BT must have been channeling a very annoyed and impatient goddess of fate, because she insisted on inviting me to the next event that Gareth would be attending, her Halloween party.

BT’s Halloween parties are an annual occurrence that include a game of capture the flag in the fields near her house.

At night. 

With only glow-sticks to see by.

After a lot of stumbling around in the dark, getting lost, tripping over various bushes and hoping that I wasn’t about to be attacked by a rabid fox and/or a skunk, Gareth and I found each other squatting in the same patch of grass, guarding our precious flag.

“…….”

“So…..”

“Wanna hang out sometime, then?”

We acceded to fate and arranged a “playdate” Though I suppose “get together” would be a less immature way to put it, but that sounds stupid. “Slumber party” would be closer to the truth, but it wasn’t a party. Whatever, I’m gonna go with playdate, even if it makes us sound like preschoolers.

Somewhere between the bad horror movies, cookie dough, chocolate, and staying up until two in the morning writing  bad comedy skits, we became friends.

I’m gonna go ahead and blame the bad horror movies for this one

So that is the long, convoluted story of how I met Gareth…. And Je-sus, it’s five pages long…..and that’s with a lot of the details skipped over or summarized…..and without adding any of the pictures yet. Damn…er…

Have some hedgehogs to make up for the long post

....I don't want to talk about it

So it’s come to this.

I am going to complain about Twilight.

I feel so dirty.

It took a sudden epiphany to sink this low. I didn’t really love/hate the book as much as the internet seems to think I should. It was good for what it was, which was a dime store romance novel that got a little too big for its boots. I happen to like certain romance novels when I’m in the right mood, so whatever. It was a good junk food read.

Now, If I were Gareth, I would spend the next few pages ranting about how people blow the whole thing out of proportion and that there are more important things to argue about than whether or not a mediocre vampire story sucked or not. I’m not going to do that, and not just because of the pun.

I’m not even going to complain about the little things that were annoying about the books, like the unhealthy relationships, or the fact that Bella choose the asshole instead of the sungod, or even the fact that her favorite book was Withering Heights, a story that I can’t stand.

This is what they make you read in Hell

I can live with all that. That’s all part of the story. Edward sparkles? Fine, sure. It’s different and creative way to explain the sun aversion.

No, what finally prompted me to start complaining was the sudden realization (yes, the definition of epiphany, which everyone knows now because the Simpsons ruined it for us smart people) of exactly why I didn’t care much for the series.

Bella never faces the consequences for her actions. There, simple as that. Think about the final book for a moment. First the big one: She gets pregnant. She gets pregnant and only spends about three days throwing up, a phenomenon that usually lasts weeks, sometimes months. Heck, Gareth’s mom had morning sickness up until she went into labor with him. Then, because Edward’s maaaahgic, what normally takes almost a year happens in a month; so no walking around feeling like a blimp, no embarrassing mornings where you look fat in everything, no maternity tops in public, and no swollen feet. She didn’t even get any stretch marks or varicose veins as far as I can tell. 

Bella got to spend a month in bed and had a few weird cravings and then she was done. Do you know how many pregnant women would kill a puppy for that?

So she had a rough birth, boo hoo. Gareth’s mom had two C-sections, both with insufficient anesthesia and both while suffering with fibromyalgia. Suck it up, Bella.

….I’m using Gareth’s Mom as an anti-MarySue, aren’t I? Sorry Gareth’s Mom.

Anyways, so the baby is born. Honestly, this is what I was expecting.

And wouldn’t that have been a great ending? Stephanie Meyer didn’t give a damn, she was already a millionaire. That would have been a hilarious little twist. But alas, it was not to be.

Right, so, baby. It’s a baby for, like, what, a week? Because it’s maaaahgic. And Bella sleeps through it. So, no dirty diapers, no colic, no baby barf, she didn’t even have to nurse the little monster. Again, no consequences there.

But she’s a vampire now, right? Awesome as that can be, there are certain repercussions. Like killing humans and never seeing your family again. Except Bella avoids those things, side-stepping them with a grace that the character never had. That intoxicating, impossible-to-resist draw of human blood that the story has been going on and on about? Not for Bella, because she doesn’t want to. And as for her family, her dad conveniently puts on blinders the size of Cincinnati, plugs his ears and sings “LALALALA” at the top of his lungs. So she doesn’t have to lose him.

That just leaves Jacob, who was arguably the best character until he transformed into an angst-ridden loup-garou. Even after that, he was still pretty cool. Bella may have a slave-like husband, an attractive, even-tempered kid, money, looks, immortality, and her parent and in-laws get along, but at least she can have some guilt, right? She broke that kid’s heart; that’s something she has to live with. That’s something we’ve all gone through.

Except no - because Jacob finds his true love and forgives Bella.

And everyone lives happily ever after.

The end.

You know what? Disney should have turned this into one of their cartoons. The story is perfect for their feel-good-no-repercussions little color dramas. And then we wouldn’t have had to see Robert Pattinson's naked chest.

I’m not even going to put a picture of that up. It was that disturbing.

There. I’m done. Let us never speak of this again. I may not even post this, unless I am completely out of material. The internet has enough Twilight rants on it.

Edit: Wow, look at that. Collage classes keep me from writing and this is going up. Please don't hate me.