If you have been listening to Jim Rome for the past week, you know that he has become TOTALLY obsessed with guys by the name of Rex. For each of the last 5 broadcast days, he has had on someone named Rex. Today it wasn't even someone related to sports. It was Rex Lee, the actor from Entourage. In keeping with Rome's Rex week, I am reposting the following blog post from the old MySpace blog. I wrote it a couple of Valentine's Days ago. I am also considering resurrecting the "Bad Crushes and the Horrible Reasons I Had Them" series on The Make-Ready. God knows that I have about 300 crushes left from which to draw. Anyhoo. Enjoy this jog down memory lane.
In Honor of Valentine's Day's Approach
In Honor of Valentine's Day's Approach
Bad Crush #2
Ok, I feel a little guilty calling this a "bad crush" because it was actually a fairly good one. But . . . well, it does have an element of the ridiculous to it. Wait. For. It.
SO, my parent's moved into their last home the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. It was a weird move, because they did it while I was at camp (busy being a CIT, or counselor-in-training for those of you who are not initiated into mysteries of summer camp). I left, and we were in the house I grew up in, and I came back, and we were in this new house. I HATED it. I won't get into all the reasons why, but one of them had to do with the fact that it was the middle of summer (bad to begin with) and the house didn't have any window coverings, and was A LOT brighter than the house I grew up in. All the light was making me cranky, and I missed MY house. On top of all of that, my best friend had moved to Norway about six months prior, and I missed her awfully, and she was miserable as well, which I knew because of the 2-3 letters PER DAY I received all that summer.
The move had one silver lining though, which I found out about a few days after I got back from camp. Our builder had hired a college-aged handyman, and he was over at our house several hours a day, working on finish work (a deck in the back, landscaping, adjusting doors. He was very handy.) On top of being handy he was HOT, and in his early twenties. And I was a bored sixteen-year-old. I was in heaven. He did a lot of working outside with his shirt off (and, I don't need to tell you, dear reader, that he had a great chest, and a great tan, and bleached out hair) and I did a lot of taking him glasses of lemonade. It was all very 90210 (you know, when Kelly had a thing with Jake, before they spun him off onto Melrose?!).
If all this was not enough to send me into hormonal overload, he did the cutest thing ever, and it sealed the crush deal. See, we had moved into a new housing development, and we were in one of the first houses finished and occupied. So the area around us was leveled, but not really developed. A stray dog showed up one day. My mom got worried about it and started making sure that he had food and water. He was a mutt, but very sweet. My parents, of course, were not going to take it in (we have a family aversion to pets), but my mom was somewhat worried about what was going to happen to him. The handyman was VERY sweet to the dog, and it began to follow him around all day. In the afternoons, the handyman would take a break for lunch, and the dog would curl up next to him. Before long it became pretty obvious that he was going to have to take the dog. OK, so I'll admit that I'm not a huge animal lover, but I did think that it was adorable that the handyman felt responsible and nurturing toward this dog. I remember the day that he finally decided to take it home with him. I have this image of the handyman's truck driving away, the dog happily riding in the bed. He looked like he couldn't believe his luck.
The handyman finished the work on my house, which was sad. Then summer ended, and he finished working for our builder, and that was sadder. (Yes, I did just say "sadder"--get off my back, grammar police!) He went back to college, I went back to finish my senior year of high school.
Sigh.
So I know what you are thinking. Nothing THAT ridiculous about the story. But I have been keeping for you, reader, the detail that does make this crush silly and embarrassing in retrospect. The handyman's name?
Rex.
I kid you not.
Ok, I feel a little guilty calling this a "bad crush" because it was actually a fairly good one. But . . . well, it does have an element of the ridiculous to it. Wait. For. It.
SO, my parent's moved into their last home the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. It was a weird move, because they did it while I was at camp (busy being a CIT, or counselor-in-training for those of you who are not initiated into mysteries of summer camp). I left, and we were in the house I grew up in, and I came back, and we were in this new house. I HATED it. I won't get into all the reasons why, but one of them had to do with the fact that it was the middle of summer (bad to begin with) and the house didn't have any window coverings, and was A LOT brighter than the house I grew up in. All the light was making me cranky, and I missed MY house. On top of all of that, my best friend had moved to Norway about six months prior, and I missed her awfully, and she was miserable as well, which I knew because of the 2-3 letters PER DAY I received all that summer.
The move had one silver lining though, which I found out about a few days after I got back from camp. Our builder had hired a college-aged handyman, and he was over at our house several hours a day, working on finish work (a deck in the back, landscaping, adjusting doors. He was very handy.) On top of being handy he was HOT, and in his early twenties. And I was a bored sixteen-year-old. I was in heaven. He did a lot of working outside with his shirt off (and, I don't need to tell you, dear reader, that he had a great chest, and a great tan, and bleached out hair) and I did a lot of taking him glasses of lemonade. It was all very 90210 (you know, when Kelly had a thing with Jake, before they spun him off onto Melrose?!).
If all this was not enough to send me into hormonal overload, he did the cutest thing ever, and it sealed the crush deal. See, we had moved into a new housing development, and we were in one of the first houses finished and occupied. So the area around us was leveled, but not really developed. A stray dog showed up one day. My mom got worried about it and started making sure that he had food and water. He was a mutt, but very sweet. My parents, of course, were not going to take it in (we have a family aversion to pets), but my mom was somewhat worried about what was going to happen to him. The handyman was VERY sweet to the dog, and it began to follow him around all day. In the afternoons, the handyman would take a break for lunch, and the dog would curl up next to him. Before long it became pretty obvious that he was going to have to take the dog. OK, so I'll admit that I'm not a huge animal lover, but I did think that it was adorable that the handyman felt responsible and nurturing toward this dog. I remember the day that he finally decided to take it home with him. I have this image of the handyman's truck driving away, the dog happily riding in the bed. He looked like he couldn't believe his luck.
The handyman finished the work on my house, which was sad. Then summer ended, and he finished working for our builder, and that was sadder. (Yes, I did just say "sadder"--get off my back, grammar police!) He went back to college, I went back to finish my senior year of high school.
Sigh.
So I know what you are thinking. Nothing THAT ridiculous about the story. But I have been keeping for you, reader, the detail that does make this crush silly and embarrassing in retrospect. The handyman's name?
Rex.
I kid you not.
