“I think you and I used to play soccer together,” I said uncertainly despite being absolutely certain we did.
“Oh really, where?” He inquired with raised brows giving him an inquisitive look.
“We played on the Bruisers soccer team together at the Sports Academy,” I answered and threw out a couple other player’s names that had brought him on board our team.
“Oh man,that was a long time ago,” he responded before adding, “but yeah man, I remember now. Those days were a lot of fun.”
Our conversation moved past soccer to what he was doing in his personal life at the moment and what Melissa and I were doing in ours. After bagging his merchandise and bidding him farewell I turned to my coworkers to share with them the story I am now about to share with all of you.
His comment about those days being a lot of fun left a permanent smile on my face the rest of that afternoon because he had absolutely no idea just how much fun Melissa and I were having during that time – all at his expense!
I captained the best-kept secret in the cutthroat world of indoor soccer, The Bruisers, from January 2006 throughJune 2011 and when I shared this little saga with my coworkers, I found myself unable to pinpoint the exact place in time that it all happened.
Not knowing timelines bothers the Hell out of me, but I knew my historian ways would ensure that once home, I would have all the knowledge I needed. The discovery of a particular mixed cd that played a crucial role in this story gave me the information I sought so dearly.
Like I said in my last post, It’s Britney Bitch, Britney Spears has recorded the soundtrack to my life. The fact that her #1 smash hit, Hold It Against Me, made the track listing of this mixed cd informed me that these events happened near the end of our Bruiser Soccer run. Britney released that single in January 2011 and its placement on this mixed cd gave me the very answer I needed, so as always, thank you Britney. I don’t know where I would be in life without you.
During one of our more aggressively heated games, Melissa and I were both on the field defending our goal from the opposition, but because our opponents were intense, our offense, which at that moment included the boy from my store, were playing defensively alongside us to ensure our goal was well defended.
Everyone on the other team apart from their goalie was down by our goal as well making our half of the field quite crowded. Well, after several failed shots by our opponents, our boy got the ball and made a breakaway for the other teams goal. Melissa, was caught right in the middle of his line of fire causing her to panic without the knowledge of which was he was going to maneuver around her. As he came up on her she screamed in fear of messing him up, but in a move to direct her, he placed his hands on either side of her body and dribbled the ball right around her, leaving Melissa to just stand there in complete awe at what she still refers to as his fearlessness and bravery.
As our offense and our opposition followed him up the field, Melissa and I stood back and watched as he easily scored on the other teams unprotected goalie. In the excitement of his goal Melissa turned to me and said, “He touched my body! Oh my God, Ben! He touched my body! He just touched it without even thinking! HE TOUCHED MY BODY!”
Melissa had thrown her hands up in the air and was repeatedly and rapidly fist pumping the sky while running around in tight little circles all this while wearing a completely elated look across her face. Our teammates all laughed and complimented her on what then became known as her “victory dance,” but they were all clueless about the fact that the victory she was celebrating wasn’t about the soccer game, but the one on one game she convinced herself the two of them were playing.
It became quite clear that in his directorial moment when he placed his palms on each ofMelissa’s hips and instructed her to stay right where she was, he had unknowingly cast himself in a starring role in the motion picture of her dreams.
After that game Melissa became intensely obsessed with our top scorer and talked about him nonstop. She would watch him longingly during all the other games and then spend the hours following them talking about how perfect and wonderful he was. Like so many boys before him, he too could now do no wrong in her eyes.
I always encourage Melissa to pursue her dreams and this time was no exception. I told her repeatedly she should try to court him to which she would scoff off each time. We knew he was single and I told her there was nothing holding her back except herself. If she truly wanted to be with him she should make the first move because he might not even be aware she was interested. Well, Melissa is almost always too scared to do anything first, so I decided to help her along in the best way I know how.
I made a mixed cd for him on her behalf of all songs sung by female artists depicting how this boy made Melissa feel and the relationship she longed to have with him. It turned out phenomenally and seven years later still holds up as a non-stop jam fest.
I rarely do my best work alone, so I incorporated our friend Nicole to help encourage Melissa to take the necessary first step to what could have been a life time together with this boy. So, one spring evening Nicole, Melissa, and I were going to hang out, but I made sure to have Nicole come over before Melissa, so she and I could finalize Melissa’s future. We used Nicole’s extremely girlie handwriting to write the name of our mixed cd on the burned disc, “4 His Ears Only.” Obviously, we used his real name in the title and not ‘His,’ but I am certainly not going to embarrass this poor guy by adding his name to any point in this story. He and I are Facebook friends after all, so there is a real chance he could read this debacle.
Nicole and I were ready by the time Melissa had arrived to my house. Rather than sneaking the cd into his bag atone of our soccer games, we decided we would put it in the mailbox at his house. Melissa had already driven us all by his home on multiple occasions by this point so we were already familiar with the fact his mailbox stood on the street at the end of his driveway and figured it would be quite simple to place the cd inside.
You are probably wondering how we knew where he lived in the first place. Well, regardless of the fact that Melissa andI are expert stalkers, this information came quite easy to obtain.
As the team captain I was required by the Sports Academy to acquire certain information from each player on my team and submit it on our teams registration form. Well, fortunately for Melissa,some of the information necessary to play was the address of each individual player. Melissa and I had known for months where this kid lived and when her love for him reached its boiling point after he touched her body we would drive past his house a couple times a week and Nicole had been with us on a handful of these drive-by’s.
Don’t even act like y’all have never driven by someone’s house before and experienced the rush of what if they see you! Melissa and I have driven past so many people’s houses so many times that I could not even give you an honest guess of how many times we did it. Hell, even now,basically a decade removed from some of those drive-by’s we still do it if we’re in the neighborhood – I mean – sometimes it is a five mile detour to get in that neighborhood, but you get what I’m saying. It’s more for the memories now, but there is always that little rush of what if we’re spotted?
Anyway, y’all got me off track, so after Nicole and I shared this foolproof plan with Melissa she was fully on board. The three of us went to dinner, saw a movie, maybe got ice cream, who even knows really, but it was finally late enough that we were certain everyone would be asleep in this boy’s house. Timing was everything because the last thing we wanted was to get caught. We had never placed something in someone’s mailbox before, so this was a new frontier for us.
Melissa always drove, so the tires of Club Aurora,her Oldsmobile Aurora gently caressed the perfectly smooth roadways of his subdivision as she carefully drove down those deserted streets. As we neared his house we opted to drive past it and circle back around to ensure that the coast was completely clear. As we skulked by his two-story home we saw that like nearly all his neighbors, all the lights were out and assumed this was a safe sign that everyone was in bed. We kept rolling towards the cul-de-sac at the end of his street, but as we circled around it to head back in his home’s direction the unthinkable happened.
SSSCCCCCRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPEEEE!!!
The plastic covering underneath the hood of her car fell down – as it had a frequent tendency to do – and began scraping loudly against the asphalt. This was a nightmare scenario. Melissa panicked and started to drive faster in an attempt to escape his subdivision all together. This only amplified the noise. It echoed throughout the bare streets leaving the three of us mortified that we might end up giving ourselves away. Melissa was having a fit, but Nicole instructed her down another street that would surely end in another cul-de-sac like all the others and there we could get out and hoist the plastic covering back up underneath the hood.
Melissa slowed her roll significantly and with her decreased speed came a decrease in noise. Once she felt we were far enough down this new street that we were safe from her man spotting us, she got out and remedied the situation. I remember when she climbed back in the vehicle she looked all blotchy and sweaty, just a real mess.
“Oh myGod. I’m so nervous. I’m going to be sick. We can’t do this,” she exclaimed frantically as beads of sweat continued trickling down her colorless face.
“You can’t do this? I’m the one who has to put it in the mailbox!” I exclaimed in disbelief. “If anyone is going to be spotted it’s going to be me, not you!”
“Doesn’t matter, I’m too nervous,” Melissa responded breathlessly. “We seriously cannot go back out there past his house. He’ll see us and I’ll die. We’re just gonna have to wait here for like two hours.”
“What the fuck?” Nicole and I replied in unison, looking back at one another in disbelief. Melissa had lost her mind if she thought we were going to awkwardly sit in her car for two hours till she deemed the coast clear.
“Melissa, come on, we came all this way. We can’t turn back now. Trust me, once he gets that cd he is going to be dying to know who left it for him,” Nicole said encouragingly before taking the kill shot. “It’s like you are about to be in the midst of your very own Cinderella Story.”
That was all Melissa needed to hear. She put the car into drive and drove us steadily down the detour street in route back to his road. Once we were a few houses away,she steered the car towards the very side of the street, driving along the curb as if she were the postman. Club Aurora was moving at such a snail pace that it made the atmosphere in the car very,very tense as we crept up on his mailbox.
The time had come. I rolled down my window to place the cd in the mailbox, but I was somehow too far away. I didn’t want to open my door and step out because then I would have to shut it and any noise seemed to be amplified throughout his tree lined neighborhood. I looked back at Melissa, “are you fucking kidding me!?! You drove all those houses right by the curb and somehow for his you veered four feet from it!”
“Oh myGod! What do I do? What do I do?” Melissa was starting to panic again as Nicole watched anxiously from the back seat. This should have been going much easier than it was, but we were all thrown off course by these unexpected happenings.
“Nothing. You do nothing. Just keep this car motionless!” I hissed back as I stretched my torso out the window and towards the mailbox. Thankfully my arms are overly long and I was eventually able to reach out and grab the metal tab on top the box and pull it down towards me opening his empty mailbox. I took the cd and tossed it in, thankfully it landed in the back of the box. Any fears I had of missing the box completely had thankfully become null and void.
“Go! Go! Go!” I said excitedly as I brought my body back inside the car and with that encouragement Melissa took off speeding out of his neighborhood.
“Oh myGod we did it! Oh my God we did it!” Melissa cheered over and over while bouncing giddily in her seat and clapping her hands.
“Your glass slipper has been left with your prince charming, now he just has to find you,” Nicole added as we set course for my house. Despite the initial turbulence our mission was a success.
That first soccer game after the cd drop was full of tension and nerves. Naturally, Melissa was dying to know if he had listened to it, but she certainly wasn’t going to come right out and ask him. Her greatest fear was that his parents got the mail and after one listen of all the jams on there they kept it for themselves. Suffice it to say, we were on pins and needles all night dying for any mention of the album, but alas, the hour came and went with nothing. I remember it being such an incredible disappointment.
Each subsequent game ended in the same fashion and while Nicole and I (along with many others by this point) all encouraged Melissa to tell him that she was his Cinderella, she never did. We finished Bruisers Soccer with no knowledge of whether or not he ever even listened to that mixed cd and seeing him in my store the other day left me in no position to ask. I felt like he would have no idea what I was even talking about and to have to explain even a tenth of this to him would have just been too crazy.
The mystery remains, but if he did give it a listen, this is what he would have heard:
I Think I’m In Love With You – Jessica Simpson
Hands – Jewel
Touch My Body – Mariah Carey
Hold It Against Me – Britney Spears
See You Again – Miley Cyrus
Crush – Jennifer Paige
A Mind Of Its Own – Victoria Beckham
Sittin’ Up In My Room – Brandy
Whenever, Wherever – Shakira
Brighter Than The Sun – Colbie Caillat
Part Of Your World (Reprise) – Ariel
You Belong With Me – Taylor Swift
I’m Your Baby Tonight – Whitney Houston
I Wanna Be With You – Mandy Moore
Come To My Window – Melissa Etheridge
Come On Over Baby (All I Want Is You) – Christina Aguilera
Tell It To My Heart – Taylor Dayne
Cherish – Madonna
Love On Top – Béyonce
Why Not – Hilary Duff
Start Of Something New – Troy & Gabriella
Even if he never jammed to it, I can promise you Melissa and I certainly did! It became quite the staple in Club Aurora’s twelve-disc cd player for along time thereafter.
Well, I do hope you all enjoyed this stalker story as much as I loved sharing it. Now that I’ve opened this bag, there are plenty more of these mortifying moments inside that I cannot wait to share! As always, thank you ALL for reading! I do hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season! I’ll be back with another post soon, but till then, hope y’all are living your best life ever!
ONE LAST THING! Today December 17, 2018 is my beautiful Melissa’s 33rd birthday, so I just want to take this opportunity to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRINCESS! You have come so far in your life, tying yourself down to one man – me – and leaving all these old flings behind. Of all the boys you could have ended up with I’m the lucky one who got to make you mine! #blessed
That CD is still epic!! Man that was a good night!!
The best! We definitely need to take a trip down memory lane sometime soon!
Omg I loved reading this story about yalls crazy antics
Thanks so much! Glad you loved it! We are always having a good time!