Good Girls Go Bad - The Pen Pal (Creep Central)

I have never had luck with guys. In fact, it's a miracle that I still want anything to do with men of any age, and haven't ran fleeing into the dark of night to a convent where I could become a nun and live only with other female nuns. I would say this was an exaggeration, but it's really not.

I know that I've mentioned before my disdain and issues with men, but I've never really elaborated, so today I'm going to take some time to tell you a story about one of the guys that has single-handedly taught me what epic fail meant. Over the next few months I will feature stories on and off about the guys that have been in my life. Some will make you laugh, some cry, and others just make you want to find these guys and put a loser stamp on their forehead to warn any other girls of the trouble these guys will cause. If you feel the need to do so, just e-mail me. I know where most of them live, or can find out for you and would gleefully let you know and buy you the stamp.

I'm going to call this segment the "Good Girls Go Bad" segment. The reason for this is that I feel these are guys who make nice girls take a turn at guys and ruin it for the next, possibly great guy that comes along by being idiots and treating girls like crap, or just by being tools in general. They make otherwise innocent girls get skewed views on guys, and girls start to wonder if there is anything better out there. They ruin the idea that there are good, stable, mature guys out there for girls everywhere. This is also a song, and the lyrics fit so perfectly to these stories. You can find the song here.

I will have you know that despite all of this, I do not look at all guys like they are evil tools, and do believe there is someone out there for me. When the time is right, I will find them, but I have learned to be slightly leery of men because of these guys who make "good girls go bad." Get it? Okay. Moving on.

Also, I already wrote something that would go into this segment, but this was when I first started the blog and didn't know I was going to be doing this segment. I have re-posted it below, because it found itself stuck in between a large post with several other stories, so for the sake of breaking this up into easy to read posts that revolve around boys, I have singled out that story and put it all by its little self. If you'd like to read it, like I said, it's directly below this post.

The first story comes to us via my more youthful and naive years. For the life of me I have no idea what made me remember this, as it's one of those insignificant things that feels like it happened in a whole other life, because I'm simply not the same girl who is into the same things anymore. The details are a little sketchy when it comes to when this happened, as I only have an estimate, but the details of what happened are not. I ask you all to sit back and recline in your chairs, or else you're going to want to take a flying leap at this guy.

I have horses. I have had horses for about twelve years, and when I was around the age of twelve, I decided that I wanted to make a pen pal via The Appaloosa Journal. They had this feature where kids could write in to find pen pals, and I thought that was just the bees knees at the time, so I wrote in. I thought this would be a safe way to find a pen pal who also enjoyed horses, appaloosas to be specific, so we'd have a ton in common. The reason for this being that, at the time, the only way you could subscribe to The Appaloosa Journal was to actually own an appaloosa that you had registered with The Appaloosa Horse Club, and then pay for a subscription of it from there. So what I'm saying is you had to own a registered appaloosa to even have the option of getting the journal, therefore, I wouldn't get any whackadoodle, just a kid who liked their appaloosas.

I got some awesome pen pals and we sent pictures back and fourth and had a really good time. They were all young girls around my age who were looking to write in, too, and then found me. My favorite was a girl named Tiffany, who I spoke with for several years, but lost touch with when I really got sick. I still have the pictures of her amazing horses to this day. Everything was basically good.

That was until many, many months after I posted the ad, I got a reply from a boy. Can you believe it? A boy! I was shocked that a boy replied to a girl my age, because I was just not thinking about boys at that age, but he replied. And he was older, seemed nice, and interested in being my pen pal. Forget the fact that he creepily replied many months later. He was a boy!

We began talking and he seemed nice enough, so nice that we even e-mailed and IMed, but he'd disappear for awhile. Then he'd come back. He chalked this up to going through high school and being busy, which I understood. I was home schooled through high school, but I knew friends who weren't and they, too, would get busy and disappear for a little while in being bogged down with tests and finals.

Then he graduated and took up a career in horse training. Soon after he disappeared, only to tell me later he had moved to Florida for a job offer, only to not like it and move right back to Ohio where he had come from, and it was only a state away from me. He had always said that horses were where his heart really was, and the other job in Florida as some kind of computer tech was just not for him. He had to be back in Ohio training horses like he had grown up doing. This was understandable, and although at this point I hadn't ridden in awhile, I still saw my horses regularly and loved them to death. I still do, except for the seeing them regularly. I don't have a lot of time these days with being sick and all, nor am I allowed to ride with my random passing out and what not.

But that's neither here nor there. I stayed in touch with this guy for several years. Now, I can't remember his name and neither does my mom, but we think it was Chris. If it was Chris that would just make it more perfect, because almost every single guy I've had an issue with has been named Chris, only he was the first and original loser of the pack.

This is one of those parts where we're not sure of exactly when this happened. We're guessing I had to be around seventeen to nineteen, but so much has happened since then that he has been the least of our problems, so we're not totally sure. I believe I was working at Hallmark at the time, which would have set me right around in the eighteen to nineteen range, but we just really, really can not remember.

One day in this open time period, we had made plans for him to come and visit since he only lived about an hour and a half away. He had offered to come down here without me even asking. In fact, he asked me if he could come down and I agreed. He's the one who brought it up, picked the time, picked the day, the whole deal. All I had to do was be ready for him. This was simple enough, so I got up that day, looked my best and waited for him to come. He was supposed to be here mid morning, around eleven, but eleven passed and I was still waiting...and waiting...and waiting. He never called, never showed up, and after an hour I just moved on with life, figuring that he wasn't coming, or had forgotten. It was a jerky thing to do considering he'd picked the date, time and offered to come down, but whatever. I knew even then that boys will be boys.

My mom had wanted to lay flooring in our spare room that day, so I counted my losses, pulled my hair up, changed into old ratty clothes, and helped her out. It was a hot day with no air conditioning, so I was sweating, and the makeup I would have never put on otherwise was running. No big deal, though. I didn't need to look good for anyone...and then my phone rang. I rushed to it thinking that it was Chris finally calling two hours later with some really great excuse, but it was not.

Instead, it was my Aunt on my dad's side. I've never had the best relationship with my dad's side of the family, but they were coming down this way and my other Aunt and Uncle were home from Germany with my cousins and were having dinner later nearby. I was invited. I really wanted to go because when I was little I spent a lot of time with my cousins, Michelle and Jonathon. Also, it was rare that they were actually home since my uncle was a minister to the soldiers fighting in Iraq, and although they lived in Germany for the job, he would travel through war zones and leave his family. You never knew for sure if he was coming back, but you hoped. So since it had been two hours with not so much of a word from Chris, I agreed to meet them several hours later knowing we could finish the floor and have time to clean up. Perfect plan.

That was until another good hour went by and someone pulled into our driveway. I looked out, confused, and then my mom looked out. And then a young guy started walking towards the house, so I made my mom answer the door figuring that this guy was the asshole who I was supposed to meet earlier and he never called or showed up, but was now here. I didn't want to see him. I just wanted him to leave because I was not looking good for company and I already had plans later since he couldn't even throw me a phone call.

Low and behold, it was him. And my mom, being my mom, felt bad he drove the hour and a half across state lines and let him in. I was not happy, although I understood why she did it. I still didn't want to be around him. I wasn't in the mood. I knew then that this kid was an asshole. I mean, he couldn't even call to say he'd be over three hours later, but instead just shows up? That takes a lot of arrogance and a lot of balls to do that, and the last thing I wanted to do was hang out with him, but now I was stuck.

I tried to be nice, thinking that possibly he had a good excuse, so I came out to the dining room and sat down to talk with him while my mom kind of hung around. I could tell she was leery about him, but not half as leery as I was. He tells me that he's really sorry he's late, but he slept in. He just didn't get up in time to leave. Basically what he was telling me, since he only lives an hour and a half away and he was over three hours late, was that he slept through the time he was supposed to be here, forget the time he was supposed to leave. He does not know how to set an alarm, nor did he respect me enough to try to find out, so he figured he'd just get up whenever and come visit me without so much of a phone call. Hell no, you jerk.

Then I asked him why he didn't call. He said he didn't think it mattered and he didn't want to waste his cell minutes. He figured I'd just wait around for him, basically, and that my whole day was devoted to him, whenever he decided to arrive. I was done with him right there. Even that many years ago I knew that he was being disrespectful to me and didn't give a crap about anyone but himself. But he was still there and my mom was still telling me to be nice to him, give him a chance and get through today, and then I wouldn't have to talk to him again. I sighed. I did not want to do this, nice or not. I wasn't in the mood for nice. I didn't feel like I had to be.

I tried to nicely smile and tell him that I wouldn't have that much time to hang out with him, because, since he didn't show up after two hours or call, I had made other plans later that evening. He actually had the nerve to tell me that he had driven all this way to see me, so he was a little upset about that. Oh yeah, well learn how to use a phone. If he would have, I would have never made other plans, but I had every single right to assume he wasn't coming. Therefore, I had every right to make other plans. I knew this kid was a piece of work right here and then, but what I didn't know is that I hadn't seen anything yet.

I asked him what he wanted to do in the hour or so that I had time to do something with him, as I needed to come back and get cleaned up before I went into public, but wasn't about to do it for him. He said that he wanted to go see my horses. This made sense considering this is how we met, and at the time the horses were only ten minutes away so that gave us plenty of time to go up and get back, and seemed like a safe thing to do, right? Even still, I kind of eyed my mom like God, please come with me because I know I'm old enough to do this myself, but there's something hinky about this guy and I don't want to be anywhere near him. She in turn said she was going to finish the floor and would see us in an hour. Thanks for throwing me under the bus, Mom.

We went outside, me still in my old clothes and not really caring, and he insisted on driving to the barn. It wasn't hard to get to and I could easily give him directions. Considering he was also blocking our cars in and I figured it would be a huge incident just to get him to move his car so we could get one of ours out (at least I think I had my car at the time, too, but can't remember), I got in his car and shut up.

It was the last place I wanted to be, and I realized very quickly that he didn't know left from right, and unless I pointed he had not a freaking clue what way to go. He also didn't take direction well and liked to pretend like he knew where he was going, making him even have to turn around once because he argued that I wasn't telling him where to go correctly. This guy was so obviously a first class asshole with a chip on his shoulder, and a God complex. He thought, too, because I was younger that I would apparently bow down to him. At this point I was so creeped out that I just wanted to run screaming into the hills for dear life. That convent was looking better and better with each passing moment.

While in the car, a stick shift, may I add, he tried to make useless conversation that I wasn't interested in, because I quite frankly couldn't stand the guy for obvious reasons, no matter how hard I tried. Then he did it. His hand "slipped" off of the stick shift and went right on my knee. He never moved it or apologized, and I moved it for him, telling him to keep his hands to himself and drive his damn stick shift as not to kill us. He didn't try to touch me again after that, but what a creep! I was under the understanding he was coming out here to meet me, not to hook up with me, or try to come on to me. We had never met in real life and didn't really know each other, so this took a lot of nerve.

We finally made it to the barn with all his hands in tact and my sanity slowly spiraling out of it. To my luck, this would be the day that nobody would be there, not even the owners. This was a boarding barn where people came to ride on weekends. It was the middle of the day on a Saturday. I thought this was a safe option, but no one was there. Needless to say, I was mortified. It only got worse when I realized Chris was scared to death of my horses. When I say scared to death, I mean he wouldn't even come into the stall. I have one horse that is so small she is technically a pony, and he still wouldn't come in the stall. She was standing there sleeping while I brushed her, and he stood outside tapping his foot like I was on his nerves for brushing my own horses.

Let's stop here and review, shall we? He's the one who got my name out of The Appaloosa Journal and also told me he was a horse trainer. He's the one who wanted to go see the horses. While I was there I was going to brush them, because what else was I going to do? Then, he stands outside the stall, to afraid to even come in and pet them, and taps his foot angrily while I brush them. What.the.HELL?

I knew something was up, so I brushed my horses until I was content, not wanting to get back in the car with him. I was actually hoping to annoy him badly enough that he would just end up leaving and I could call my mom on my cell phone to come and get me.. That's what I was trying to do, because now I realized that although he got my name out of The Appaloosa Journal, it had to have been a fluke. He must have gotten it off of a friend or a neighbor months later when they were done with it, thus the way late response, and then realized he could prey on someone young by telling them he was a horse trainer. Since he lived a state away, I would never know, but then his mistake came in him wanting to come see the horses. He couldn't hide that he was afraid of them.

I wasn't stupid and I knew something was seriously wrong, so I really did not want to get back in that car with him. But he didn't leave and I was forced to. On the ride home, being the short one that it was, with my cell phone in hand and cued up to call my mom if needed, I asked him about the whole thing back at the barn. He told me that he was in his good clothes and didn't want to get dirty. I called bullshit because he was wearing holy, shitty clothes, which kind of appalled me anyway because he was coming to meet me and knew that. He just really didn't care, but since we were going to see the horses I let it go, figuring that was his plan all along. When he didn't even so much as touch the horses, I couldn't let it go anymore.

I called his bullshit again and he told me he just hadn't trained in awhile. I brought up how he told me that was his main job, and he said, no, that he was a computer tech. I brought up again how he told me he was one in Florida, but had moved back to Ohio to train horses again because that was his true passion. He told me I misunderstood. If I had been at a computer I would have pulled up the emails to show him that clearly he was a liar, because I had saved them all. I just finally stopped arguing with him because you can't argue with stupid, and it was obvious I'd get no good answer out of him no matter how hard I tried.

We made it back to the house and I grumpily bid him adieu as I headed inside. He followed me...and did this knowing that the deal was he would go see the horses and then leave because I had other plans. My mom had just gotten cleaned up, so I went in to shower while he sat in the dining room and talked to my mom. My mom came in my room once to see how things went and I told her very quietly that he was nuts and I would explain later, but he's not who he told me he was. My mom kind of realized now that something was wrong, but when I came out dressed and ready to go to dinner, he somehow was coming with us. I do not know how this happened. My mom says she invited him. I don't know why she would do this. To this day I still do not, especially when she knew I was more than creeped out by him, pissed at him and she, too, agreed he was pretty creepy.

We went out and he wanted to take his car, because he said that he would leave and go home after we went out to eat. My mom had told him that the place we would be having dinner at was on the main road headed towards Ohio. This was simple enough, so we told him to just back out of our driveway and sit on the road for one hot minute so that we could get our car out and he could follow us. Instead of doing that, he pulled out, almost got stuck, and then drove the opposite way from where we were going. We couldn't figure out what he was doing, but he went and turned around somewhere and came back. I, for one, was so hoping he wouldn't have.

He followed behind us very, very slowly, making us having to keep slowing down so he kept up with us. I kept telling my mom just to drive the speed limit and let him get lost, and eventually she had to so we didn't get pulled over on the main road for driving too slowly, as we were going that slow. We pulled into the restaurant without him in site, but he came along not that much later and pulled in next to us. I, again, was disappointed. And also, folks, there is no need to drive down a flat main road at half the speed limit like he did. This kid was just a tool.

We went inside and met with my family. There were upwards of ten people there, so I did everything I could to get away from Chris, but he sat by me anyway, my cousin Jonathon on the other side of him. I simply was at the point of just being pissed off and wanting to spend nice, quiet time with my family without this jerk there. The last thing I wanted was him sitting next to me, but to my luck the only other boy there happened to be Jonathon, so Chris and Jonathon talked and he left me alone. And when he didn't, I just started up a conversation with Michelle, who was across from me, and called it a day.

Finally, dinner ended, and I say finally only because I was so incredibly uncomfortable with Chris. No matter what, I was on the edge the whole evening, and then the check came. My mom says she knows Chris paid for himself, but I remember a total other story, and knowing that my mom stands up for people when they don't deserve it, I really believe she's just telling me this so I won't hate on Chris anymore than I already do. To this day she won't admit he's a loser, but let's be honest, he obviously lied to me and I don't know what he was looking for when he came here, but it wasn't a friendship over horses, so that's just really creepy.

I distinctly remember the dinner ending and Chris then announcing as the bill came that he did not have any money. In fact, he said he barely had enough money to get home and hoped he didn't run out of gas, because if he did he would be in trouble. My mom shut up and paid for his meal, if I remember correctly. I could be wrong and maybe my mom is right and he did put it on a credit card, but I don't believe that's true. Either way, he made a big stink about it, so maybe it's just the childish stink that is stuck in my mind. I know for sure he whined about not having money and then tried to blame us saying he didn't expect he would be going out to eat, and also that he drove down here just to see me and so really he paid all that toll and gas money. He was making it out like it was our fault he didn't have money. He needed to go play in traffic as far as I was concerned.

We departed and nicely explained to Chris that all he had to do was go back the way we came and he would end up right on the turnpike. You couldn't miss it. We were going back that way so he followed us, but eventually we just drove not being able to go that slow .When I say that you end up right on the turnpike, I mean you RUN RIGHT INTO THE TURNPIKE. There is nowhere else to go. You either turn off on a back road or you go straight onto the turnpike. He got lost, which really cracks me up considering he made it here okay, having to go down a few back roads to get to my house, but he couldn't drive straight onto the turnpike going home. He called and called, but I never picked up the phone and he left messages about how he was lost and I needed to come meet him somewhere and get him on the turnpike. Mean, maybe, but I was far past done with him. I just couldn't take him anymore. I think I had every right to feel that way.

I think what really gets me about this story is that he continued to try to contact me for a year or so afterwords. He called me and left messages, e-mailed me, the whole deal. He acted like he wasn't a total ass and never lied to me or did anything wrong. To this day I still don't know what his deal really was, or who he really was. I don't know how he got The Appaloosa Journal, what he was looking for when he came here, or what he really did for a living, because obviously he hadn't been around horses in his life. Because of this, to this day, I have never replied to him and eventually the e-mails and calls stopped. The damage was already done by this time, and I had gained a great story to pass along the ages.