Mr. and Mrs. Bart Simpson
I absolutely love being the bad boy’s girl. My first time in this role was at the very tiny age of four.
I can still see his spiked hair and rat tail, his orange and black bike, and his shit eating grin. I loved him instantly.
He also saw me as the perfect kiddo in crime partner. We were instant best friends, which was likely my moms worst nightmare.
You see at the time I already had a best friend since the playpen. He was sensitive, he played nicely and was reserved. I was the wild one of the two of us.
But he was/is a brother to me. And I knew he had a calm and intellectually driven demeanor, and I didn’t want him to get caught up in our riff raff.**
But for about 5 years I rode on the pegs of my wild first love’s bmx bike.He was almost always shirtless, with a blue bandana on his head. Me, with a helmet on, waving happily to my mother probably going into cardiac arrest. (srrrrry mom)
We built forts, played house and video games, got into fights, rode bikes, climbed trees, played in the creek and had dance parties.
When one of us had to go to family obligations, the other was literally dying of boredom. When his mom’s blue Pontiac pulled up the street, I was 100 miles an hour out the door in my cut off shorts and untied shoes.
We tried to dye his hair with red Kool-Aid, when all that was really red was his front steps and upper body.
We danced in my garage for hours to everything from Nirvana, to Rancid, to Onyx, to Michael Jackson. I’m still an atrocious dancer, but he was such a freaking good dancer even as a little kid. He could do that weird hanging up sideways plank on the garage support bar. I don’t even know how to describe this as anything other than he had strong forearms and looked like a flag and it made me laugh.
In the summers, he almost always had a mohawk.
He was so painfully funny and he had the best laugh. We had 100% innocent sleepovers and would dance in the living room and sit up all night and talk about anything and everything.
He was the best friend and first puppy love I could have ever asked for.
And so this, I assume, is why I’ve always chased the bad boy. The adventure, the fun, the laughter. Every single day is new when you love a bad boy. To be fair, not all days on vacation are good. There’s some massive storms. Especially when you add a firecracker to a mischievous boy (metaphorically and literally).
My mom was always terrified of me being with him because she thought I would get hurt. What she didn’t know, was I was just as wild as he was. She didn’t see an argument when he got so mad at me, he spit at me. And then I picked up a rock the size of a large pizza and threw it at him.
That was our worst fight. I cried. He came over and genuinely apologized and we moved on. Love is easy for little kids. We never even kissed. We could both easily see when we were wrong and apologize and actually learn from it. That line was never crossed again. And we didn’t need 4 days of silence.
We just swallowed our pride because we missed one another and were too bored without our partner. ***
In my top 3 days I would time travel to, one would be with him. In fact, I would even choose the day we had an atrocious fight. Because even on our worst day, we bounced back.
We had the most loyal, Bonnie and Clyde style relationship. Just two little grungy kids in cut off shorts with a master plan. I covered his tracks and he covered mine. Nothing came between us. He went after anyone that picked on me, and he would have your ass. He was just smarter and wittier. When he fell off his skateboard (when I told him he should wear a helmet and avoid the gravel and he didn’t listen to me) and got a concussion and needed stitches, I was a wreck. The entire time yelling that he didn’t listen to me, worried sick and running home to get an adult. (Sorry Alex, I was always like this.)
When he moved away to a new school district, I mourned. I still have the post it with his new address on it. With busy parents and no ride, it was over. I was crushed. I grieved. I thought about how I could sneak to his new house but it was impossible. I would subconsciously start looking for this same bond with a guy well into adulthood.
And so, to my first love and bad boy kick off, thank you for inspiring a hell of a dating life. You’re still my favorite rebel. I am so glad we found one another. 🖤
**This is another start to my pattern of shooing good boys away because I knew I’d kill them. I needed partners who were feral, like me. I kept an excellent and well-behaved disguise, despite his open rebellion. This helped us to get out of trouble so many times. Talk about a match made in my moms hell. (Sorry, please cling to me churning out 3 awesome grand babies)
*** I wish I would have learned the life lesson that day that I can and will go 19 miles over the line in a fight. I’m retaliatory and it’s awful. And that’s a massive lesson I keep painfully learning over and over. But believe me when I say, I see and hear the awful I have spewed and it haunts me. I’m sorry. And I continue to find new ways to maintain my composure, and learn from my catastrophic and painful moments in the past. OY. If you’re one of those recipients, I’m sorry. The very person scanning this before I publish gets a million sorry’s. I see myself a lot more clearly now. Sorry for my lack of awareness and sorry for it/when I lose my shit in the future. I’m so glad I finally figured out I don’t always need to react when someone presses that button. What a relief. Instead just saving it for if, I ever need to use it.