Benedict Cameron

So I’ve known C since babyhood. We’d do normal kids stuff, like trick-or-treat on Halloween together, hold hands, beat the shit out of each other, play with train sets in his backyard–

I don’t remember much, but what I can tell you is he had a broad jaw and these massive blue eyes that sunk into his head a little bit; made you wanna poke your head closer to him to get a better look.

We parted ways I’m not sure when…One day we were babymates, the next he was a ghost in my 13 year old mind.

Now, I say 13 because that’s when it dawned on me that I hadn’t seen this weird handsome boy since…I couldn’t remember when. I became obsessed with finding him. I bugged my mother to search for emails she’d sent to his mother, the phone-book, old Christmas cards, A N Y T H I N G. Anyway, I was super dejected and actually recall crying in front of my eldest sister because I was so lonely (get a grip). Then my mom found a letter with the return address and I sent a letter right quick.

For two weeks I checked the mailbox everyday after walking home from school. I’d tell my friends about him, dream about him. After awhile I gave up, and then I got the letter.

He told me to add him on Kik (first red flag), a dinosaur of a messaging app, and there we were, messaging and such. He seemed really nice, and right off the bat wanted to have nicknames for each other (cringe). He wanted me to call him ‘Ace’ and he wanted to call me ‘Pebbles’ (what?). Of course I agreed, though. Now, as my young self, I had this terrible disease where I would check my phone every 10 seconds, reply right away, lie about my knowledge on certain subjects (aka Pokemon), and send double, triple, replies to him.

After a week and a half or so, our mothers agreed that we could all link up at the local bowling alley. Here’s where Benedict Cameron’s lesson comes in.

LESSON ONE:

DON’T LIE ABOUT YOUR INTERESTS TO IMPRESS SOMEONE.

Yeah… I… I don’t know. You may be confused, but let me tell you what I did, and ultimately how Benedict C went from ghost, to weird crush, to stranger.

We meet up at the bowling alley, he’s standing there with his mom and there’s my mom, and I come over…and after a week and a half of…consistently and constantly staring at my phone…waiting…when he’s standing right in front of me I don’t even look at him. After a full 10 minute conversation he says: “Hi.” Then I stupidly look at him as if I’ve just noticed him and I go, “Hi!”

I remember trying to accentuate my butt (I wore my best bootylicious jeans) and my awesome bowling skills (went into the side every time) because I said I loved bowling (I hated it). We went and got food later. He ordered a vegan burrito and the whole time had strings of lettuce hanging from his braces (hot).

This was also the moment when I discovered I had a thing for hands (no not a fetish, but something like that). He had really nice hands; with long, elegant fingers with a hint of young man.

Anyway, I never saw him again after that. After our initial meeting, I lied about what level my starter Pokemon was (level 173), and he said: “That’s impossible…unless you had a program like GameShark that allows you to hack the game…” or some nerdy quote like that.

I also barraged him with insecure messages when his power went out for a week and he lost power. He came back to see a lot of messages from me, and was like: “Whoa…chill…” and that was that.

I wonder what he’s doing these days…