I have attended many football games for the Rockets, the football team of Catholic High School For boys. Most of those times I was with my family and I just went back home with them but I had never gone out with my friends from catholic after a game, maybe because I didnt know they went out or maybe I did know but I had to go back home with my host family because they were my ride home basically, I can't exactly remember which was true. After I switched families , one time after a basketball game, I just didn't want to go home, there wasn't much to do there, and for sure I wasn't going to go to sleep, instead I was going to read my book under the light of my lamp on my bed till sleep gets to me. But that night I told my host dad I wanted to get somethoing to eat before we went home. I didn't know then that I was going to find about 30 people from Catholic High and Mount St. Mary's at Macdonald's at 10:30 pm. I sat with my host father while I ate my sandwich and he ate his salade, he was a strict vegan, when a couple of girls waved to me from a distance. " They're cute", he commented, which kind of encouraged me to go say hi. Then, I found all those boys and girls I recognized from school and football and basketball games. Some of the boys were with me in the Fitness team that I had joined at school, some others I had classes with. I said hi to Anthony and we chatted a little and he asked me who the man with me was and I told him it was my host father and explained to him what that meant. He offered to give me a ride if I wanted to stay and hang out with him and the rest of the people. I was ecstatic with his offer because that's what I had wanted all along, to go out with my friends from school and see where they hang out, and also mingle with girls that I had only seen at games and seldom talked to.
I have to explain that my urge to talk to girls in America was due to a couple of reasons. When I came to this country I basically wanted to try and experience whatever an american teen did experience, as long as it doesn't conflict with my own set of values and beliefs. Of course my school was only for boys so I hadn't got to know many girls. I wanted to know how they really think and talk about everything. I had erased basically all my thoughts about american girls from movies and what not, which presented them as mainly promiscuous. I wanted to include some girls in my friends' group in addition to the many guys I had gotten to know. I wanted to see how they acted on different occasions and really see how they thought about different concepts. I remember that at that night I saw that one girl, we'll call her Erica, that wore a violet costume of a fairy probably, and she was always there in football snd basketball games. I had always thought she was very pretty and fancied to talked to her but of course had never got the chance. But then I saw her there and I just decided to talk to her, I don't even remember much how I started talking but I remember that I pulled a chair and sat facing her. I don't remember either what we talked about but what I remember very vividly was when I asked very shyly for her number. Make a note, that I had never asked a girl for her number, because I never knew what to do next, but I saw in american movies that once the guy got the girl's number that that was it, he did it, and now he has a date with the woman. So I tried that, and her expression till that day still confuses me. She was so excited that I did ask for her number, which startled me because we had never talked before and I didn't know that I can make a girl so happy just by asking for her number. Her excitement showed only a second on her face and when she asked"you want my number?". I said yes, but the worst thing is that I didn't have a cell phone, and wrote down numbers in a small agenda. Till this day I dont remember why exactly I dont have her phone number now, but one can guess, I leave that to you.
I told my host father that Anthony, my senior friend, was giving me a ride and he left. We then left to Sonic, the famous food chain. There I found even more people from Catholic and Mount. Jake Chase, my buddy from homeroom class and the football player, Mike Ferrara, one of the writers in the Catholic High newspaper and also on the football team. Katherine Lorge, the twin sister of Stephen Lorge, my buddy from American Lit class. We hadn't talked before, but I recognized them, and apparently so did they me. My memory can only help me with a few things that stuck in there. I remember that girl that gave me a handkerchief with her number on it snd told me to give it to a guy sitting on the next table, I was stunned by her disrespectful attitude. I instantly frowned and gave the handkerchief to a friend and told him to take care of this. Katherine was pulling her zebra-looking socks, and for some reason I went like"easy zebra" which cracked them up so hard. It was my accent or how I said it, I never knew. Many people that I had seen at school and at games were there which was great.
We went to stand outside and I laughed so hard at that one black man who apparently worked there, when a TV van passed outside Sonic, he ran out frantically and screamed"I aaaammm KP babeee I wanna bee Oon Tv babe!" with the thickest black southern accent. It was a large group of high school kids, boys and girls, and it was exciting for me to finally crack in and get to know my friends outside school walls and out of their Catholic high shirts,  ties and kaky pants. I had talked to that one girl and apparently I had expressed the desire to want to see her again and so she wanted to give me her number but again I was faced with the same dilemma of not having a cell phone. So she just very simply took my forearm and wrote down her number on it, which stunned me at first, but then again it was kind of playful which was cool except that, what happened the next second disrupted all that. A cop came up to me, with my forearm still in the girl's hands, and I have to mention she was inside her car and I was outside on the passenger side, and the cop said"TAKE OFF".
To fully understand what was going on, let me tell you what it was like. From what I understand, a large group of teenagers in a late hour as in 10:30,( we say it's late in Egypt starting from 1:30) ganged up around one place, in that case Sonic, is always indicative of a prospective fight, underage drinking, drug dealing, or an hour later DWI, driving while intoxicated. So a cop car was roaming the place, and the worst was that one of my friends was actually super drunk and he had in a bottle in his jacket and he was loud too. I had been overwhelmed by the whole scene, and I didn't see that when the people saw the cop car they felt they had to leave, but I didn't. So now comes the moment, my arm is in some girl's hands, and a cop comes up to me and says"take off". See, I have always thought my English eas great. My American friends always told me I had the lightest accent compared to any foreigner they had met. My English totally betrayed me that moment. I only remembered the worst meaning of "take off" that could have been understood at that moment, YES to sadly take off my clothes. I totally fogot that it meant to simply leave the place as fast as you can. My friend found out that my English was now temporarily deactivated, so he took me by the hand and we "took off". AFS, the organization that enabled my exchange year, had three strict NoNos. One, no drinking or drugs, two, no sex, three, no hitch-hiking. Now If Ihad been indicted by that cop of any drinking or drugs of any kind, I was going to be deported just as fast as I had come, which would have been a terrible failure to my experience and a great shame to my host family and my natural family.
I have to explain that my urge to talk to girls in America was due to a couple of reasons. When I came to this country I basically wanted to try and experience whatever an american teen did experience, as long as it doesn't conflict with my own set of values and beliefs. Of course my school was only for boys so I hadn't got to know many girls. I wanted to know how they really think and talk about everything. I had erased basically all my thoughts about american girls from movies and what not, which presented them as mainly promiscuous. I wanted to include some girls in my friends' group in addition to the many guys I had gotten to know. I wanted to see how they acted on different occasions and really see how they thought about different concepts. I remember that at that night I saw that one girl, we'll call her Erica, that wore a violet costume of a fairy probably, and she was always there in football snd basketball games. I had always thought she was very pretty and fancied to talked to her but of course had never got the chance. But then I saw her there and I just decided to talk to her, I don't even remember much how I started talking but I remember that I pulled a chair and sat facing her. I don't remember either what we talked about but what I remember very vividly was when I asked very shyly for her number. Make a note, that I had never asked a girl for her number, because I never knew what to do next, but I saw in american movies that once the guy got the girl's number that that was it, he did it, and now he has a date with the woman. So I tried that, and her expression till that day still confuses me. She was so excited that I did ask for her number, which startled me because we had never talked before and I didn't know that I can make a girl so happy just by asking for her number. Her excitement showed only a second on her face and when she asked"you want my number?". I said yes, but the worst thing is that I didn't have a cell phone, and wrote down numbers in a small agenda. Till this day I dont remember why exactly I dont have her phone number now, but one can guess, I leave that to you.
I told my host father that Anthony, my senior friend, was giving me a ride and he left. We then left to Sonic, the famous food chain. There I found even more people from Catholic and Mount. Jake Chase, my buddy from homeroom class and the football player, Mike Ferrara, one of the writers in the Catholic High newspaper and also on the football team. Katherine Lorge, the twin sister of Stephen Lorge, my buddy from American Lit class. We hadn't talked before, but I recognized them, and apparently so did they me. My memory can only help me with a few things that stuck in there. I remember that girl that gave me a handkerchief with her number on it snd told me to give it to a guy sitting on the next table, I was stunned by her disrespectful attitude. I instantly frowned and gave the handkerchief to a friend and told him to take care of this. Katherine was pulling her zebra-looking socks, and for some reason I went like"easy zebra" which cracked them up so hard. It was my accent or how I said it, I never knew. Many people that I had seen at school and at games were there which was great.
We went to stand outside and I laughed so hard at that one black man who apparently worked there, when a TV van passed outside Sonic, he ran out frantically and screamed"I aaaammm KP babeee I wanna bee Oon Tv babe!" with the thickest black southern accent. It was a large group of high school kids, boys and girls, and it was exciting for me to finally crack in and get to know my friends outside school walls and out of their Catholic high shirts,  ties and kaky pants. I had talked to that one girl and apparently I had expressed the desire to want to see her again and so she wanted to give me her number but again I was faced with the same dilemma of not having a cell phone. So she just very simply took my forearm and wrote down her number on it, which stunned me at first, but then again it was kind of playful which was cool except that, what happened the next second disrupted all that. A cop came up to me, with my forearm still in the girl's hands, and I have to mention she was inside her car and I was outside on the passenger side, and the cop said"TAKE OFF".
To fully understand what was going on, let me tell you what it was like. From what I understand, a large group of teenagers in a late hour as in 10:30,( we say it's late in Egypt starting from 1:30) ganged up around one place, in that case Sonic, is always indicative of a prospective fight, underage drinking, drug dealing, or an hour later DWI, driving while intoxicated. So a cop car was roaming the place, and the worst was that one of my friends was actually super drunk and he had in a bottle in his jacket and he was loud too. I had been overwhelmed by the whole scene, and I didn't see that when the people saw the cop car they felt they had to leave, but I didn't. So now comes the moment, my arm is in some girl's hands, and a cop comes up to me and says"take off". See, I have always thought my English eas great. My American friends always told me I had the lightest accent compared to any foreigner they had met. My English totally betrayed me that moment. I only remembered the worst meaning of "take off" that could have been understood at that moment, YES to sadly take off my clothes. I totally fogot that it meant to simply leave the place as fast as you can. My friend found out that my English was now temporarily deactivated, so he took me by the hand and we "took off". AFS, the organization that enabled my exchange year, had three strict NoNos. One, no drinking or drugs, two, no sex, three, no hitch-hiking. Now If Ihad been indicted by that cop of any drinking or drugs of any kind, I was going to be deported just as fast as I had come, which would have been a terrible failure to my experience and a great shame to my host family and my natural family.
No comments:
Post a Comment