TMI Thursday: This one time, at choir camp...

Okay, so I'm really not proud of what I'm about to tell you on this second TMI Thursday. But it is, after all, "Too Much Information" Thursday, and therefore I feel compelled to confess my sins and try to shamelessly elicit some blog traffic because I know how attracted people are to stuff that's just.plain.wrong.

Heh. I think I'm setting you guys up to expect something really scandalous, but it's really not all that awful. I'm just feeling a little melodramatic today, I suppose. But anyway, this is a rather embarrassing thing I'm about to admit here, so don't judge me too harshly.

Side note (I know, I haven't even started yet and I'm already suited up in my Tangent Girl cape): I probably have some equally embarrassing "This one time, at band camp" stories, but as a former floutist, I refuse to partake in this viral American Pie joke because frankly, I heard enough of it in school.

Thus, my "This one time, at choir camp" story. Enjoy!

As previously stated, I'm not proud of this story. And I'm also a liiiiiiittle bit nervous about certain people reading it, like my mom. Or my dad. Or pretty much anyone I know in real life. Alas, I'm all about openness here at Just Tabitha, so here goes nothing. (I'm really going to start it now. Seriously. Just have to work up the nerve, is all. Stick with me, folks!)

So, a few summers back, I was getting ready to head back to school for a new semester. I had to arrive on campus a week or so early for choir camp, so I got to be the first to move into my apartment (hello, claiming the best bed is essential!) Anyway, I had recently become completely obsessed with line dancing with my best friend Erin, so she and I made plans to go to a country-western place called Borderline (in Thousand Oaks). We'd been there a couple of times before, but later discovered a place much closer to school (Montana's baby!), so this was probably one of the last (if not the last) times we went there. I'm pretty sure we went on a Thursday night, because Borderline offered lessons before the real fun started.

Dancing ensued...and so did a little bit of drinking. (Nothing excessive, Mom!) But let's just say I was kind of...sort of...feeling...really, uh...flirty. So I ended up meeting a guy and flirting shamelessly with him while we danced to a bunch of songs. We talked, danced, laughed, and were having a fun and innocent time. Until.

Until...he kissed me. And then the dancing and laughing was abruptly replaced by lots of kissing. At some point we moved off the dance floor and to an area where we could stand and kiss in a relatively dark and less public setting. (Pretty much just off the dance floor, near a wall that was at least two feet away from any tables or barstools or chatty people.) Okay, before I go on let me say, again, that this is NOT something I'm proud of, and it's not something I do on a regular basis. (I mean, of course I don't do it NOW, because I'm madly in love with Joe. But even before Joe, I wasn't just going around every weekend making out with boys in country-western joints.) So, yeah. Story's not over. Get ready.

All of a sudden, this guy was sucking on my neck. Like, seriously, one second we're kissing and the next I can feel blood vessels bursting in my neck. I'm pretty sure he only hickey-fied me for a MAXIMUM of seven seconds (because once I realized what he was doing, I was like, "Hey buddy, get the crap off of me!), but it was apparently more than enough time to give me a nice, obvious, shameful hickey right on the side of my neck. Ick.

Needless to say, I didn't get his number.

So, that was Thursday night. And choir camp? Yeah. That was starting on Sunday (I think). SUNDAY. I don't know if you've ever had a legit hickey in a plainly visible spot, but let me tell you that the darn thing was still there after three days. In fact, I think it didn't fade completely until the following Thursday. (Oh, I just realized how ironically appropriate this whole TMI Thursday thing is right now!) Also...I tried the frozen spoon thing. Doesn't work. And it was summer, so turtlenecks were basically out. Plus, I don't think I owned one at the time. Talk about a mortifying situation. Me, with a hickey on my neck, meeting a bunch of new people who I'd be spending extensive time with in choir over the next two semesters.

How did I handle it? Well...probably not very discreetly. But I tried. I wore a light scarf/wrap thing the first day, and kept on adjusting it obsessively to make sure it was covering the dreaded hickey. The second day I think I tried to cover it up with makeup, and then just sat in whatever shadows I could find, or on the end of a row where my corrupted (aka hickey-ed) side faced away from everyone. After that, I probably just did the makeup thing and tried to pretend like it wasn't obvious.

Luckily, no one really said anything to me, except my friend Micah, who saw it pretty much instantly and called me a "sly fox" or something along those lines.

Yeah, I wasn't embarrassed or scarred for life at ALL. Thanks a lot, random gross hickey guy at Borderline. See if I ever let YOU buy me a drink again.

The end.


Dear Mom and Dad,

Please don't ground me. Getting a nasty hickey was punishment enough. Trust me.

Love always,

Your sweet daughter.