The Misadventures of Mrs. Taken Ch. 02

I didn't have it much better than Foster for my first summer job. I graded eggs for the local chicken farm. It paid, well, chicken shit, but at the time earning two bucks an hour was big money.

His skin was tanned a perfect golden brown from being in the sun all day. Foster had great biceps and the arms of the brand new polo shirts he had bought with his summer earnings strained from the bulk. Foster played the bass drum. Every member of the band sweated, a lot, in the late summer heat as we practiced our routines over and over again. Everyone sweated except for Foster, looking so cool with that big monster of a bass drum strapped to his chest as he glared at the sweating lot of the marching band and flag corps from behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses.

I was a flag girl and content to strut my stuff in a cute little short outfit. Daisy Dukes and belly shirts weren't allowed on school grounds, but it didn't matter. As flag toting members of the color guard it was our civic duty to push the envelope of the dress code as far as we could.

It was at least nine thousand degrees and humid as the inside of a clothes dryer that summer day. The big competition, THE COMPETITION of the season was just around the corner. The flag corps had peddled candy bars, washed cars, and practically sold our souls to earn the money for our little Podunk town high school band to enter the contest. We were going to do it, compete against the big city bands with their fancy light up signs and sequined costumes, and we were going to kick ass.

Being in the color guard isn't all glitz and glam. It's dangerous and hard work. Everyone thinks all a flag girl has to do is look pretty and twirl a flag. Miss your mark and see what kind of hell you get from your dance coach. Drop a flag or worse, one of those wooden rifles you're supposed to toss into the air and hopefully catch, and someone could end up with a concussion. Each and every one of us had at least one or two splinted fingers from getting thwacked with the practice rifles. We were bruised from getting thumped with the flags, sunburned from the hours of practicing on the football field all day, and chewed up with mosquito bites from staying out there till after dark.

The day before the big competition I was so focused on learning a sudden change to my dance routine that I didn't notice the crater in the football field. I think I was too worried about bonking the clarinet section in the head with my flag to care about some silly hole.

Trust comes hard for teenagers and the woodwind section trusted us with their lives, or at least it seemed that way at the time. The idea was a good one. The flutes, clarinets, and saxophones would duck and we would throw our flags over their heads in time with the music. It wouldn't have mattered if I had been positioned at the twenty or the thirty-yard line, catching the flag was the important thing. But, I was at the fifty-yard line, dead center in the middle of the action, and my dance partner, Shawna, was a bit slow on the uptake.

The band director had chosen a tribute to Scotland as the theme and I was also worried about my short little kilt riding up to flash the world my butt. We were in full dress rehearsal and even Foster had lost the sunglasses and donned a red and black plaid tam with a fuzzy ball on the top. The band was performing for the town. Proving that all those candy bars and car washes they had bought had gone for a good cause. I was clan Campbell and there wasn't even a drop of Scottish blood in my ancestry, or so my parents claimed. I would have rather have worn some other colors, but, the dance coach thought the tartan, the red and black, looked good on me.

Shaking in my white knee high drum majorette boots, I was nervous enough without the entire town watching me. I was worried about giving the freshman clarinet player staring at me wide eyed and terrified a concussion with my flag. The drummers were on the fifty-yard line and Foster was standing right in front of me, smirking at me like he knew, he just knew, I was going to brain that clarinet player with my flag.

As it turned out, I didn't brain the clarinet player and my partner, for once, was right on her mark. I caught my flag and with the band playing Red is the Rose and me stepping higher and twirling faster, and beaming with pride at the applause from the crowd that I didn't see the hole in the field and well, you can guess what happened. I tripped and fell flat on my face at Foster's feet.

Foster was a trooper and dedicated to the cause. I'd like to think he was marching backwards and didn't see me and that was why he stepped on me with his huge size thirteen shoe. But, I don't, even though he claims he really didn't see me, think that was the case. He smashed my hand flat as a pancake and kept right on marching off the field with the rest of the band. Afterwards, he didn't even bother to ask if I was ok. I was humiliated. I had fallen flat on my face with the entire town watching me roll around like a cockroach stuck on its back on the fifty-yard line. I didn't even worry about flashing my butt to God and everybody. I was too busy trying not to bawl like a baby. My life as a teenager at Washington County Consolidated Schools was over.

Luckily, nothing was broken with exception of my fragile teenage ego, which had been shattered to dust. My hand was swollen huge as a balloon and I wasn't going to the competition. The heck I wasn't. I had badgered everyone on the block for weeks selling those candy bars. I had spent every Saturday for the past month standing on the corner of Main Street flashing neon signs advertising the car wash. Damn it, I had earned the right to go and I was going no matter what. My dance coach could duct tape the flag to my hand for all I cared. I had to be there.

I was a chesty girl. At sixteen, I boasted a DD-cup. You would think being so well endowed would have made me popular with the boys. It didn't. I think they were a little intimidated by the size of my boobs. I know I certainly was.

The band director caved to my badgering found something for me to do. It was more of an excuse for me to go to the competition than something that needed done and a handy way to get me out of his face. He handed me a pair of cymbals and ushered me to Foster for a little last minute instruction before we boarded the busses for the long ride into the city. I hadn't gotten over the fact that Foster had smashed my hand to smithereens and he was supposed to teach me my new routine? I wanted to shout at the unfairness of it, but if I wanted to go to the competition, crashing those cymbals together was how I was going to do it.

The wool band uniform was hot and itchy. I wanted my cute plaid kilt and knee high white boots. The tam was too big for my head and kept sliding down over my eyes. Foster glared at me over the top of his sunglasses and dared me to complain. I sucked it up and kept my mouth shut all the while wondering when he was going to apologize for basically ruining my life. He didn't bother with an apology. He wasn't even nice to me. He tapped out a rhythm on a snare drum and toed me in the shin with the tip of his sneaker when it was time for me to crash the cymbals together.

I was so nervous. Here I was standing within five feet of one of the coolest boys in school. He was, begrudgingly, paying attention to me. All I had to do was bang those cymbals together when the beat sped up and I couldn't even get that right. Determined to wow him with my discerning ear and tapping off the beat with my toe, I crashed the cymbals together. The only problem was that I didn't realize my boobs were in the way. There my DD-cups were smashed between two cymbals and I had no way out of my humiliation. I had embarrassed myself in front of the coolest guy in the entire history of marching bands.

His jaw dropped and I could see it. Foster trying to hold back a fit of laughter over my embarrassment. Sniffling and red faced, I started tearing up. I wanted to disappear into a crack in the sidewalk and never see the light of day again. Seeing how shamed I was, Foster showed his other side. The side of himself he certainly had never showed the drum line or any teenaged girl. He took the cymbals out of my trembling hands and mopped up my damp cheeks with the hem of his polo shirt. Then he did something that completely shocked me. In front of the entire marching band, drum line included, he kissed me and ever since that first kiss, my very first kiss from a boy, through all the thousand times we broke up and made up again. We were an item.

Foster:

In high school I was an ass. I wore these big ridiculous sunglasses and earned myself the nickname Foster Grant. I was arrogant and completely way off base about so many things. Not that anyone could have told me that at the time. I was simply too full of myself to hear anything anybody had to say that was slightly less than flattering. I was popular with the girls at school. The problem was, at seventeen, I didn't want a high school girl. I was gunning for the college girl scene and so far out of my league chasing after post-adolescent skirts that I truly was an embarrassment to high school boys everywhere.

To my friends, I was a god. I had the looks. I was on the drum line. I was fit and trim and completely unflappable. I was genuinely my own biggest fan and master of my little corner of the high school universe. I was going to be a drummer for some big time rock band by the time I was twenty-one. I just knew it. High school was just some sort of purgatory where I wasted my time until the opportunity that would spring me out of the nowhere town in which I grew up came my way.

High school girls were a pain in the ass. Always worried about this or that and all the drama...what guy in his right mind wanted to deal with it? I sure as hell didn't. I was a senior and the underclassmen, or should I say underclass girls, flocked around me like hens around a bantam rooster. I didn't bother with them and graciously allowed the poor things be contented with basking in my glory.

I knew all the girls simply as a side effect of growing up in a small town. All of our parents grew up together, and so had all of us and, with the exception of me and my upcoming escape from the pits of Nowhere' Ville hell, our kids were doomed to follow.

I had to admit. Some of the girls were a little difficult to ignore. For example, the rare few that didn't seem to notice I was even alive. Claire and her posse of flag waving color guard groupies were on my radar simply because of the fact that I wasn't on theirs. I'd shoot them a smile, my sexiest, rock star smile and Claire and her gaggle of followers would giggle under their breath, snub their noses at me, and walk away.

I had been paling around with the kids in town since I could peddle a bicycle and I had never noticed Claire before. She was a girl and I was a boy and during that tender time of innocence before the hormones kick in what could we possibly have had in common? Then one summer at the start of my senior year of high school, I noticed her. Boy, did I notice her.

My future wife was hot back in the day. She had all this hair, huge hair, shining red-gold like a halo in the sunlight. Her eyes were big and round, brown, like chocolate drops. She was curvy and cute, so damned cute and she would not give me the time of day. All the guys talked about her when there wasn't a girl within earshot to overhear the things teenage boys say about girls when they're not around. Claire was one of the rare few girls with boobs and I don't mean the kind of boobs that come from pushup bras. I mean boobs, real boobs.

Band practice was one of those things I tolerated simply because there wasn't anything better to do between the end of corn detassling season and when the school year began. I wanted a letter jacket and not really being a jock, marching band was one of the only ways to earn one.

I didn't make the time to talk to girls. Girls were supposed to talk to me. Yeah, right like that ever happened in the social boundaries of high school. The whole thing was an act, a brave front, my cool aloofness around the fairer sex, and a way to hide the truth about my shyness.

Girls were a mystery. The college girls I tried to hang with treated me like I was a lost puppy. I was cute and I had earned many a pat on the head and a tender peck on the cheek. But, they figured I'd wander off eventually and leave them alone. The high school girls, girls like Claire, treated me like I was a rabid dog and just as likely to bite them as to lick their hand.

The marching band had been practicing their routine most of the summer. Spending the hottest days of late July roasting in a cornfield detassling corn and earning a whole seven dollars an hour for my trouble, I was used to the heat. Looking back, I was an idiot and a fool and I really wasn't all that good at playing the drums. It was more to the fact that nobody else wanted to traipse around with a bass drum strapped to their chest in the middle of summer that earned me a spot on the drum line. But, what did I care? I had my sunglasses and my coveted place in the percussion session. I was going to get my high school letter, and well, to be quite honest, Claire had the cutest ass I had ever seen. Her shorts were so tiny and short, and I got a bird's eye view of that fine, curvy butt every damn day.

I used to pray she would drop her practice flag. That way I'd get to watch her bend over and pick the thing up off the ground. I hadn't seen the outfits the dance coach had picked out for the color guard until the afternoon before the big contest. The band was strutting their stuff and the whole town had come out to watch. There she was, wearing the shortest skirt I had ever had the privilege of seeing. I didn't know shit about women's clothing and I still don't. I wouldn't know a pleat from a wrinkle or plaid from paisley, but that skirt looked damned fine on Claire. If I hadn't already been praying for her to drop her flag. I sure as hell was now.

I was pounding my heart out on the bass drum. Concentrating on keeping in step with the rest of the band and out of the way of the clarinet section as the flags were tossed over their heads. Claire nailed it and the crowd went nuts. Sure, it was just a simple toss of a flag over some poor potentially hapless victim's head, but for Nowhere' Ville, Indiana it was big time entertainment. I was focused and jazzed by the crowd. I didn't notice when Claire tripped and fell on the fifty-yard line and I certainly didn't hear her screeches over the noise from the trumpet section when I stepped on her hand and smashed her fingers underneath the heel of my size thirteen Converse. I swear. I didn't.

She was out of the competition, or would have been if I hadn't convinced the band director to come up with some way to include her. After all, it was my fault she couldn't go. Well, it wasn't my fault, but I felt guilty anyway. I hadn't planned on being the one to teach her when to crash the cymbals. I certainly hadn't warned Claire that her boobs might get caught in the crossfire and I really, really didn't intend to laugh when they had. I had never seen a girl cry before. I was helpless in the downpour of her tears. Speechless and tongue tied, I didn't know what to say so I did the only thing I could. I kissed her.

Sure, we've had our fair share of fights over the years. Everybody does. We've broken up and made up at least a dozen times. Once, the D word nobody wants to say or hear even came up, but by some miracle we worked it out.

We've changed a lot since the heyday of our youth. My parents, my brothers and sisters, her parents, and hell, even our best friends back in the day predicted that we wouldn't survive the first five years of married life. We were too young to get married and looking back now, at the fresh out of high school eighteen year old she was and the associate degreed college graduate of twenty I was, we were.

We matured together. Through all the ups and downs we always knew that at the end of the day we were going to climb into the bed and kiss each other goodnight. I think that, the simple act of a goodnight kiss night after night has been the one thing that kept us together. Claire knew no matter how mad I was at her, and God knows I've been plenty mad at her from time to time, that I was going to kiss he goodnight. I'm no angel either. Just like the old married couple we are. We still spat at one another. But, there's always bedtime to look forward to when we kiss and make up.

College pre-requisite classes are a blessing in disguise. Psychology 101 was required for my associate degree in heating and air conditioning. At the time, I hated the class. But, now, on the verge of putting my plan into action, I'm damn glad I actually paid attention. My idea is a simple one. Operant conditioning. Maybe, B.F. Skinner was onto something. Instead of demanding that Claire quit smoking, I'm going to apply a little psychology. Positive reinforcement for good behavior and negative reinforcement for bad, it just might work.

Claire is a die-hard smoker. Even if I still smoked there is no way I'd go out on the back porch in my robe and slippers on a frosty winter's morning to light up. Claire doesn't like it, but she complies with my demands. She tries to sneak a puff or two in the house now and then. Sometimes, the house smells like smoke because she brings the smell in with her on her clothes. The smell of stale cigarette smoke drives me nuts.

I'm not her daddy and turning my wife over my knee for a spanking doesn't really hold any appeal for me. Likewise, I'd never skip the goodnight kisses that have kept us together for almost twenty years. I don't yell when I smell cigarette smoke in the bathroom. I don't scold her like she's a child. I simply remind her that we have an agreement and she broke it. Usually, that's enough to send her blushing and scuffling for the air freshener.

I'm going to give Claire an incentive to quit smoking. One she can't refuse. It might kill me in the process or at the very least give me a hell of a case of blue balls. If the house smells like smoke, if I smell it on her clothes or hair, she gets no loving from me. I can hold out. Whether or not I can hold out as long as Claire can, I'm not sure. Does she love me more than she loves smoking? Surely, I can give her more pleasure than a cigarette. I'm damn sure willing to try to at any rate.

As a reformed smoker I can assure you the first day is the worst. If I can get her to give up the cigarettes for one whole day, just one twenty-four hour period. I'm pretty sure I can prove to her that she can put them down for good.

Some people might call my plan cruel. I'm not being cruel or selfish. I'm trying to save her life. I don't want my wife to die. We made our prepaid funeral arrangements last year, but I'm not in that big of a hurry to use the plots we picked out, a nice spot at the base of a huge old oak tree on top of a hill, anytime soon.

We don't have any kids. Soon, my parents and Claire's parents will be buried in the older section of the cemetery. My brothers and sisters and their kids are scattered across the country. Claire and I, we've got friends here and there's definitely a sense of home and community to this place we wouldn't find anywhere else on earth. But, I don't want to hang around too long after she's gone. I could die first, I suppose. But, I wouldn't want to do that to her either. Leave her behind alone. I think the best thing we could do for each other is to milk every last second out of our lives together that we can. And yeah, maybe that makes me a selfish bastard, because I want as many days as I can get with her.