And a Half

by Redneck Diva


And a Half

I was fifteen. He was sixteen. And a half. When you are a mid-teen, that half is very important and you never forget to add it. Even if you are talking to the President of the United States and he nonchalantly asks you how old you are, you must dumbly reply your age "and a half." It’s really that important.

So there we were, all wrapped up in our teen angst and madly in love, getting ready to go skiing with my church’s youth group. I was a clutz. A hopeless, eternal clutz and before we boarded the bus to leave, I had asked my mother approximately 2,701 times if she had medical and life insurance on me. When you are a tragic fifteen year old clutz, you worry about those things. He was holding my hand and would squeeze it every now and then, reassuring me without words that I was not going to die while careening down the bunny slope. He was awesome that way. My repetitive voicing of my deathly concerns weren’t annoying him like they were annoying my mother. Mom was about ready to strangle me and make her own claim on my life insurance policy, but he just sat there on the curb, holding my hand, squeezing it occasionally and watched me annoy my mother.

When Dave, our youth pastor, was finally finished obsessively/compulsively going over his obsessive/compulsive checklist for the 60th obsessive/compulsive time, he hollered for all of us to gather in a circle. All of us youth held hands and then our parents gathered in a circle around us, holding hands as well. The parents prayed over us, the youth minister said a rather obsessive/compulsive prayer (I’ve always wondered if God laughs at those of us who pray our OCD right up to Heaven) and it was time to go. The hand that he was holding was sweating, but he didn’t let go to wipe it off on the leg of his jeans. He just kept holding my slimy, nervous hand. Stuff like that didn’t bother him.

I hugged my mom with one arm (because we were still holding hands) and decided against asking her one more time about the insurance. He hugged her, too. One-armed, as well. I was starting to feel like a parasite, but I wasn’t about to let go and he gave no indication he was either. Thankfully all of our bags were loaded in the bus already and technically, unless either of us had to pee or poop somewhere between here and there, we didn’t have to let go for the next 6 hours. My bladder was primed and ready to go and my bowels were up to the challenge. I wasn’t sure about his and I wasn’t about to ask. You just don’t do that when you’re fifteen and prenuptial. That’s something you do when you’re 40 and have been married for half your life. When you’re in your thirties you can broach such subjects as poop, pimples and how eating shredded wheat for breakfast makes you just awfully gassy, but not when you’re young enough to still add "and a half" to your age. I was just trusting in his ability to hold it in and hold my hand.

The bus ride to that point was actually quite uneventful. I slept with my head on his shoulder the first few hours of the trip. He slept with his head uncomfortably leaned against the window. He could’ve let go of my hand to go get his pillow from his bedroll, but instead he let his head bounce against that window. He really was awesome. After most of the group had woken up from their uncomfortable naps, we decided to play some games. We played "Name That Tune", "I Spy" and "Guess the Jingle." I won by default when I sang the entire Oreo cookie jingle without messing up one word. That impressed the entire bus. We held our seemingly conjoined hands up in victory from our seat.

I could tell we were nearing the mountains because the air felt different. The sky was grayer and a few of the girls asked Dave to turn on the heater. When the bus started making funky chugging sounds I didn’t worry too much. I just remembered the time on the way back from a trip to a baseball game when the bus broke down and we sat on the side of the highway singing songs and talking until some church members arrived in a caravan of cars and minivans to either fix the bus or haul us home. I kind of looked at it as an adventure. He didn’t seem worried either, so I just settled in for the wait. Dave was looking pale and flustered when he boarded the bus after having looked under the hood. He said he needed some of the older boys to come out and help him. I silently wondered what would be so bad under the hood of the broken-down bus that would make him look so pale, but didn’t say anything. And seeing as how sixteen "and a half" was the second to the oldest age, he was going to have to let go of my hand and go help Dave.

He kissed me on the cheek and said he’d be back in a few minutes. He stepped out into the aisle and followed the other guys toward the door of the bus. As he stepped down onto that first step, he looked up over the partition and smiled at me. I smiled back and then realized how cold and naked my hand felt, lying open on the seat beside me. The door shut in a whoosh and the younger boys that were left on the bus and all of us girls leaned over and pressed our faces to the windows to see what was going on. I heard one of the younger, quieter boys ask, "Where did that come from?" and then we all watched as one by one the older boys stepped into the fog.