Have I ever written about Tommy Burkley?

I tend to not use real names in the blogosphere, but I doubt that's what he goes by at his fancy finance job here in the Big Apple, and I further doubt it will get back to him that I'm sharing this story with y'all, so I think it's safe to go on.

"Go on..." says the toney voice of the impatient singular audience member I imagine I am writing for in this moment.

Tommy Burkley, in Nook Girl folklore, is notorious for being my neighbor roomie's first kiss.

Well, her first kiss on the cheek.

We told our sixth grade social studies slash homeroom teacher, Ms. Andrada, alllll about how giddifying an experince it was when he caught up to her at the busses outside of Day Middle School that fateful afternoon and planted a peck right there on her rosy cheek, causing her to smile for miles for days on end.

But before he was being all Rico Suave sixth grade playa style, and before he was the hot ticket item at the singles' table at the Nook/BC wedding we ALL went to last Summer in August (shit, I still have yet to drop off that ginormous gift I have for the now expectant newlywed couple at their 3 bedroom, 1 dog-family home in Needham, but I digress), Tommy Burkley was tormenting me weekly in our CCD class.

My Catholic nemesis from the time we first faced off for the rights to the First Reading at the Sunday Family Mass our class was going to be leading as proud/newly proficient second-grade readers, Tommy was the Mr. to my Mrs. Goody Two Shoes back in the day.

But our rivalry was all in good, clean fun until one day in the Fall of Seventh Grade when he SLAMMED me with the worst insult I'd ever received (and by this time my brother was nearing tweendom himself and lethal with taunts of his own toward me so I was fielding dastartdly digs regularly)...

"I bet you plan out the conversations you're going to have with people the night before," Tommy sassed on Sunday.

And before I could retort with an equally as dogging comeback or insult (something really good and clever like, "oh yeah, well I bet you've already started preparing homilies for when you grow up to be a Priest!!!" for example) I found myself in the worst rut I'd ever found myself...SILENCED!

I mean, I had been born with the gift of the gab, I was CONSTANTLY getting in trouble and shushed in class, at Church, during dance & singing lessons, at movie theatres, lining up for religious ed on Sundays... I talked non stop as a child. But I was speechless when he threw that one out there, because the mystery boggled my mind...

HOW DID HE KNOW???

And how humiliating.

Was it not normal to rehearse coy conversations that could come up with cute boys or ammunitional jabs with which to combat confrontational girlfriends, impressive rants to outsmart pretentious fellow students with or persistent denials of wrong doings in case probing parents came in pursuit of grounds on which to ground one on?

Didn't everyone think up things to say in potentially precarious situations? And since obviously not, was there something strange about the fact that I did loosely outline dialogue so I could carefully steer future exchanges in whatever direction best suited me?

UGH.

Shit.

Seriously he rocked my world. The nerve of him outing me in front of our class. In front of my only recent ex-bf (heartbreaking split after a field trip to the Science Museum and Planetarium...talk about puppy love, but the drama I'd felt I was living when I turned my claddah ring to face outward once more after I'd been dumped before English with Mr. Roberts one Thursday...sigh, it was rough).

Stupid Tommy saw right through me.

But.

What he saw as weirdness, I have parlayed over the years into the true skill of a productive procrastinator.

And now, as I set out to write the non-fiction book proposal that's gonna land me an agent and my lil' coming of age story told through emails a book deal in the next few months, I'm proud as anything that I've thought out the pitch I want to make for this project and slept on the way I want to converse with publishing moguls who'll need to know exactly how and to whom I want to sell this puppy.

So there Tommy Burkley.

So there.