Prince Ali Ababwa

Blogs are easy to conceive, easy to start, but can be hard to get going. Like an old vehicle they seem to stall quickly right after the initial creation process, and like something with a pull cord, it takes quite a bit to start it back up. What causes this phenomenon? Time and dedication, mostly. You have to devote some level of time into going with this, and it has to be important enough to keep going. Not that you have to be talking about life, the universe, and everything, but just something important to you.

Something important like the drama of my second and final chance in high school to get with the queen. Following this trip, no real oportunities exist and when I talk about the interrim, you'll find why I was still not terribly encouraged by what happened. If you know what a "Crowbar Award" is, you'll get the idea.

But on the bus ride to Washington, D.C., though, we also had the joy of the Queen's mother (aka Queen Mother) and brother (who we'll call Darth Vader for reasons w'll learn later) tagging along. The weird thing here is that I don't remember them on the trip at all. I guess I never gave them a thought, and only regarded the Queen Mother as another chaparone. To make it double strange, they did remember me.

The bus ride didn't start so well. We got onto the bus at about the same time, but we were almost immediately split upsince there wasn't a seat together. Yup, she actually intended to sit next to me. Isn't that cool? Anyway, I was in one seat and she in another, but at some point in the ride to D.C. (which is one seriously long bus ride from Oklahoma), we managed to get to sit together.

The first time my hope began to fade was following that point in the ride. Being the music guru I am, I was toting a lot of different cassettes and CD's (oooh, wasn't I cool?) and one of them was the soundtrack for Aladdin. Since Crackhead was on a different bus (he preferred to hang with his buds), the Queen wanted to write him a note as girls do. So, during the writing of this note, she wanted to know how to spell "Ali Ababwa," as in the song from Aladdin, "Prince Ali, amorous he, Ababwa."

Well, being the eavesdropping spy that I am, once I'd given her the lyrics book for the soundtrack so she could write out whatever she wanted, I glanced over her shoulder, and saw the flowy handwriting of a girl writing a note to her little beau. Any other geek would be heart-broken and upset and never want to speak to her again. Not me. Oh no. I didn't want to part from her side and continued to stick with her the whole time.

I'm such a glutton for punishment. Still am for the most part.

Well, despite the fact that I never forgot "Ali Ababwa," the ride was still pretty good. If it weren't for that cloud hanging over my head the whole time, I might have thought I had a chance, but with "Prince Ali" out there earning her notes, I was too afraid to ask. Like George McFly, "I just couldn't take that kind of rejection." In the logic of my age, I figured if I didn't ask, I couldn't be rejected. But in the logic of retrospect, since I never asked, I was never accepted.

Nothing else of note happened on the bus ride down there. We reached the hotel, which was in a town in Virginia bordering D.C., and everyone got unpacked and settled in for the festivities that awaitd us in our week in D.C. A trip for an event that would ultimately last only a few hours, but a trip, nevertheless, that still made an indelible impression on the Queen and I, even though my feelings would remain quite unrequited for many years to come.