Mike Mollsen

The alarm sounded wildly this sunny morning, severing me from my gratifying dream in which the perpetually awkward girl gets the out-of-her-league guy.


Of course, the setting was once again back in the dreaded high school gym class, where adolescent little Tammy held a unilateral crush on the golden-skinned Mike Molson with the million dollar grin. One flash of that alabaster smile would invoke involuntary, pint-sized giggling, the kind that she wished could be instantaneously annulled in order to hamper the entire student body from witnessing her naked emotion. As we join her in her defeated hour as the distressed, artsy outcast who gets picked last for the basketball team, we learn that in recent days, our heroine has inadvertently left her heart on her pastel-stained sleeve and that the object of her affection has grievously dismissed her substantial token.

Taking a seat upon the heavily shellacked risers, Tammy tried to decipher whether the scribbled scrap of paper dictated that she's on team 24 or 29, (obviously a weighty issue for a fifteen year old benchwarmer). Seeing the look of painstaking deliberation on her pale face, Mike sauntered over, sauvely careening one leg after the other over the pine bench above her, hunching closer to read along. He offered a suggestion to toss the slip aside and join whichever team she wanted, which prompted Tammy's further analysis of whether or not she'd like to play on Mike's team or oppose him. He placed a reassuring grasp upon her round shoulders, planting small kisses on her cheek and back of her neck, which again incited the tell-tale giggling. He suggested they go out for smoothies after class and she tried as much as humanly possible to conceal her enthusiasm with her acceptance. The buzzer sounded, indicating it was time to start the game of hoops, but then seconds later, she found herself firing rampage upon the red led screen of the clock.


Funny, I barely spoke to the guy in school and hadn't thought of him in nearly seventeen years. The mind is a peculiar, but sometimes entertaining playground.