Post-It Notes

I still remember all the foolish things I had done when I was younger. And if I forget, I can always go back to my room and look at the wall I covered in small pieces of square paper with an untidy scrawl. When I was fifteen, the age I was when I went to high school, I had spent most of the summer break hogging the family computer to myself and searching things up like, how to be funny, or how to be cool, or how to look handsome. After nine hours of research a day this is all I found:

• Being cool allows you to make friends
• Don’t be stupid
• Raise you hand in class even if your answer is dumb
• Play a prank on your teacher
• Never say that you like anything that’s cute. It will ruin your teenage life

There were only three useful things on that list, the last three. I went into school feeling unprepared I wasn’t one of the "Cool Kids" I found myself fitting more into the group of people who just tag along with the cool kids to try and be cool. The first day of school someone invented a game called HI, you play it in class and one person starts it by saying hi in a whisper, the next person, no matter how much the difference is, has to say it louder. Then it goes on and on until the teacher sends a kid to the principal’s office. I happened to be the one every time, the seat next to the office is practically moulded to my butt and only my butt not anyone else's. The principle didn’t look surprised to see me anymore, in fact she just sends me back to the classroom with no punishment, and this went on and on until the whole year had gone by and I went home to do some more research for the next year this is what I found:

• Being cool allows you to make friends
• Don’t be stupid
• Raise you hand in class even if you answer is dumb
• Play a prank on you teacher
• Never say that you like anything that’s cute, it will ruin your teenage life

The next year I felt a bit better about myself because although I didn’t find anything new, I know what was going to happen. The same as the year before, I soon found out I was wrong. The first day I got in trouble for playing the HI game and I was sent to the office. Waiting on the seat when I got there was a new student and as soon as I saw her, I knew that if the boys found out what I was feeling right now they would laugh at me till I die. I sat on the seat closest to her and asked her the first question that came into my mind.

"How would you like your funeral to look like?" I asked.

She look startled but a second later she smiled, it felt like the sun was burning a hole through the clouds.

"How would you like yours?" She asked back.

I thought about this carefully, no one had ever asked me that question before.

"I suppose I would like a coffin made of crystal." I replied

"Like Snow White?" She asked.

"Snow White had a glass coffin." I said.

"Snow White had a crystal coffin because the glass coffin didn’t work out. After she had died, every full moon she would crawl out of her coffin no matter how much her body was decaying and she would go to the kitchen of the dwarves house and grab a knife, turns out this knife was the same knife that little red riding hood used to kill her grandmother.-"

"What?" I interrupted but she just shushed me.

"She would take that knife and pull a dwarf out from his bed by the ear and chop up some potatoes to feed him. And when he gets fat she throws him back into bed, and the next day she would have gone back into the crystal coffin-"

I interrupted her again I didn’t want to hear the rest.

"How would you like your funeral?" I ask.

"Well, there will be no priest, and instead of a priest there will be a rapper, and I want him to be spitting out words at two hundred miles per hour. And my body will be thrown into an enormous bonfire with wolves that are prowling in circles around it. Oh and I missed an important detail, if the rapper cannot rap as fast as 200 miles per hour then he will be thrown in with me, so I can slap him in the afterlife. And pigs with wings will fly out of the ground. And Neil Gaiman will be there and he will be throwing cups of red bull into the fire. Gordon Ramsay will also be there, he will take the worlds largest pan and start frying me, but I wish someone will tell him that I would not enjoy being a sunny side up egg. And there will be lots of Mountain Dew. There’s another important detail, every year on the date of my death, children will be allowed to drink vodka." She said.

"Are you finished?" I asked.

"I know, kids will be REQUIRED to drink vodka." She said.

"Are you finished?" I asked again.

"R-E-Q-U-I-R-E-D." She said.

The principle came out of her office.

"You two look like you’ve been enjoying yourselves, now back to class." The principle announced.

"Which class are you?" I asked her.

"Ms. Walsher." She told me.

"Why did she send you to the office?" I asked, she was so bright I was surprised that anyone would send a lovely soul like that to the office.

"She might have caught me throwing her computer…" She started.

"No way, you’ll have to pay for that." I gasped.

"- at her." She finished.

I was speechless.

"So shall we meet here again tomorrow?" 

"Just don’t throw her computer again… at anyone." I said.

"Deal."

The next day I knew I had to go prepared, That night Our family watched a movie, Star Wars 2 (Attack of the clones.) I watched Obi-Wan fight Grievous. He starts off with saying. 

"Hello There." In a cool almost menacing way, no wonder why he’s got all the girls.

I run to my room and grab a spare piece of paper noting it down I tape it to the wall.

I meet the girl at the office seat again. But this time, instead of just directly sitting down I leaned against the locker wall and I said exactly what I was practicing all night that night.

"Hello there." I practised so much that even the tone sounded the same as Obi-Wan, this better make her like me and think I’m cool. I thought.

She got up standing her seat and looked like she was about to pounce onto me, but instead the following thing she said made me very embarrassed 

"Its over Anakin I have the higher ground!" She said. 

I was surprised that she had watched Star Wars. I shuffled over to my usual seat and sat down.

"How did you get to the office this time?" I asked.

"I threw a binder at the teacher." She said not feeling sorry one bit.

"I told you not to throw stuff!" I exclaimed.

"Your not the judge of me, and you only told me not to throw the computer." She deflected smoothly.

I decided that she was one of those people who could always find loopholes so I had to be as strict as possible.

"My mom wants you to come over for dinner tonight." She shrugged.

"I think I can make it. Are there any rules to follow?" I said.

"Just mind you manners, don’t use you hands, don’t slurp, use the knife, use the napkin, no drooling, no phones, no playing with your food, and dress up as neatly as possible." She listed.

"Ok." It was the same rules as at my house. "Shall we meet here tomorrow after you're dinner?"

"Yep."

"No throwing anything." I said seriously.

"Yep."

"And no kicking." I said triumphantly.

"Damn, you can sure be a pain in the butt." She grumbled.

I took that as a compliment.

"And one more thing, what’s you name?" I asked.

"Sophie."

When I told my mother about the dinner news, she almost cried.

"My son is finally getting a girlfriend!!!"

She bought me a new suit and tie, I took a sneak peek at the receipt. One thousand dollars! That is expensive. At 7:00 I got to her house, if there was a miniature version of a castle this would be it. I knocked at the door and it almost opened instantly. It was Sophie’s mom.

"Hello Ma’am." I said.

She nodded to her husband.

I took off my jacket. She shook her head at her husband. I concluded that a nod means she likes what she sees and the other one was she doesn’t. I tried to figure out what i was doing wrong. I glance at Sophie and she gave me the signal of washing my hands. I walked to the bathroom and washed my hands. The parents both nodded.

The dinner did not go as planned, they had four forks and two spoons I was lucky I watched a movie where the dude had to figure out what each one was for. The first thing we had was tomato soup. And all I could say was the mother did not know how to cook. I kept finding feathers in my soup as if she had murdered a chicken to get the red colour. Next we had steak. I felt eyes on me and looking up from cutting my food I see two pairs of beefy eyes staring at my hands monitoring me using my knife. After sweating buckets because of the fear for making a wrong move with the knife we finally had dessert. It was mint ice cream put into a fancy cup. And that was when I made the wrong move. There was an Oreo cookie pushed into the ice cream and I found myself using my HANDS to pick up the Oreo. I didn’t like Oreos on my mint so I did what I always id. I ate it first using my HANDS. Sophie glanced at me in horror, and her parents made disapproving muttering sounds. I finished my ice cream and the parents said goodbye to me and sent me off.

The next day at school I go to the office again. I found Sophie sitting there.

"Hey I’m sorry." I said.

"No its-." 

"I should have remembered." I apologised.

"No its-."

"I’m really sorry." I said.

"MY PARENTS APPROVE YOU FOR CHRIST SAKE." She yelled.

"They what?"  

"They like you."

"So will you be my girlfriend?" I asked.

"Maybe." She said.

Tears well up in my eyes.

"I’m just kidding! Gee, why you gotta be so emotional?"

And that’s how it worked out, until we graduated and went to the same college, after that we got married. I’ll just give you a hint on what happened during the wedding. There was no priest, and instead of the priest we had a sumo wrestler. We were married for sixty years with no conflict until one day she died in a car crash on her way to work. And as the only person who ever heard what she preferred at her funeral I gave her what she wanted. I organised some firemen to help me start a bonfire. And bought some huskies and hired a professional dog trainer to teach them to walk in circles, then we hired Juice Wrld to be the rapper who spits out words at two hundred miles per hour. And after that we found Neil Gaiman, he agreed to throw red bull into the fire. Next came Gordon Ramsey. He called me a donkey and slapped me a few times, but he agreed. We got some Mountain Dew and started the funeral, Although Juice Wrld did Rap at two hundred miles per hour, I threw him into the fire to show Sophie that I fulfilled her dream just in case she wasn’t watching from heaven. All of those memories I still remember because of one great invention. Post - it notes.