“This is a story of girl meets boys. The girl Monica Caporaso of Bridgewater, N J, grew up believing that she would never truly be happy until she met ‘the one.’ This belief stemmed from early exposure to sad American pop music and a total misreading of the movie (500) Days of Summer.” The boys ranging from Alabama, to Korea, to New Jersey, to New York did not share this belief. Monica meets the boys on the first day of school, the first day of camp, and Halloween. She knows almost immediately they are who she is looking for. You should know up front that this is not a love story.” -500 Days of Summer
It is really hard to be a girl sometimes. I know this is a generalization but at least in my case, I am very emotional, I am always thinking and looking for signs, and I do everything with 100% passion. This is why when I was in seventh grade I thought I was going to marry the first boy that I kissed (we don’t really talk anymore). Once you live through every romantic comedy (rom-com for short) plot you realize that love becomes a drug and you obsess over having it.
At the ripe age of eighteen I really have lived through a lot of these plots. This might bring a few words to mind, and they are probably all right. I have had the kindergarten boyfriend, the summer flings, the bad boy that all parents hate, the love of my life (three times), the long distance relationship, the best friend that is in love with you, being in love with your best friend, the crazy random (I am going to make my parents hate me) hook-ups, and the cheated and the cheater. There is no way that my life would not be a rom-com if it was turned into a movie. I am the perfect co-star for Jason Segel (known for his acting in Forgetting Sarah-Marshall, The Five Year Engagement and How I Met Your Mother) and over time I have learned to have no qualms with it.
Rom-com Plot 1:
The kindergarten love. Everyone had one. Think back, you will remember. If you weren’t lucky like me to be “married” you just had to ogle from afar. I was married. Craig and I. Monica Craig Williams. Such a happy thought. Craig could be played by James Van Der Beek; if you don’t remember let me give you a hint, Dawson’s Creek. His blonde hair, blue eyes, and his eyebrows about three shades darker than his dirty blonde hair makes him a perfect candidate to play Craig. I don’t know what originally attracted me to Craig. It might have been his coloring ability, maybe that he saved me a seat next to him during reading time, or he might have shared a cookie with me once. This was obviously a deep love. Craig and I were actually married for a few years. From Pre-K 3 to first grade. It was a happy marriage, we held hands, never kissed, and always ate lunch together. I moved on though. I realized Craig just wasn’t the right guy for me. He just wasn’t motivated enough and didn’t have any real aspirations like me. I wanted to be Snow White in the Disney World parks. He was just holding me back.
Rom-com plot 2:
The summer love. Most people have seen movies about summer love. Any movie from The Last Song to The Notebook starts with a base plot of boy meets girl, and it is summer. Bo Gorham, he was my leading co-star. He is from Birmingham, Alabama. I would imagine him as a Ryan Gosseling. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and even when I first met him, when I was eleven, he seemed to be really in shape. Of course, I didn’t really focus on that as much as his beautiful southern accent. When he would say the words, “Hey y’all” I would drool. That’s what is nice about sleep away camp, you get to meet people from everywhere and I thought I found my Prince Charming. He would pull out chairs, hold open doors and called adults “Sir” and “Mam.” He must have been created by Disney or at least the model for their princes.
As I said we went to camp together since we were eleven all the way to seventeen. Bo needed to be blissfully unaware that I was totally and completely in love with him. I was obsessed with him from the first day I saw him in touch football. I was the only girl in the group and his cute jean-colored Chevy hat only made that southern charm more prevalent. I think I still have that hat. All my friends knew I was in love with him; I knew he knew too. For my first three years of camp with him, I had to admire from afar and when we were together I had to “man up” and try and kick his ass in whatever sport we were playing. I even set him up with his first girlfriend at camp, Frankie Sirkin. She was from Boston but her Kim Kardashian looks and body type, yes even when she was twelve she was fully developed, made her look like an exotic goddess. She was my friend, but I hated her at the same time. Those three weeks were the worst three weeks of a summer ever! I sat on my best friend’s bed and stared in a mirror. What reflected back at me only made me angry. Almost equivalent to Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock) in Miss Congeniality I was no exotic beauty. Luckily, Frankie was a year younger than us and Bo and I would be moving to a different campus for the intermediate program and Frankie would be staying behind. I needed a plan.
My friends gave me the ultimate makeover next summer. I came prepared with flowery shirts and skirts. I was going to be girly even if it killed me. I came close a few times. I could not shake my competitive side with him so when carnival night came and my friends had straightened my hair and put makeup on me, it did not change my urge to beat him at the big blow up obstacle course. Little did I know cotton tank tops do not hold up as well as t-shirts, and when he was waiting for me at the end of the race my shirt had somehow torn and I was exposing to him and the world my first ever push up bra. But we all know how romantic comedies work; tragedy and embarrassment equal romance. We were a couple after that night.
I remember our first kiss. At my camp we signed up for “classes” such as biology and forensics and he went on the same bus with me to our class. He was chewing gum and I asked for a piece. “You’re going to have to come get it.” My face must have gone bright red. My first kiss was only about three weeks earlier with a boy that I dated the first session of camp when Bo was not there. It involved gum too. Bo was a lot more experienced than I was and I was so afraid of being a bad kisser. While he was chewing his gum slowly with a smirk on his face I reached in his mouth and snatched the gum right from his mouth and put it in mine. “Come and get it.” I said laughing.
Rom-com plot 3:
The Bad Boy. During the winter between my summer fling was the bad boy. I was really mad at my parents for making me leave my school, and I knew one boy that could rile them: Jeremy Leavitt. He was that kid that got held back when he was four because he wasn’t as mature as the other four-years-old. All parents hated him. He wore all black with crazy band names on the front of his shirt, he had piercings, and illicit activities were his only activities. We were friends when were four and five but grew apart. I was a prissy person who wanted to appease her parents and he couldn’t care less about what adults thought of him. He was perfect revenge. The nights we spent at the mall we spent in stores that I had never heard of like Hot Topic and Spencer’s that just spewed anarchy. Hot Topic led me to dying my hair all sorts of crazy colors like blue and red. Spencer’s had an eighteen year and older section that we would sneak into and laugh from the embarrassment of what we were looking at. Sadly I woke up one morning barely able to move because I was so exhausted and I couldn’t eat any food. The guy cheated on me and now I had mono. That ended that.
Rom-com plot 4:
The Random Hook-Ups. Fast forward another year and I am now a freshman in high school. The new unexplored territory of boarding. I have a boyfriend. I love him very much but he is in California and we are so on and off that I don’t even know when I am cheating on him and when I’m not.
Honestly it wasn’t my fault though. I was still really mad at my parents for making me leave my school and I still had a taste for revenge. Little did they know there was no 6:30 gate and frolicking time was still possible. The 6:30 gate was put up to prevent teenage romance from taking place. The gate blocks us from entering the school building and using the classrooms as our own personal love rooms. Good thing it wasn’t put into use until my junior year. So I went from a boy who used me because he knew I liked him, to a boy who was just convenient (and reminded me of Bo), my first international, and my long-haired boyfriend. I think that would piss off my parents sufficiently if they knew. If you haven’t gone through this phase yet, maybe you are waiting for college, or just a bit more emotionally stable than I am, I am letting you know right now, it gets you made fun of a lot. Whenever a conversation starts with “So Monica,” I know that I am about to be made fun of mercilessly for my acts but hey, they are just jealous.
Rom-com plot 5:
The loves of my life. I said I have had three of them. And I have: the summer camp boy, the one who moved to California and now my current boyfriend. My current boyfriend, Michael, was definitely not love at first sight. But it is hard to fall in love with someone when the pictures on their t-shirts frighten you. They are from bands that I had never heard of such as Iron Maiden, and Black Dahlia Murderer. The pictures on the shirt had aliens and blood and fangs. I must have gotten over it somewhere in our relationship though because I now have own shirt to match his. He is incomparable to any actor I know. Maybe it is because he is an actor himself. He is a great actor. I am so proud when I watch him. He doesn’t have the most confidence which is probably why he lets his shaggy hair droop over his brown eyes but when he is on stage there is no one more confident than him. He is also extremely smart. Not in the sense that he is taking six AP classes and getting an A in all of them but he knows a little about everything. I feel stupid around him, in a good way. He always has something to teach me. I have never been so close to anyone. When we hang out the smile that spreads across my face feels like it could last there forever. We hang out down by my locker on the basement floor. It is a good spot because no one uses their lockers down there because of the inconvenience of trying to get to class. We sit there and talk for hours. About nothing in particular but each time we just become closer. Too bad it can’t last forever.
Rom-com plot 6:
The break up. I have been broken up with by a note, by Facebook, and now by text. I have to be honest, it sucks. I was dumped over Facebook by my boyfriend from California; the distance made it hard, but come on, pick up the phone and at least talk to me. I am five foot and five inches tall and 114 pounds, how scary can I be. My razor sharp fangs and barbed tail must be what’s scaring them about me.
The end of love is obvious and is the most heartbreaking thing ever. It is hard to leave these boys. You love them for a reason. You love them because they are the sweetest person ever and you had the greatest times together. He was the first one to wish you happy birthday. He buys you a ceramic doll because he notices that you collect them because of all the ones in your room. When you start hurting each other that is when you know you need to get out. You start purposefully ignoring texts. You start trying not to have a good time when you are with them. You start nit-picking every little thing you do. You don’t do these things because you hate them, you do them because you want it to hurt less when it has finally ended. It doesn’t though. It hurts more because you know you have hurt them in the process. You made a difficult situation worse. All you can say is sorry and hope they understand.
“I was just too afraid to be honest with you, with myself, because if I was really honest, gut wrenching honest, then I would have to admit that we weren’t right.” –The Little Black Book