My Wonder Years - A True Story

When I was 11 years old, I thought I was Kevin Arnold. "The Wonder Years" premiered just as I was entering the 6th grade, and the pilot episode was Kevin Arnold...entering the 6th grade. His best friend was Paul, my best friend was Steven. And Steven looked exactly like Paul. I mean exactly. When he would venture outside of our small town, people would ask for his autograph because they were sure he was the kid who played Paul. Kevin Arnold had Winnie Cooper, I had Christy Boyer. But unlike Winnie Cooper, Christy Boyer never gave me the time of day - this would be the first in a series of life insults that would lead me to become a comedy writer, but that's another story.

Anyway, the show seemed to mirror my life (except for course when Kevin would get chicks) - when Kevin would go to his first school dance, I'd go to my first school dance, and when Kevin would do shitty in school because of an asshole teacher, I would do shitty in school because I was lazy.

Now, if you ask any true Wonder Years fan what their top 3 episodes are, I'm pretty sure the 3 you would get the most are: 1) the pilot, where Kevin starts junior high and Winnie is suddenly hot, 2) the episode where Kevin breaks up with Becky Slater and she beats the shit out of him, and 3) the episode where Kevin goes on summer vacation with his family and he meets a ridiculously hot girl at the drive in and at the very end he touches her boob.

Number 3 was my favorite episode, and not just because of the boob touching (he may have been touching her heart, but her heart was sitting precariously right underneath her boob). The reason this is my favorite episode is because of the girl whose boob got touched. She was beautiful. And with her brown hair, olive skin, and willingness to let her boob get touched, she would become the template for almost all girls I've been attracted to since. I loved this girl, and so did many Wonder Years fans. They even had to bring her back in a heartbreaking episode a year later. I always remembered that girl, and everytime a rerun would come on, I would hope that it would be the boob touching episode. This happened when I was 13.

Flash forward 10 years. I'm in Italy. I meet a girl from Encino. Sara. We become fast friends. And one night, for some reason, I babble on about my love for all things Wonder Years (oh, I know the reason, I'm a huge dork). She says that her best friend was on the Wonder Years a couple times. Instantly I think of the boob girl, but it can't be. But I describe the boob girl and the episode and sure enough, that is her best fucking friend. Weird.

So I move to LA and start film school. Sara comes back to town (she'd been at NYU) and she invites me to a Halloween party and yes, boob girl will be there. This is it. My welcome to Hollywood moment, where you don't just fuck girls like the ones on TV, you fuck the girls from TV! I prepare myself. I meditate, do some visualization. And I remind myself not to mention the Wonder Years or my secret psycho love for this girl that I've kept inside for 10 years.

I go to the party, she's not there yet. I go in Sara's room and we hang out. And then, She walks in. I'm freaking out because she looks exactly the same! Exactly, except for now boob girl has woman boobs! What a bonus!

We are introduced. And her first words to me, I'll never forget them, are: "Do you have a dollar bill?" This caught me a little off guard but luckily, yes, I had a dollar bill! I handed it over. And then she said the second thing she ever said to me, which was: "Do you have a credit card?"

Okay, let me interject here with a little personal information: I don't do drugs. I've never done drugs. I've never smoked even a cigarette. Now, this has less to do with my high moral standards than it has to do with my unwillingness to try new things and my borderline Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I don't really care about drugs. I don't care if you do them, I don't care if anyone does them, but I have no curiosity or need to try them. I've never had soup or sushi, for Christ's Sake, you think I'm going to try coke? No. But besides never having done drugs, I was very naive as to the materials that are involved in doing drugs. So at this point I have no idea what's going on. Back to the story.

A little confused, I go back into my wallet and get my Visa card and willingly hand it over (boob girl from the Wonder Years has my credit card!). And then it happened. Of course, all of you know what's about to happen, but try and remember I had no idea that this was about to happen:

She pulls out a giant bag of cocaine. Okay, when I say giant, I mean giant. This was like a clown bag of cocaine. Like she got it from the gag drug paraphenalia store. It was enough to keep the Columbian army high for a month. And so, boob girl, starts doing lines of coke right in front of me. But hey, she was doing them with my dollar bill!

Welcome to Hollywood, douchebag.

ADDENDUM

Since that happened, I have randomly and repeatedly run into that girl. We somehow have multiple mutual friends who don't even know each other, and I will show up somewhere and she will be there. And surprisingly, even with the clown bag of coke, she always remembers me and we talk, etc.

But the reason I wrote this story is because I was invited to a Halloween party by my ex-girlfriend (who is completely unrelated to this story, but keep in mind, it was a Halloween party where I first met boob girl and now here she is invited to another Halloween party that I'm invited to).

I looked at the Evite, yes Evite, and whose name was on there? Boob girl. What the fuck? How does boob girl know my ex-girlfriend? Is fate trying to bring us together? Is there something going on cosmically between the two of us? Was the clown bag of coke just a plot device from some romantic comedy to keep us apart but we'll eventually be together and it will be a hilarious story (minus clown bag of coke and the "boob girl" moniker) to tell our kids?

I urgently call my ex-girlfriend: how do you know boob girl? Oh, she's Matt's (her best friend who she grew up with, Kevin to her Winnie, as it were) girlfriend. They live together. Oh, great.

Welcome to Hollywood, douchebag.