Since we’ve reached the part of my tale where I believed it was time to search—in earnest—for my eternal mate, we need to review my romantic resume. Spoiler: it’s short.

You already know about the “kissing girl” fiasco from the playground. So, no early success there.

In the so-called gifted program, there was a boy named Zack I thought was cute. On Valentine’s Day, I left a box of chocolates in his desk labeled from a secret admirer. When he found it, he loudly announced how “stupid” it was—then shared the chocolates with everyone except me.

Remember the poker face I never had? Yeah. He knew it was me. That cured my interest in boys for a good while.

In Junior High, I was blissfully oblivious to the hormonal chaos around me. I went to dances—school and stake—but not to dance with boys. Ew. I went because it meant a new dress, a night with girlfriends, and premium people-watching. Maybe if I observed enough “normal” teenagers, I could learn how humans interacted.
(I have still not figured this out. More research pending.)

One boy, Skylar, had my number from a group project and called constantly. Repeatedly. Persistently. Annoyingly. “What do you want?” I’d ask, while he tried to flirt and make small talk and I impatiently waited for him to get to the point so I could go back to watching TV. He never had a point.

But honestly, I wasn’t popular with boys, and I did not care. I was loud, ridiculous, and probably smelled weird (see:  dubious hygiene). My grandma kept my hair short, permed, and aggressively triangular. Mom helped by dyeing it “Orphan Annie Red” at my request. I was a little chubby—my routine was: drop backpack, sit in front of the TV, and consume eight (always eight) Oreos while doing homework. And I was an insufferable know-it-all. Not exactly a siren song.

When I turned 16 things started to change.

A couple years earlier, I’d stopped letting Grandma touch my hair. Her dementia had begun showing in “creative” ways—like chopping six inches off only the top layer when I’d asked for a trim. Leaving long, wispy undergrowth. I looked like a squid wearing bangs.

So I got a real stylist. My hair grew long, straight, intentionally layered. I ditched the clown-red dye for blonde. And then puberty hit.

I swear it happened overnight. One day I was looking down and chanting, “Oh pointy boobs, oh pointy pointy,” and the next my mom was dragging me through the mall trying to find a bra in my abnormal size (32D). I also lost a significant amount of weight because I decided to… stop eating. Almost entirely. (Which I can now look back on and recognize as an eating disorder.) So, then I also had to search for clothes small enough to fit. I figured out that a Girl’s 16 was the same size as a Women’s 0, and cost significantly less. So, I started buying more clothes, that were the fashionable name brands.

Suddenly, I was very popular.

I didn’t mind when boys visited my desk in class for homework help, but it annoyed me when they tried to flirt during lunch when I was CLEARLY busy talking to Megan, thank you very much.

But I didn’t want to miss any milestones. I hadn’t had a first date yet (it’s possible I’d been asked; I was simply too oblivious to notice). So I called Skylar. He was male, available, and willing. That was the entire eligibility criteria.

It was a terrible date. I took him to Olive Garden, which I thought was “fancy” with my unrefined teenage palate. Since I was paying, he ordered the most expensive dish, took two bites, then had the waitress throw the rest away because he “didn’t like leftovers.” I strongly considered leaving him at the table.

I dated a little, but not much. Mostly I went to school dances.

A thing you should know about Utah culture in the 1990s You didn’t just ask someone to a dance. Oh no. You had to stage a small parade. Balloons, posters, candy puns—‘It would be Mounds of fun if you’d go to Homecoming with this Dum Dum.’ Even I couldn’t misread that.

So, when Dave decided to ask me out, it made perfect sense to make a bunch of ice cubes, each with a little message frozen inside saying it would be ‘cool’ if I went to the dance with him.

Unfortunately, he didn’t know he was about to reenact the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan in our cul-de-sac

Unbeknownst to him, the neighborhood kids felt it was their moral obligation to persecute the “inactive” family on the block. Several times a week, sometimes several times a day, one of those little shits would ring our door bell and run away. It was constant harassment. Stupid. But annoying. And after years of this, my dad and brothers were DONE. If the bell rang, they launched into military chase formation: Dad out the back door, Jason and Alan out the front, friends and cousins joining the hunt like an angry, asthmatic militia. My cousin Shad, with his long legs, was able to overtake the kids in hilariously fast fashion.

So – when Dave giddily poured out the ice cubes on the porch and rang the bell, just to run and hide behind his mom’s minivan parked around the corner, he expected to see me open the door, step out, look around in confusion, and then happily bring in his offering to decipher the message. What he got instead was the pounding of foot steps catching up to him in seconds, and a sudden confrontation from five, large, red faced (and slightly confused) guys (why was there ice all over the porch!?).

His soul left his body.
He sputtered out something like “I was just asking out Diana!” and was released, physically unharmed but emotionally altered.

Miraculously, he still wanted to go with me.

Mom and I hunted for a dress that could fit my tiny waist and my giant boobs. After visiting every store in Utah, we found a gorgeous deep red corset-top gown with a high neckline and a full skirt. Two problems: it was expensive, and the wide straps almost counted as cap sleeves but not quite. But we got it anyway.

In Mormon country, bare shoulders are basically pornography.

Dave was scandalized by my bare arms. And three different teachers pulled me aside at separate times during the dance to express disappointment in my wanton display.

Still, Dave asked me to be his girlfriend—another milestone unlocked. He gave me my first kiss (Bam! Milestone speed-run!)—ironically on the same playground where I’d once traumatized boys with kissing noises.

He was a drama kid, so we spent a lot of time together during rehearsals and Thespian parties. One night he rear-ended me – literally, not romantically – on the way to a poetry reading at a coffee shop where we absolutely did not drink coffee. That would not have been kosher behavior for good Mormons.

I was driving some of the drama kids in my car, and Dave was following behind in his mom’s minivan with the rest of the group. As I pulled into the turning lane and slowed down to take the left turn into the parking lot, I felt the sudden jolt of his vehicle rearending mine.

He cried. My bumper died. He begged me not to call the police or insurance. I didn’t. My dad was livid.

Dave insisted, he would take care of it, but then after a few weeks he decided he didn’t want to shell out the money for the repairs, and declared it was my fault, and he didn’t owe me anything.

Soon after, he said if I ever broke up with him, he’d kill himself.
So I broke up with him.
I was naïve, not stupid.

There were a couple of other boys in High School.

One I asked to a dance, then canceled on him last minute—because it was immediately after the poop-a-geddon field trip. I was exhausted, embarrassed, and possibly still dehydrated. Also, I hadn’t found a dress.

Another took me to a German opera in Salt Lake. I thought we were going to the school dance. That evening did not end on a high note (Get it? High note? Never mind.)

And who could forget Dan, Dan the checkout man?

For a brief time during high school, I worked in the bakery at a grocery store up the road from my house. Dan worked the registers. Dan was charismatic, very attractive, and—let’s be honest—far too old for me. I was sixteen; he was probably twenty-one, but in teen-girl math that didn’t matter.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time gazing at him from behind the cake case, pretending to box glazed donuts while really just trying to catch a glimpse of his dreamy smile. One afternoon, as he was visiting me in the bakery, and helping himself to the day-old goodies, he asked if I had plans that weekend.
I practically levitated. “I’m free!” I chirped—like a Disney princess on her first hormone rush.

He invited me to go… fishing.

Okay. Not ideal. Not my fantasy date. I had pictured something involving hand-holding, maybe a movie, not… worms. But fine. I could endure nature if it meant spending time with Dan the Dreamboat.

I showed up at the designated meeting spot by the river, heart pounding, lip gloss freshly applied – only to be introduced to his tall, gorgeous… girlfriend.

And the short, unwashed boy this little expedition had apparently been designed to set me up with.

A full bait-and-switch. Literally. We were holding fishing poles.

I was… disappointed.

I stopped checking Dan out after that. I mean, don’t get me wrong—I still looked. I just did it with the appropriate amount of bitterness.

Then there was Harlen, sweet and painfully innocent. Megan would dare me to put my hand on his knee or nibble his ear, and he would literally drool. Nothing ever happened between us — just a lot of giggling. I had absolutely no idea what to do with boys anyway. It was all mysterious nonsense.

All of which is to say: even with the all the dances, even with the drama kids, even with all the naughty jokes I was exposed to having now watched un-edited movies, you might assume I learned something—anything—about romance, or attraction, or even basic anatomy. I did not.

To be fair, my formal education consisted of the elementary school “Maturation Assembly,” after which, my Mom sat me down and explained nothing—nothing—except where she kept her pads and that if I had any questions, I should “look it up in the medical encyclopedia.” Very helpful. Thank you, Mother.

 Then came the state-mandated Sex Ed class:  a single hour in eighth grade informing us that sex would get us AIDS, or get us pregnant, or both. That was it. No follow-up. No questions. Not even a diagram.

So, while my classmates were off experimenting, and pushing boundaries, and straight-up having sex (I learned much later), I remained a cheerful, oblivious bystander.

Which is probably why the next story hit me so hard: I genuinely didn’t know what I didn’t know.

We had this game in my family—rhyming. No rules, no prizes, just spontaneous verbal badminton. It could start anywhere: in the car, over dinner, folding laundry. Someone would pluck a word out of the air, lob it into the silence, and suddenly we were all volleying rhymes like our lives depended on it.

Good words got applause. Bad rhymes got groans. And the game always ended the way it began: abruptly. We’d go back to whatever we were doing… until five minutes later someone would shout another word from across the house and we were off again.

One day, me, Alan, and Mom were in the kitchen when the rhyming switch flipped. Several minutes later we were still going strong:

“Deviate!”

“Operate!”

“Aggravate!”

“Co-operate!”

“I said operate!”

“I know, I said co-operate!”

“Oh. Exonerate!”

“Celebrate!”

“Accommodate!”

We were zinging along, rapid fire, when suddenly I remembered a word from my English spelling test. A beautiful, polysyllabic masterpiece. I beamed.

“Ejaculate!”

A full beat of silence.

Then Mom’s face went red—fire-engine red—and she burst, absolutely exploded, into laughter. Not lady-like, dainty, appropriate laughter. I’m talking shaking, wheezing, eyes streaming, possibly-slightly-pee-your-pants laughter. Alan stared at me, horrified. Then he cracked, too.

I stood there, baffled.
“What? It’s a real word! It means to say something quickly and suddenly!”

This did not help.

Mom was now collapsing against the fridge, giggling so hard she had to slide down to the floor. She tried to wave Dad off when he came to see what was going on (Oh, Investigate! That would have been a good one!), but she couldn’t speak—just gasped, pointed at me, and dissolved again.

I had never killed this hard.

Somewhere in the chaos, Alan managed to choke out that the word had… another meaning. But then refused to explain. So, I did what any curious, and somewhat embarrassed teenager would do:

I looked it up. First in the dictionary, and then in the medical encyclopedia.

This is how I finally started learning about the birds and the bees – from a reference book published in 1978.