Chapter 6: Mental Mischief

Mental Mischief

So, did I mention that I’m a nerd? A complete, 100% nerd in every sense of the word. Wow, that rhymed. I have contacts, I had braces for five years, I have an innate knowledge of math, I have never failed a test in my life, I constantly seek out new things to learn – what side of your body hurts when you have appendicitis? The right. I’m always reading new books – fiction and non fiction – as well as old books. I find just about everything fascinating. Which is probably why I met Roger. You see, he’s a nerd too. He knows a little about everything, and also loves to research. The fact that we match on that one small trait has forged a relationship that I have never experienced before. Why am I telling you this?

Well, part of the reason Roger has the ability to call me at three o’clock in the morning is that he has my phone number. And the other part of the reason (I would kill anyone else that did it) is that we work best randomly, in the middle of the night. We run a website dedicated to the research of just about anything for the fun of it. So I can call him – anytime – with a question, and if he doesn’t know it, we’ll both look it up and see what we can find. He can call me with a question, anytime, and if he doesn’t know it, we’ll get online together and look it up through different search engines and see what we can discover about the topic.

Today is our work day. It’s a free Saturday – its not our weekend to shop for my disabled uncle, and my parents are actually going to be gone all day at some business exposition in the city. The house is mine. So as soon as Roger wakes up, its game on. My job until then is to come up with as many questions as I can.

Most of our website focuses on philosophies and religions – the humanities, really. But we’re adding stuff about science and history and language as well. And on top of it, we open up discussion threads that are either impossible to answer or very difficult to take a stance on – ex: If you were female and get raped, and find out you’re pregnant, would you take a chance on aborting the baby even though it may be your boyfriend’s? And the male side of that would be – If your girlfriend was raped, would you want the baby? Would you break up with her if she wanted an abortion? If you are against, or for the abortion – the common reasons for your stance can not be used to defend your decision.

So you can see why I’m excited. I get free nights and weekends on my phone too, so I’ve been calling his house every five minutes or so to see if he’s up yet. Of course, he’s probably just rolled over with a pillow on his head, getting extremely pissed off at the ringing phone. Or he shut the phone off – he has a habit of doing that because people call him twenty four hours a day. He’s a sucker for doing favors for people – another good quality – he’s an absolute sweetheart. But he barely sleeps, sometimes he’ll go a week without sleeping more than three or four hours. I probably should have stopped calling after the first six times, but I couldn’t help it. I’m an impatient person.

Considering I hadn’t gotten much sleep, that probably helped my inability to wait for him to wake up on his own. It was only eight o’clock in the morning, and I hadn’t slept for more than six or seven hours. But I, like I said, am very excitable on the grounds of being a nerd. So, I picked up the phone again. Hit send twice. Held it up to my ear, waiting for the standard five and a half rings. I had it times so perfectly. The first ring occurred right around six seconds into the call. Lasted three seconds, waited three seconds – and so on until 00:32 rolled around, where the message machine kicked in. I could even hear the female computerized voice kick in: Hello, you have reached phone number 0-1-3-5-5-5-4-7-4-9. We are unavailable to take your call. Please leave a message. Beep! I usually hung up right after the machine started to speak, so the woman ended up saying “Hell!” to me. Fun, right?

Anyway, I hit send. I heard a half of a ring. And then a very deep, very pissed off voice.

“This better be fucking good, or you’re going to find my foot shoved so far up your ass you’re going to throw it up.” I recognized it as a very tired, very pissed off Roger.

“Hey, grumpy. That’s no way to talk to me. I love you, member?” I said in a very high pitched cute voice. He growled. “We’re gonna work today, right?”

“Oh, hey Storm.” He said in his normal, higher voice. “I’m sorry for yelling. People have been calling every few hours.”

“Its okay. I’m going to make you get up though, sleepy. We got lots of stuff to do and my parents are gone, so I can talk freely without worrying about them.” I said excitedly. He growled.

“Can I make some coffee?” He asked. I heard him yawn in the background.

“Yup. But I’m staying on the phone with you, because last time you shut the phone off and went back to sleep. I don’t care if you have to take a shit, I’m staying on the phone with you.”

“Damn, girl. Alright. But you gotta hang on a second. Alright?”

“Okay.” I replied. I felt bad about waking him up, but it was for the greater good. The sooner he was up, the more we could work. My parents wouldn’t be gone all day, after all, just most of it. And every time they were home I got paranoid. We weren’t dating or doing anything illegal, but they knew how much I talked to Roger, and it wasn’t like we always talked about the most kosher subjects. Abortion, homosexuality, math, space, fetishes, the mind, religions, philosophies. It must have sounded weird to my parents.

A minute or two later he picked the phone up again. “You ever had one of those pisses that seems to last forever?”

I laughed. “Uh huh.” He talked about the weirdest things sometimes, and I had to humor him.

“Don’t you hate those? You’re sitting there, or in my case, standing there, and you’re wondering ‘when is this ever going to stop? Jesus, I must have pissed out a gallon of water by now!”

“Uh huh.” I repeated, trying not to laugh too hard. I understood perfectly. “Why?”

“Oh, that’s what just happened. That’s all. Sorry it took me so long. I just…couldn’t…stop.” He apologized. I laughed.

“Its okay. So do you need to get coffee before we start working, or can I start throwing ideas at you already? I know you’re kinda slow in the morning…” I trailed off, giggling. He wasn’t so much slow as he was grumpy in the mornings.

“I started that, too.” He admitted. “So what are you so jumpy about this morning? Did you have an epiphany or just too much sleep and coffee?”

“I’m just excited. I don’t do coffee, and if anything, I’m probably sleep deprived. What were you going to talk to me about today anyway? You kept me up last night and mentioned at some point during the day that today was going to be a work day. What are we working on?”

“Well, I had this idea. Oops, hang on, coffee’s ready to be poured.” I waited patiently, hearing a crash in the background. “Shit!” I heard him holler, and a few seconds later he returned to the phone.

“Anyway,” He continued.

“Are you okay?” I interjected, wondering if he had broken something.

“Yeah, I didn’t break anything, on me or the dishes. Don’t worry. ANY way.” He said with emphasis, “I was hoping that maybe we could have a part of the site that was like a mini-dictionary for our users. You know, it we use a slang term or an uncommon term, they can go through and look it up.”

“And…” I waited for him to continue. “How are we going to go about doing this?”

“Well, I was thinking that maybe you could use some JavaScript so it wouldn’t be too hard…”

“JavaScript won’t work for that, and on top of it, JavaScript sucks. I’ll have to use databases. Next?”

“Well in that case, I was hoping we could just have it simple, you know, not case sensitive, just words or phrases that it could search out and return a page with the definition on it.”

“You’re a pain in my ass.” I commented, the wheels already turning in my rusty brain. I hadn’t touched the programming of the site in at least a month, and my PHP brain had lapsed. “Case sensitivity is not a problem; I can’t do misspellings without a lot of work though, so they’re going to have to know how to spell the word. And I suppose you’ll want a back part so we can enter new data in?”

“I love you and your brain?” He offered up hopefully. I sighed, with more dramatic feeling than I actually intended. I didn’t mind doing it – it was an exercise in my coding skills.

“Only my brain?” I asked him, laughing.

“No ma’am. All of you. Every little bit.”

“So soon after your break up too…” I joked. I knew what he meant.

“Ah, but babe, you’re different than Tina. She was…here. You’re…amazing.”

“Uh huh.” I said simply, as if challenging him to continue.

“Oh, stop fucking with me! I had a hard night last night.”

“I know, I know.” I conceded. “I’ll leave you alone for now. But I expect answers at some point.”


I switched on my computer and let it boot up. I heard his computer in the background of the phone, and realized we had done it at the same time.

“I’ll make you a deal.” I offered to him. “I will do the coding, if you can make the form and spell check it so I don’t have to go back later and change it all around. You know how to make the forms, right? Just copy and paste. That way you can design it however you want.”

“I know. I’m not completely retarded. And you’ll do the code.”

“Yes, I already said that. It should only take maybe an hour, maybe a little bit longer. I doubt it. Not if I do the copy and paste thing, too.”

“Okay, so I’m glad that’s all working out. Next…umm, what are we both gonna research today?”

“I was thinking of looking into the Darwinism vs. Creationism.” I offered up as conversation.

“And I remember you talking about that Jonathon Smith dude the other day...."

“Ah, yeah, I remember that. How are we doing people?”

“Hopefully you’re doing one person, not people…its hard to do more than one at once, so I’ve heard.” I interjected, laughing. I could almost hear him roll his eyes.

“You have a dirty mind, little girl. I meant,” He paused for effect, “Are we doing biographies as well as papers outlining the controversies of the people? Or do I have to do something on his specific work?”

“I don’t care. The more stuff we have up, the better. We’re trying to build a database, remember? An intellectual hotspot, so to speak. A creative, intelligent environment. So its your choice.”

“Okay, so anything goes.” He concluded. “You want to meet up online in a minute or two, or just stay on the phone? Its free on weekends, right?”

“We can stay on the phone. I like your voice – its hot.”

“I’d almost say you were flirting with me, bard.” He used a seldom mentioned nickname. The first time he had heard me sing, he called me a bard.

“Nah, I’m just appreciating your hotness. That’s okay, right?”

“So you’re not flirting?” He asked me. I heard the messenger noise in the background, and realized he had signed on.

“I always flirt.” I agreed. I didn’t want to push him.

“Uh huh.”

“Its gonna be a long day today, isn’t it…” I trailed off, and clicked the “Buzz” button on my messenger, waiting for its effect to happen several thousand miles away, in Missouri.

I heard the doorbell sound on the other end of the phone and waited the millisecond for the noise of frustration. He hated the “Buzz” sound, and I loved the way he was always at a loss for words after I hit it. Especially when I surprised him with it.

“Damn it, Storm! Why!” He growled. I giggled.

“’Cuz its funny, of course!” I said, falling into the high pitched voice I used with him to stay out of trouble when I did that stuff to him.

The strangled noises continued for a moment before dying off into a low, steady growl. Sometimes he reminded me of a dog.

“I heart you!” I typed into the messenger box and pressed send. I heard the “Ding” indicating a message had been received. The growl diminished to nothing. Trying to hold in my giggles, I pressed the “Buzz” button again.

“If you pressed that –“ DING DONG! “God damn it, Storm I’m going to fuck you up someday!”

“You were saying I was flirting earlier? I’m not the one telling you I’m going to fuck you someday.” I responded, laughing openly. The frustrated, choking noises erupted from his throat again.

“If you don’t watch yourself, little girl, you’re going to find yourself over my knee.” He growled, his voice deepening.

“If you don’t watch yourself, little girl, you’re going to find yourself over my knee.” I mimicked him in the lowest voice I could imagine.

“I mean it. I’ll fly up there, knock on your door, drag you outside, and spank you in front of your entire neighborhood. And make you count.” He growled again. I couldn’t really help it – I was melting thinking about him doing that. But I also couldn’t let it go. I pressed the “Buzz” button once more. Seconds later, I heard the resounding doorbell from his computer. Choking noises ensued.

“Yup.” I agreed with myself as he lay at a loss for words on the other end. “Long fuckin’ day.”