Coming from a military family, you learn to take people at their word and to move fast, because you don't know when the offer will be taken off the table. And you never know what good or bad can come from it.

I was in Fort Polk, Louisiana, when I first REALLY noticed girls. This was also my first REAL experience in America, since I had spent the previous 7 years in Berlin, Germany. I quickly made friends with the standard misfit crowd that would be my support system to this day: The low rung of the social ladder, but we liked it just fine. We played D&D, and listened to Anthrax, and sneakily watched R rated movies when our parents had gone out to dinner. And we were mostly guys.

Being the social misfits we were, we really had no idea how to interact with the "fairer sex." One friend, Albert, would moon girls he liked, which quickly got him a unique reputation around our cul de sac and school. But at least this was his doing, my interaction was thrust upon me from higher up on the ladder.

Kim, one of the popular girls (as popular as you can be when you are 10), who ran with all the other cool "Townies," called me up at my house one night and we talked for an hour, which is an eternity to a ten year old. I couldn't believe it! I had been noticed by a cute, popular girl. We had some class together, or at least lunch, and that's how she got to see the goods! At the end of the conversation, she asked me if I wanted to be her boyfriend. I didn't even have to think about it. As soon as I got off the phone, called my best friend at the time, Mike, and told him the news. He was super supportive. Ah! the naivete of youth.

The next day, at school, when I saw Kim I went up to her and said hi, and stood next to her and her group of "cool kids." She looked me up and down like I was made of mold, and bright green. The look in her eyes and the smiles on her friends' face told me all I needed to know. I had been duped! A sucker punch right to the soul. I made a hasty but stoic exit to the boys room where I broke down and cried for what seemed like an hour. Mike followed me into the bathroom, where he gave me a hug and told me that she was a stuck up girl, and I didn't need her. I just kept asking "Why me? Why would she play this cruel trick on me?"

A question that I have asked myself with almost every girl I've been with since then.

Exes and Ohs follows that broken boy as he becomes a man to see if there is a girl who doesn't play tricks.