�

Okay, so it�s not how they really respond, but it�s how they should. To all of my fellow women out there: We have nothing to prove.

I�ve never experienced childbirth personally, but clearly, our place in heaven will be comparatively better than the boys�. Kind of like our apartments.

I just mentioned it a second ago, but it bears repeating: We. Have. Nothing. To. Prove.

And I learned this lesson the hard way.

It was the spring of 1997. A Friday. And I was a senior in high school. Our varsity softball team was planning a get together at April�s house that night.

Now let me tell you a little something about our high school softball get togethers. The last two I had been to (both the previous year), the baseball team got wind of, and decided they were going to crash and try to scare the ever-loving shit out of us.

The year before, we�d been hanging out at the house where a friend of the softball team (Brandi) was house-sitting. We were innocently (I use the term loosely) playing cards in the dining room when all of the sudden, all of the power in the house went off. Of course there was ear drum-piercing shrieking, swearing, and pretty much just mass chaos. Then, someone spotted a figure running through the back yard. (A little back story here�I grew up in a small town in Northern Michigan, a backyard there usually consists of about 20 acres of coniferous/deciduous wilderness. If you�re picturing camp horror movies, you�re picturing it right.) More screaming, swearing, and chaos. The baseball team (those stupid assholes) had snuck into the garage and cut the power, and then totally trashed our cars out front with shaving cream and condoms (I doubt those 17 and 18 year-old boys were using much of either. Ha, she says, finally getting a dig in 6 years later.).

A few weeks after that get-together, we�d planned a party at Emily�s on a Saturday night. That time was mostly junior and senior girls (the varsity team the next year had one freshman and a couple of sophomores on it, which comes into play later), and we all snuck out of the house to go (don�t ask me why) out into a planted field across the street from the house. After getting shocked with the electric fence, a car came by which we of course thought were the cops (turned out to be members of the baseball team) drove by, and we all dove into the field so as not to be seen. Of course, the field had recently been fertilized by cow manure, so you can imagine how well that went over. We cleared the field, and me, April, Emily, and Andrea decided that we were going to go back to Emily�s house (everyone else stayed out there).

Well, the four of us are walking back to the house down the dark gravel road lined with huge trees, when all of a sudden, this guy dressed head-to-toe in camouflage (with his face painted as well) jumps out of the bushes along the side of the road and directly in front of us.

Now, this part of the story is a really interesting case study in human reaction and the fight-or-flight defense. Because after about half a second of us looking at him looking at us, me, April and Emily screamed bloody murder and grabbed onto each other for dear life. Andrea, on the other hand, took off down the road like Carl Lewis on speed. The guy looked at us for a moment and then turned and started chasing Andrea. Next came our ardent screams of encouragement to Andrea along the lines of �Run, Andrea! RUN!� The rest of the softball team came running down to where we were huddled to see what was going on, but by then Andrea and her attacker were already far into the cover of darkness down the road, and judging by the sheer speed of that girl, probably a good couple of miles away.

About a half an hour later, both Andrea and camouflage boy came walking back towards us. It turned out to be her boyfriend�the baseball team�s catcher. Keith, if you�re reading this, thanks for nothing. That day shattered any illusions I may have had about how I�d probably be the only one to survive if I was ever in a group of people that were one day attacked by an axe murderer.

Well, we�d decided that this get together at April�s was going to be different. Much like the previous two parties we�d thrown, we held every girl on the team to the strictest confidence about this shindig. However, the few seniors on the team (myself included) had finally gotten hip to the fact that no matter how secret the party is supposed to be, someone (probably a sophomore or freshman or softball player with a baseball playing boyfriend) is going to let the secret out, and the baseball team will try to crash the party and scare the crap out of us.

I had driven to Emily�s after school so she could pick up her stuff to take to April�s, and while she was in her room, I hung out in her kitchen playing with her dog Bess (Bess was half German Shepard and half Timber wolf, and one of the coolest dogs I have ever known). Bess tired of playing with me after a few minutes and so I was stuck in the kitchen with nothing to do. But sitting on her kitchen counter, I found the answer to all of our problems. A can of shaving cream sat there, innocently, and an idea sparked in my brain. We weren�t just going to sit in wait for the baseball team to come and get us. This time, we were going to get them back.

I went into Emily�s room and asked her to pick out something black and sexy and prepare to do some funky poaching. Okay, not really. I told her to get black sweats if she had any, and to get any balloons she had in the house. We proceeded to call every girl on the team and told them to do the same, and also to bring Super Soakers if they had them.

At 10 o�clock, the sun had set, and we were all dressed head-to-toe in black with shoe polish smeared across our faces, and were filling up the last of about 85 water balloons. We looked good. The girls with the Super Soakers (myself included) fanned out about the house and into the tree line surrounding it (April also lived in East Fuckachuck, if you�ll pardon the expression, and even had a swift flowing crick coming out of the hills and running a stones throw from the back of her house). We stationed other girls around the porch with water balloons, and as a final insult, put two on top of the roof above the garage with an entire bucket full.

A half an hour later, a Chevy suburban came crawling up April�s driveway (which was a two track through the woods) with it�s lights cut. Those boys thought they were being soooooo stealth.

They too fanned about the woods and separating into groups of twos and threes (there were probably 8 of them total, compared with11 of us�Katie, the coaches daughter, had to go home early). They gave out their lame signal to go (a duck call) and two of them, Wes and Matt, seriously walked within two feet of me and didn�t even know it. When they got about 20 feet from the house, I unloaded my Super Soaker on them, and we unleashed hell.

Those boys had no idea what had hit them. I think I even heard one of them scream like a little girl.

We came out of the woodwork and doused them with water. The girls on the roof unloaded all of the water balloons, and then dumped what was left in the bucket right on Joe�s head. It was totally awesome.

We chased them toward the Chevy, which was threatening to take off without two of their guys who were trying desperately to catch up and dive into the back door which was open, and I remember throwing our last water balloon, with perfect accuracy, right through the open back door just as the last guy got in and was closing it.

We stood there cheering for a good fifteen minutes, celebrating our victory, and then we went inside to finish off the rest of the pizza April�s parents had bought us. Fifteen more minutes into that, and the celebration stopped cold.

�Hey, where�s Trish?� Kristi said suddenly, and we all stopped and looked around. It was hard to tell who was who with all of us dressed alike and painted black. But Trish wasn�t with us. Kristi went into the bathroom and then came back with a scared look on her face (she was a sophomore, as was Trish). Trish wasn�t there, either. We scoured the rest of the house. We went outside and looked everywhere we could think. She wasn�t anywhere.

The freshman was scared and freaking out. The sophomores were crying. The juniors were apathetic and threatening to go inside and pretty much just pissed off. The other seniors and myself knew that we couldn�t just forget about her. I reminded everyone that we needed to fan out and check the crick. If she�d slipped on a wet rock and fell, Very Bad Things could have happened. So of course that freaked everyone out more. We looked. And looked. And looked. And we could not find Trish. I was on the verge of calling the Sheriff department when at 1:30am, the phone rang. April answered.

She talked for a few minutes and then hung up, turning to us.

�The guys have Trish,� she said, �they said all of us have to go over to Matt�s house and we�ll take it from there.�

I won�t go into the process of hostage negotiations, but let�s suffice it to say that two hours later I was really pissed off and threatened to call Matt�s parents and wake them up. Soon after that, we got Trish back.

But not without giving up Michelle, the freshman. We all drove all of the way back out to April�s and waited for another half an hour for them to bring Michelle back. They instructed us to stay inside, proceeded to duct tape her to a tree in April�s yard and then left.

And that was the last time I ever tried to get even with boys. It�s a law of nature that no matter how low girls stoop, boys will stoop lower. It�s a cosmological constant.

That weekend, yes, the guys team may have gotten the last word, but the girls still know better. Softballs are bigger than baseballs, anyway.

"Faith: You can't trust guys. Buffy: You can trust some guys. Really, I've read about them." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer