You see, I went to high school with Maria Bello at Archbishop Carroll in Radnor, PA. Will Smith also went to my high school but only freshman year then he left to go to Overbrook High. Note to everyone out there: Keep in touch with every person you meet in high school. You never know which one will end up becoming a huge movie star that just may be able to help you with your career. Or, at the very least, make you the Turtle to his Vince.

Anyway, I guess I technically didn’t go to high school with Maria because she was a year ahead of me in the Class of ’85. Back then Carroll wasn’t co-ed. However, it did go co-ed after I graduated. As a matter of fact, my class was its last non-co-ed class. The one thing that made it more bearable not being co-ed was the fact that, unlike some other boy/girl Catholic high schools in the area, ours was attached so there were opportunities to see members of the opposite sex throughout the day. Mainly, in the library and out back during lunch. What’s funny was no one ever went to the library to do work but to socialize. It always looked like a nightclub. Wall to wall people. Hard to get a table. All that was missing was loud music, a cloud of cigarette smoke, and a bouncer working the door. The year after I graduated I went back to visit my newly co-ed Alma matter and when I walked by the library it was a vast wasteland. Not one soul was in it except for the librarian. Now that you no longer needed to go to the library to score a date, no one bothered to use it anymore.

The other way to see members of the opposite sex was if you had an advanced placement class. Which, thankfully I did. The girls either came to the boys’ school or vice versa depending on the class. I guess this was sort of a hormonal reward for the more cerebral students. When I was a freshman, I would see Maria a lot in the halls and, just like today, she was hot. But the reason I said I didn’t go to high school with her is because I never spoke to her. Not a sentence, not a word, not a syllable. And there are two very good reasons for this. One was because I was extremely shy around girls. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe but it’s true. The second reason is because Maria had an older brother named Joe.

Joe Bello was a hulking behemoth of a man who was on the football team and was quite capable of crushing your face into powder if he so desired. Joe was also very protective of his little sister. I know this because I remember being in the hall during a class change and seeing Maria when I overheard another freshman remark to his friend, “That girl is hot.” His friend began to panic and said in a squeaky little voice, “Man, shut up! That is Joe Bello’s little sister. If he hears you saying that or even sees you looking at her, he will kick your ass!” Needless to say after that, I was more determined than ever not to talk to Maria Bello. Even if I wasn’t shy, I didn’t have a death wish.

Now all these years later, I have to relish the irony that back then Joe would kill you if you even looked at his sister in the hall, but now you can look at his sister in her movies. Depending on the movie, you can look at a lot of his sister. And with the magic of DVD, you can pause it and keep looking. Gotta love that full frontal digital clarity. Many of my fellow alumni have gotten a long belated wish: we finally got to see Maria Bello naked. Which makes me wonder, how does Joe feel about this? In hindsight, could it have been his over-protectiveness that pushed her to be such an exhibitionist in her films? Instead of resenting him all of those years, should we now be thanking him? More importantly, can he still kick our ass?

I wish I had run into Maria when I lived in LA. It would have been fun to introduce myself as a fellow Pat (short for Patriots, the name of our teams). Then I could’ve asked her to tell me exactly how they filmed that scene on the steps. Those hard, cold wooden steps. Was padding involved? Please, Maria, don’t leave anything out. And tell the story nice and slow. Oh, and if by some freak chance of nature, Joe is reading this blog, all I can say to him is:

“Yo, Joe, I saw your little sister naked last night. Full frontal, dude! Full frontal!”