off she goes — dump

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[div style="0px; width:400px; height:auto; text-align: justify; font-size: 9pt; line-height:13px;"]MELROSE RIDENOUR — we have got to really stay together / and i hope and i pray we will find it someday
• seventeen to eighteen years old.
• melrose ridenour was born as andre patton to jasmin and kalil patton on august twenty seventh in detroit, michigan. even though both of his parents were financially-stable and more than able to raise a child, they simply didn't want him and just didn't believe in abortion, so they put melrose, then andre, up for adoption before he was even born. thankfully, denise and mimi ridenour were able to adopt him within a few weeks.
• denise and mimi named melrose after melrose park, where they met and eventually got married. they rarely actually call him melrose, though — denise calls him "ducky", because of how much he loved ducks as a kid, and mimi just calls him cutesy things like "love" or "darling".
• melrose for sure loves both of his moms equally but denise swears she's his favorite because her first steps were towards her while mimi thinks she's his favorite because he learned her name first. the two of them have been bickering about it for over seventeen years.
• he was so spoiled growing up, but in a good way. denise and mimi sent him to the best private schools they could find and he pretty much got everything he wanted, but denise always kept him humble by insisting that the whole family volunteer at homeless shelters at least once a month. as cheesy as it sounds, it was where he realized how much he actually enjoyed helping other people.
• mimi owns a house in st. joseph, michigan, and the family spends every summer there. when he's not running from all the damn seagulls or buying copious amounts of homemade ice cream, melrose has a part-time lifeguard gig.
• when he got hired as a lifeguard he was so proud of himself that he wouldn't wear anything but his lifeguard sweatshirt for a whole week. mimi was so sick of it she considered burning it.
• he dresses like such a rich white boy, to be honest, like his one (1) outfit is vineyard vines shorts, sperrys, and a st. joseph sweatshirt.
• he met tristan kensington at a benefit dinner and it took approximately five minutes for tristan to be such a fucking dick that melrose punched him. the saltine demon was making rude jokes about mimi and denise and melrose wasn't going to sit there and take that shit.
• he feels like he's failed his race because he can't play basketball or football but he can ski, and in his words, "what brother can really say he'd hit the slopes before he'd hit the field?"
• mimi's british and it's pretty obvious that melrose picked up on a lot of her accent. he even spells certain words the british way, like "colour" and "grey". it got on most of his teachers' nerves but they preferred not pick a fight with his crazy british mum, so he got away with it.
• as for why he has a fear of seagulls, it's because he's like 99% sure they're all cannibals. when he was younger, denise took him to belle isle to feed the ducks. on accident, he threw his turkey sandwich out towards the duck and a seagull immediately ate it, hence the whole cannibal seagull theory (seagulls and turkeys are both birds, so baby melrose thought they were basically the same thing). 
• his first crush was his preschool teacher miss mcelroy. of course nothing ever came of it, but it was still super cute because he would always pick flowers for her and give her the best bracelets his chubby little toddler hands could make.
• he calls denise "momma" and mimi "mum", just to keep things simple.
• he wants to be a teacher when he grows up. he's not sure what subject he wants to teach, but he knows he wants to teach elementary kids because high school kids are wild and middle school kids are actual axe-drenched demons.
• he's a theater kid, but one of the cool ones where they aren't completely obsessed with it and it doesn't get on your nerves. he got into because denise, a huge broadway fan, was always taking him to shows and it just kind of rubbed off on him.
• he's the Mom Friend™ of his group, and he's the one most likely to go into full-on therapist mode whenever any of his friends need to vent because he cares about them and just wants to see them thrive.
• he went down to alabama to visit denise's family once when he was twelve and insisted that he'd never go again. for one, his cousins were way too rowdy for his tastes, and his grandmother kept trying to stuff his face with food because she thought he was too skinny. now that he's older, he's grown to appreciate both and he visits them at least once a year.
• his go-to dance move is the carlton and believe me he's not doing it ironically. the boy just can't dance, but he's always on beat, though.
• he can't play the piano, the guitar, or anything cool like that, but he can play the shit out of a clarinet. he was in band every year until ninth grade, when he switched his focus to theater.
• he never wanted a dog or a cat growing up, so instead he got a guinea pig named cheeks. he rarely ever keeps cheeks in her cage — she's always sitting on his shoulder or just chilling out in his lap.
• he refers to mimi and denise as mom squared upon occasion because he's such a nerd lmao.