Friday, April 9, 2010

Some people are FOURTY.

Location: Still at the dratted computer desk.
Listening to: A lady with a cool British accent talking about overcoming her tragic deformity on Tyra.
Days til Graduation: 59!
Followers: FOUR!!!

Yes! A new follower!! HI PETRI!!! Honestly, you guys have no idea how excited it makes me that people are actually reading this. And that they find it interesting/amusing enough to decide "Hey, I wouldn't mind getting updates when this person posts, even though she's given pretty much all the proof I need to diagnose her with some kind of disorder." Because I freak out over what to write about and whether or not what I say makes sense or if other people will find the things I find funny or if I'll be the only person laughing when I read what I wrote. Which is kind of sad, because:

1.) I don't actually know any of you, so why should I be that concerned with what you think?
2.) This is kind of just an outlet to hone my writing skills and kind of prepare me for the ridiculous amount of English-y type things I'm gonna have to do in college next year.
3.) I'm hilarious, so obviously you're all cracking up at my every word. (I'm also incredibly modest, if you couldn't tell).

Anyway, today I don't need to freak out over what I'm going to write about. Because Briane kind of decided for me. He posed an interesting question in a comment on my last post:

"Have you ever told White Chocolate how you feel? Why wait?"

Funny story, actually. Once upon a time, there was a girl who grew up in a tragically small town in a tragically dull state in the tragically unexciting Midwest. When she got to High School, some kids would actually drive their tractors to work when the weather was nice. That's the kind of town she lived in. But that's a different story.

Because she was from such a small community, she attended a rather small Elementary school where she met a rather tall boy who became one of her best friends. When they graduated from 5th grade and moved on up to the shiny new Middle School, they found themselves to be in the same "house" (this was how grades were divided up into smaller chunks. There were four houses [picture Hogwarts, but with Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin dividing one grade instead of the school]. Each kid in one house would have the same teachers for all their core subjects and would pretty much only associate with the kids in their house) and consequentially had most of their classes together. It was in their World History class one day in sixth grade, exploring the pyramids through a computer program on the school laptops after they had each zoomed in on palm trees (instead of the sarcophagi they were supposed to be looking at) and fighting over which was better, that she realized: she kind-of-sort-of-really-truly liked this boy.  

Like-liked him. She liked the way he made her laugh and teased her in that stupid boy kind of way and the way his hair flipped out when it grew too long and how he was just a really cool, nice boy.

So one day, she wrote him a note explaining her deep, adolescent lust and, in true 12-year-old fashion, had her best friend deliver it to his best friend who delivered it to him. Sadly, his reply said:

You caught me off guard when you wrote me the letter. It was completely out of the blue. I thought about it a lot and I think we should wait until at least 8th grade, then I might consider it, if you ever ask again. I completely understand that you wouldn't want to go out with me after this letter and I too hope we could still be friends until then. Plus, my mom, oh, I won't even start about my mom feeling if I had a girlfriend at this age.

Well, bye.

P.S. Sorry about the bad penmanship, any mispelled words, and/or any other mistakes I made.

P.S. #2 I like no one in particular at all.*

She was sad for about five minutes, then decided they were better off as friends anyway and skipped merrily along her way.

Flash forward a few months. It's near the end of the school year. The girl and the boy are about to become big, bad seventh graders. One day in science, the boy slips her a note. It says:

I've changed my mind. I do like you, I guess. I just didn't know it at the time when I got your note. I would like to date you, and maybe I'll invite you somewhere, sometime.*

She was elated. And they dated (a.k.a. hung out around friends and held hands maybe, sometimes) for the summer, until she realized that, at twelve, she really wasn't ready for a relationship. She broke up with him over an Instant Messanger conversation, telling him he was her best friend and she wasn't ready to date anyone, but maybe, like he said, sometime in the future.

The next year went by with little incident. The boy dated many girls. The girl dated a boy or two. They thought they were very mature as 13-year-olds. The girl got the boy involved in theater (and everyone discovered that he actually had an amazing voice) and the boy helped the girl with her guy problems. However, towards the end of their seventh grade year, the girl realized there was one problem she couldn't ask him about. It was the problem that bothered her the most and that she wished she could get his advice on: she still had feelings for the boy. This was problematic, as he was her very best friend and he was dating someone else.

So she kept it to herself. Well, herself and her closest girl friends. They chattered about him every chance they got. Eventually, it was the beginning of their eighth grade year, their first year of Junior High (because their district had elementary, middle, junior high, and senior high schools), and the boy was once again single. It was a week or two before the girls birthday, and one of her best friends was spending the night. They were talking to the boy over Instant Messanger when the topic of crushes came up (as it was wont to do). They were playing a game of 20 Questions to find out who the other liked. It finally became pretty obvious that they were talking about each other, and the friend convinced the boy to tell her who he liked...as long as the girl couldn't see his answer. So the girl went and sat near the computer, but out of view, and the boy told the friend his answer:

The Girl.

Of course, the friend told the girl right away. The boy planned to ask her out at her birthday party. The night of her party came around, and right before he left, the boy gave her a hug and said, "So, um, do you want to go out with me?" and the girl answered with a resounding "YES!".

They dated happily for the next four months. Until, at a church lock-in, the girl decided she had a crush on a different boy and broke up with the boy to be fair. She told him she loved him like a brother and she still hoped they could be best friends. The boy told her friend that he still loved her and would wait for her to come back to him.

The girl began dating the church-lock-in boy, but after a few weeks, she realized that she didn't like him. She never really had. She had always liked the boy. By the time she broke up with church-lock-in boy, the boy was already dating a new girl. The girl selfishly wished the boy would break up with his new girlfriend, and even had one of her friends tell the boy she still had feelings for him. The boy told the friend that he and his new girlfriend were in love...the real kind. However, in a later conversation with a friend that had recently been broken up with and needed consoling, the boy admitted it had taken him over a year to get over the girl.

While the boy dated the new girl, he slowly left his friends behind. He stopped talking to the girl (although his new girlfriend frequently asked her for advice about him, because she knew nobody knew him better than the girl did) and their friendship suffered greatly.

The girl continued to pine after the boy. She dated other boys, having her first kiss, her first real break-up, and her first experience with being cheated on with boys that never lived up to the standard he had set. The boy continued to date his new girlfriend until the summer before his junior year of high school. He broke up with his new girlfriend while he, the girlfriend, and the girl were all in a summer musical together. The girl thought that this was her shot. She hung out with him more, talked to him more, and flirted with him more. Their friendship started to rebuild. However, he started dating a new girl a month or two after breaking up with the last one.

Like with girlfriend #1, when he began dating girlfriend #2, the boy abandoned his friends again - but to a greater degree than before. He stopped doing the extracurriculars they had all enjoyed together, opting for things his new girlfriend enjoyed instead. He dated new girlfriend #2 until the middle of his senior year. New girlfriend #2 was already in college, and she wanted to take a break. He got mad and suggested they just break up. The girl again saw her chance. She began to talk to the boy more, and hang out with him more, and flirt with him more.

And that's where they are today.


So THAT, my friends, is why I have not told White Chocolate how I feel.

An amusing conversation from lunch today--
Me: I can't get this bag of carrots open. They're childproof! Oh! There we go. (opens carrots)
Nate: Well, duh. You're not a child anymore. Then again, you're barely an adult. That could explain the issues.
Me: Hey! I've been 18 for almost six months!
Nate: (just staring at me) Some people are FOURTY.

*I did not make up any of these notes. I swear to God. I have them saved (taped into my diary from that year). These are real transcriptions of the real things. I hope White Chocolate never reads this, because I will be mortified to the point of death. (Especially because I definitely just broke my rule about not making it obvious who he is. Oops...)

2 comments:

  1. White chocolate... the rarest of all chocolates.

    Some food for thought, some people are forty, true, the rest aren't. Which means 40 year olds are a minority.

    Very amusing post.

    http://thenonreview.com

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  2. I liked Nate's comment -- some people ARE forty. (Or 41.)

    I loved the story. But I can tell you that if people are meant to be together, they will be together no matter how much went on BEFORE they finally realized that. And I will also tell you that it's ALWAYS up to the girl to decide who's going to be together and who's not.

    Sweetie and I went through similar-in-feeling types of ups and downs before she finally let me marry her and I was finally smart enough to do so. So just go talk to White Chocolate already!

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