Chapter 29: Family Relations

My brother is living up here in Virginia now and yesterday he left to go to Florida and retrieve his family. Is it bad of me to not want them to come? They were all up here about a month ago so that they could look for houses and such, and I couldn’t take it. He has two little girls and they are squealers, his 4 year old talks like she’s two and runs around the house on all fours pretending to be a dog. The two year old isn’t so bad, when she’s not squealing. I know, I’m a bad aunt. My sisters agree with me though, they aren’t too thrilled at the thought of them occupying my parent’s house until they can move into the one that they are buying.
My mom had a good point though, one night when my sisters and I were complaining about the seemingly unruly behavior of our nieces. She said that they are not undisciplined or unruly, they are normal. It’s just not normal for the kids we have in our family. I mean, my nephew has a form of Autism and he still knows the rules better then these two perfectly normal (aside from being spoiled) girls. I guess we just aren’t used to having spoiled children in the family. None of us were what we would call spoiled and none of my siblings really spoil their children. My other brother and his wife make their son earn the money to buy things he wants (he’s only 7) such as movies and snack items. If my other nephew throws a fit he doesn’t get a, “oh, please don’t do that,” he gets a, “okay, time out.” And he goes to the corner and stays there until he’s ready to come out and play. Where did the spoiling come from? Oh wait, that’s right, their mother. I don’t think my brother got a large enough dose of his sisters when he was younger, otherwise he would know how manipulative we are and he would have learned some survival skills and he would have learned how to get his own way every once in a while. Instead, she runs the show and he’s her personal assistant who makes sure everything she wants happens. I’m sorry. This may come across as mean. I love my brother, I do. I just don’t know how I feel about his family.
It doesn’t help that the whole family has this understanding of our sense of humor and she is missing the connection somehow. No matter how much time she spends with us she thinks that we are the meanest, cruelest, people. And while that may be true for the circle of people she knows, there are certainly meaner people then us. When I was at Sweet Pea’s house this past November the way her family spoke to one of her sister’s made me want to cry, so see? We can’t be the meanest people, and in a family where everyone understands that it’s just that way and it’s not a form of verbal abuse, it works. Ringmaster just doesn’t get it. And now she’s been christened “Ringmaster”. Fabulous.
So while my family prepares to have an extra family in the house, I am preparing for my puppy to come spend the night tomorrow night. I’m pretty excited. I just have to remind myself that no matter how cute the puppy is, he’ll probably pee and poop just about anywhere right now. If I keep that in mind then I will still love him at the end of the weekend.

Chapter 28: The One Who Makes You Laugh

I haven’t written in quite some time. Remember that stress thing I was trying to deal with? It’s taking on a physical form, I have blown up to 300 pounds and started to sport a mustache. I’m totally kidding. But I have started to grind my teeth in my sleep. At least I think I have. A couple of weeks ago my tooth started to hurt, thinking it was a cavity I tried to ignore it hoping it would disappear (since we all know how I feel about the dentist office). When the tooth ache turned in to a “teeth” ache I began to think maybe sinuses were the culprit. When the “teeth” ache turned into a Charlie horse in my jaw I began to seek help. So about a week ago I called the dentist to set up an appointment to get my teeth cleaned, and possibly fix my jaw if that was an option. But later that same night that I made the appointment my jaw hurt so badly that I went to Patient First. The doctor there…well, he’s not what I would call the best, but probably only because he didn’t have an answer for me. He prescribed some sinus medication and told me that if the pain didn’t stop I might have to go to an Ear, nose, and throat doctor. Yippee. The next morning I went to the dentist expecting to have to get an emergency root canal or at least have a cavity. Good news, no cavities, no need for a root canal; bad news, my jaw still hurt. I’m almost out of that prescription and I’m not fond of taking 4 ibuprofen at a time, so I suppose next week I need to try and get over to my regular doctor and see what he thinks. In the mean time I am wearing a mouth guard at night, which makes me feel a little weird, like a football player, or a horse. I am examining the mouth guard to see where the wear and tear is. Sure enough it’s on the side that hurts all the time, so it looks like I either grind or clinch my teeth. I bet this was probably the most interesting thing that you have read in a long time. Glad I could help.
Ok on to topics that I personally enjoy. A bit of sad news first though, this past Tuesday was the last time I work with TDH for a good month. We may run into each other here and there and we may have a team meeting that we’ll see each other at, but I have been so used to working only with him during our training classes that I think I may go through withdrawal. The good news is that this past Tuesday I worked with TDH. There was only suppose to be a night class on Tuesday and I was supposed to teach it, but our manager’s manager (our manager is out of town) called me earlier on Tuesday saying that there was a girl there who had been told it would be okay to come to the noon class because she couldn’t make the 5 o’clock class. The big miscommunication there is that there wasn’t a 12 o’clock class. But I live no more then 5 minutes away from the building so I agreed to come down there and make a special class for this girl. She kept apologizing and I told her not to worry about it because all it meant was that I didn’t have to teach the afternoon class, which would be about 20 times bigger then what we had going on. So I thanked her for the mistake. TDH came in when we were finishing up and he just smiled and told me how he got the voicemail too late but thought to himself that I would jump at the idea of teaching a one on one rather then teaching the evening class. He knows me too well. I finished with that class and then TDH and I spent the hour in between to fix up the room for the larger class. Manager’s manager came up to us when we were in the hallway and started to talk about our new store opening in about a month, as she was talking I looked over and TDH was just looking at me. I smiled and he just kept making eye contact with me. I was always under the assumption that you make eye contact with the person who is speaking. Which I quickly returned to doing. Later, when TDH was teaching the class he mentioned eye contact to the trainees, and how you make eye contact, but don’t hold it for too long because then it becomes a stare down. He said that 10 seconds was way too long to hold eye contact, and the whole time he is saying this he is looking directly at me so I start laughing because it was more then 10 seconds and I think we were having a stare down. But he always does that. When we have team meetings he is always looking at me when he talks and I don’t know if I am just the only one who is actually looking at him when he talks or what. Then he always uses me as an example, the last team meeting we were talking about something and he used me as an example for it, giving me a nice weekend in Florida. It was fantastic, unfortunately I no longer have family connections in Florida to make that vacation a reality. Now, I realize that I may be reading into everything with TDH because I want to read into everything. I want him to like me, doesn’t mean he does.
I like to pretend that I am the only girl his age that he knows. Of course this is impossible, unless I somehow isolate him from all that he does know. There’s a thought…no, I won’t do that, it’s too much of an undertaking and to be honest I think I am too busy for that right now. I’ll admit though it hasn’t stopped me from pretending that he is madly in love with me but afraid to say anything about it because of how small our team is and how closely we have to work together. Which of course, in the end, just can’t end well.
I’d like to believe that we are at least friends, because it certainly does feel like we are. I don’t think you make that much eye contact with someone who you don’t want to at least be friends with right? But sometimes I wonder if I am just coming across as stalkerish if I e-mail him or leave him a message on the ever so popular Myspace. I’m not about to have a friend DTR (define the relationship) with a guy at work. I just hope he would feel comfortable enough to tell me to not stalk him anymore, and then I would stop…at least stop letting him know I was. Ha-ha.
To jump back into the story from this past Tuesday, after the class was finished up he was writing up evaluations on people that didn’t do so well on the test and he was trying to write, “in light of” but I may have already mentioned, he is a horrible speller. So he asked me if “light” would be l-i-g-h-t or if it would be l-i-t-e. I sat there for a second and finally said, “You know, I don’t think l-i-t-e is actually a word. I think it’s a slang spelling.” To which he replied, “Bud lite,” and just had that look of, “of course it’s a word.” I only looked at him and said, “Seriously? You’re going to get your vocabulary from Budweiser?” He chose to put l-i-g-h-t but I don’t think he fully came to terms with the fact that Budweiser would lie to him about spelling. Sigh. He’s my favorite person to work with.
To go along with this, however it’s possible that only I can see the connection, I will admit to the fact that I love the show “Sex and the City”. I know, bad me, slap myself across the face at least two times. I don’t know, there’s something that appeals to me about it. Of course I am getting the edited version on TBS rather then the full on scandalous version on HBO. Still there are times when I just change the channel. I don’t necessarily agree with the idea per se of the show, but there are good quotes. These women, aside from there hussiness of sleeping around, relate very closely to my friends and I. There was an episode on the other night talking about Modelizers, which by definition are similar to womanizers, except it’s only with models. Luckily I don’t have this exact problem in Richmond, Virginia. But Sarah Jessica Parker’s character is a journalist and she writes about her experiences and so she’s doing research on why it’s so difficult to find a descent guy, especially as you are always getting older.
The part I liked best was the introduction of Mr. Big. Which name Sarah Jessica Parker’s character has given him. It’s a lot like what I do, I give people these nicknames to protect their identity so I don’t feel bad posting this or anything like that. Through the episode she thinks that Mr. Big is a modelizer. At one point he is asking her what she does and she explains that she writes a column and is writing about men who date models and asks him if he had any insight into that (in a sarcastic, “I’ve already figured you out” way). He says, “Just that they are the luckiest men,” or something to that effect. She writes…or narrates, after this party where she had that conversation with Mr. Big, that she had never felt so invisible in her life. Mr. Big tracks her down near the end of the episode to the coffee shop that she sometimes writes her articles at, while she’s writing a somewhat bitter approach to modelizers. He comes in and sits across from her and says he’s on his way to a meeting but wanted to tell her that, “After a while, you just want to be with the one who makes you laugh” regarding their conversation about modelizers. I thought it was the greatest thing for a man to say. By the way, they end up dating.
I think it goes both ways. Men sometimes just want to be with the woman who makes them laugh and girls sometimes just want to be with the man who makes them laugh. It kind of reminds me of this story a lady at church told. She was teaching a lesson on marriage so she decided to ask her children what they looked for in a future spouse. She had her 17 year old son and a 14 year old daughter. When she asked her daughter she said that she got a far off look on her face and said, “He’ll be tall and blond and athletic.” She moved on to her son (at a different time) and asked him what he would want. He said, “mom, honestly, I just want someone who doesn’t annoy me after three months.” …Good answer. You can tell by the answer who has had more experience with the whole dating game.
Take home message here is that my new motto in life is that after a while you just want to be with the one who makes you laugh. Here’s the B.H. salute to Mr. Big.

Chapter 27: Something Has to Change

So I am about to tell you about the weirdest dream that had it’s own stream of consciousness. I don’t remember how the dream started, but I’ll start where I remember. I was putting together those little trains that are magnetic, you know, there for little kids and the one end hooks to the end of another train piece because a little magnetic bulb at each end. I was having trouble with them because I wanted to put something else magnetic in between them, also some of the pieces had circles cut out of their tops so that they could fit little Chinese checkers pegs in them. Suddenly the train was actually a boat and instead of Chinese checker pegs they were people. There was someone that was kind of hooked up to the back of the boat with a kite like apparatus attached to him. He was trying to get a birds eye view or something like that, of a shark. Then the weather changed suddenly so everyone was trying to get to their stations (The little circles for the pegs were the stations). The guy with the kite like thing got pulled away by the wind and the chick on the ship was saying something about her station and one of the guys told her it was the most dangerous spot on the boat. So she went with the two guys to a different station and hers got crushed by a giant pole. Then the boat was gone and I was the girl suddenly and I was worried about that shark we had been trying to watch but also worried about finding everyone else. I found one guy but the other one and the kite guy most have died or something. We were rescued and taken back to land.
Then suddenly (I hate dream transitions because they really don’t make any sense) I was with Baby Face and we were getting ready to walk into this old lady’s home. She had a million and one cats and I was trying to avoid stepping on them as I walked with the lady, she seemed to know that we were coming. I had a blanket wrapped around me like I had when they had pulled me out of the ocean, so I felt like I had just survived a ship wreck. She handed me these two books, the covers were leather and they looked like they locked together at one point and let’s face it, they looked really creepy. She said, “I finished reading your books” and when she said that I felt like I had written them. My response was, “Oh really? I haven’t even read my books yet.” And she told me not to. Not because they sucked but because just as their appearance what was written on the inside was more creepy then the look of the books.
Then Baby Face and I sat down next to each other on the lady’s couch sitting across from her. There was other things on the couch (looked like little packages she was getting ready to send out) so Baby Face and I were sitting really close to each other. She handed each of us what looked like a Christmas Card. On the cover was a picture of my Aunt and Uncle who probably haven’t seen each other for three years now, but they were smiling and waving at the camera like they were normal people (not the white trash that they normally appear (and are) to be). I glanced quickly at Baby Face’s and I swore that I saw my name on his in nice old lady cursive. I wanted to know what it said about me but I knew that was inappropriate to start reading his card. The inside of my card was completely filled with writing on both sides and the first line was, “Because how often do we see these two together?” referring to my aunt and uncle. I was tired (probably from being shipwrecked) so I started to lay my head on Baby Face’s arm but then I pulled up because I wasn’t sure if that was alright. There was some cue that it was okay so I put my head back down and I started to fall asleep, but I was concentrating on my breathing, I didn’t want to snore and I didn’t want to drool, but when I breathed through my nose I was congested and when I opened my mouth to breath it sounded a little funny too, but finally I just fell asleep. When I woke up Baby Face was asleep too. I panicked for a second because I remembered the packages on the couch next to me and worried that while I was asleep I laid on them. But they were gone and the old lady was still sitting where she had been but there were other people there too, one being my sister who just had a baby. The lady told me that she had already mailed out the packages a couple of months ago, apparently Baby Face and I had been sleeping for 5 months! I started to wake him up all panicked because not only is 5 months a long time but he had been sleeping through his mission. It was a big controversy with the people in the room and they all blamed me for it. This guy that I didn’t know decided that they should grab another piece of paper and reassign him for his mission since he had already missed 5 months of where he was supposed to be. For some reason I was objecting to this because it wasn’t fair, Baby Face had been looking forward to going where he was assigned. Someone in all this chaos I started to talk to my sister and she was saying something about how big she was and I asked if she was pregnant again and she gave me this look and I was like, “Oh duh, of course not that would take a couple more months” (since her husband is in Iraq right now). Which actually only upset her more so I left everyone and walked outside of the room and ended up going into a kitchen.
Someone was throwing muffins and biscuits onto storage shelves for cooling. I was looking at them thinking it would be fun to open my own restaurant or bakery when I noticed that something behind the shelves was leaking. I saw a miniature pitcher hanging from the wall full of some liquid that looked like water. I followed where the drips were going and they were falling into a container that held kiwis. I turned to the only other person in the room and called out to her, she scowled at me and I just innocently smiled and she said, “Oh you little heart warmer” and smiled back. Then I asked her what was in the pitcher and she said that she didn’t know and didn’t want to find out. So suddenly in my brain someone was trying to kill someone else, I just had to find out who wanted to kill who. So I run out of the room and am in one of the grocery stores that I train for, and this kid that I kind of dated in high school was working there again. He was putting away a cart when I came out of the room and he said some smart ass comment about how I made Baby Face sleep for 5 months. I really don’t like that kid anymore. So I ignored him and found someone (I thought it was one of my sisters, but I’m not sure) and started to ask her who was allergic to kiwis. She told me I watched too much law and order. Then a lady came over with a carry out cart and tried to put it away with the shopping carts and got an attitude with me for not helping her put it in the wrong place and I told her that they belongs up front and took it up there. There was a feeling that I was no longer a trainer, and may have even been new to the store, but a lot of the faces had changed and I went to a register with this kid who was trying to scan a green onion (they don’t have bar codes) and so I told him the code (4068) and he hit 4-0-6-6. I told him that was wrong and told him the code again; he hit 4-0-8-8. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with this kid but I stepped up and entered the right code for him. I saw Bulldog and I asked him if he was allergic to kiwis. Then I woke up and it was 11 o’clock in the morning.
It’s dreams like this that make me realize that I need to change my job. It’s stressing me out more then I originally thought it was and I am not handling the stress well. I’m more frazzled then ever, I mean, forgetting my age, sincerely forgetting my age? My vocabulary has shrunk, my dreams are peppered with moments in a grocery store, and if I’m not dieing someone is. I would like to really fall asleep for 5 months, I wonder how I can go about making that happen.

Chapter 26: Hitting The Books

After much thought and contemplation I have decided that May 21 of this year I will be returning to school. Well, I will be taking one class at least. You’ll never guess what the class is, or under what department it is in. It’s not sociology. That’s your only hint. I have decided that I will be taking “Family Law” other wise known as “LGL 1178”. I figure it’s a good class to start with because it’s on Monday nights, and I don’t work Mondays. The class is under the “Legal Assisting (Paralegal studies)” department. Never thought I would be doing that, and no it’s not because I love all three types of “Law and Order”. I knew I wanted to go back to school, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do once I got there, so therefore, I wasn’t doing anything. I wanted to be a guidance counselor and while part of me still wants to because I love teenagers, the other part of me doesn’t think I should because I love teenagers. I don’t want to end up on the front page of the Metro section on trial for getting romantically involved with a student. I believe this defect in me is due to the fact that I was romantically stunted in high school, so for some reason I find myself not seeing some teenagers as younger people, but equals. Then I have to remind myself of my age which sadly, at the moment I can’t even remember. Part of me thinks it’s 23 and the other part thinks 24 (this internal debate has been going on for the past three days)…I didn’t think the memory loss was suppose to happen until after my 45th birthday. Oops, I’ve digressed.
Back to the fact that I may be finding myself just getting a second Bachelor’s degree instead of a Master’s or becoming the eternal student my dad warned me against becoming. I figured that I have to take things into my own hands because if I didn’t before long my mom would be filling out job and college applications; the police academy and pharmaceutical school among some of the options. I’m scared to death to take this class though, it’s not really a big deal but it’s the whole fact that if this class convinces me that maybe I can do it then I’m going to take the plunge, I’m going to once again leave my comfort zone and what if I go down in flames after I’m halfway through the program? Of course the other voice in my head (the one who knocked me into the edge of a shelf earlier today and into a trunk on Saturday) tells me that no matter what comes up I’m taking the course, if I don’t like it, so what. It’s a pretty smart voice, just self destructive at times. Besides, if I don’t like the Family Law class then next semester is a marketing course.
I think that another reason that I am scared is because let’s face it, I am always doing things that I am overqualified for, because I know I can do them. Why do I still work at my high school job? Because I know I can do it. I’m afraid to take a chance because I’m afraid of failing, I don’t ask guys out because I’m afraid they’ll say ‘no’, I just don’t take too many chance in case I won’t be able to succeed.;
I’m just tired of people trying to tell me what to do with my life, and I’m already tired of sitting around with my job waiting for something better to just magically appear, because guess what? It’s not going to magically appear (you probably already guessed that, you’re so smart). I don’t know if this is something that I want to do, but I’ll never know until I just jump right in. I have to admit though; a part of me is getting really excited about returning to school, I feel like I need to go stock up on school supplies.

Chapter 25: Break Time

I’m sick and tired of trying to read people. I’ve got my job where I am trying to figure out if people are going to be able to do well or not. Then I’ve got my personal life where I am trying to figure out if people even want me around, much less trying to figure out if they like me. Experience has taught me one thing and now I am trying to do the complete opposite.
I have a problem with guys because in the past I have misread guys and in one case there was a guy who really didn’t even have a high tolerance for me. The guy that I got closest to in high school made out with my best friend a month after graduation. Not to mention that for the past five years I have been surrounded by guys of the most idiotic nature who say one thing and do another. Needless to say I have become quite guarded around guys. I have trouble expressing an interest in guys that I truly like (who are we kidding, I can barely talk to guys I like), I turn tail and run if a guy likes me (whether or not I had previously liked them). I can’t read into anything they say or do because I only convince myself that there is no way that they could like me. Several times I have persuaded myself that I will die alone…even if that is a depressing thought.
For a day or two recently I have tried to sway myself in the other direction. I’ve tried to talk myself into putting my heart on the line, though I have discovered that I don’t really know how to do that. Upon a self-evaluation I feel that my attempt to put my heart on the line may just come across as stalking, and that’s illegal in all 50 states. On my drive home today I wondered at how some girls date and some girls don’t. What makes them so different and is it something that can be taught or are those of us who lack the capacity doomed to hopelessly float around life all alone. Am I going to miss out on something because I just can’t let my guard down? Because I can’t believe that someone could like me?
It all comes back to Buddy land doesn’t it? Do we all start out with a hopeful palette and then slowly each experience moves us towards normalcy or towards Buddy Syndrome? There is no way to prevent it, no one can know what life is going to hand them. It’s a sad thought though, but how do you overcome it?
Right now I am ready to take a break, I hope it won’t prove to be a mistake, but considering that I am still having dreams about dying I think I have enough stress in my life, so I need to cut some of it out. This is the only type of stress I can do anything about. It’s not like I can force myself to no longer like people, or to stop getting nervous around them, but at least I can just stop trying to impress them, stop pretending that maybe some day he’ll recognize that I am exactly what he’s looking for and that he fell in love with me without even realizing it. Something tells me that it just doesn’t work that way.

Chapter 25: Neurosis

I have a difficult time realizing that there are things wrong with me. I don’t know, maybe it’s my pride, but as the light bulb comes on I feel silly and can’t figure out why I am the way I am. I have recently been called “neurotic” and I was not sure whether or not to be offended by this until I finally looked up the actual definition. I am a bit offended by it and I was in denial about being neurotic until I asked my own mother if I was. Her answer, “somewhat”. Somewhat? I thought maybe that I was a bit quirky or maybe was undiagnosed as A.D.H.D. but neurotic? Just to give you an idea of what neurotic means the synonyms for it are as follows: anxious, fearful, phobic, disturbed, irrational, obsessed. I know that maybe I am these things, but don’t tell me that I am. It really bothers me, which in turn may make me more neurotic, I just can’t win.
To keep along with the first sentence, today Motor Mouth told me that I had to come home in time for her “Oscar Night” which was her cleverly disguised “girls night” that she has been trying to get all of us “roomies” to participate in for a couple of months now. I told her that I was a sociologist and she asked what that meant, and I told her it meant that I didn’t like to watch award shows. Okay, so it doesn’t make sense, but my idea of a good night is not watching a bunch of rich movie stars get awards. Don’t get me wrong, I love Will Smith, Harrison, Ford, Christian Bale, and Hugh Jackman, along with many others, but I don’t need to do fondue with a group of girls and act like I’m excited that they won something. Motor Mouth told me to at least come for the fondue then, and I reminded her that I don’t eat chocolate. It wasn’t a confrontation and I didn’t feel angry, I just felt weird.
I don’t watch “The O.C.” or “Grey’s Anatomy”. I don’t watch Bond movies just because the guy who plays Bond is always good looking, I don’t call Matthew McConaughey “McCon-a-hottie”, and I’ve never seen “The Notebook”. I’m not like other girls am I? Granted this isn’t at all connected to neurosis, but just another little way that I have noticed that I am different from most people.

Chapter 24: Flood or Famine

I have heard it said before that with guys it’s either flood or famine. Now with this in mind I go on with my story. This past Saturday night there was an activity at church. I was debating whether or not to go and I was already an hour and half late for it when I decided to call Sweet Pea while on my way to it. I talked to her for an hour. Unfortunately she finally cut me loose and told me to go to the activity. At this point the activity had turned into a dance and I decided to at least find one of my roommates so that I could prove that I showed up, and then the plan was to leave. As I walked down the hallway to the door someone came out and was dancing towards me, with their eye on me. At first, from the distance that I was, I thought it was my roommate, but then I realized that it was my friend from school (who I also grew up with). I’ll call her my therapist because that’s what I called her at school. Anyway, so my therapist comes dancing down the hall towards me. I was so excited to see her, she was living in Costa Rica but now she’s in North Carolina, so I rarely get to see her. We sat in the hallway talking for a bit and another girl came out to the hall to join us. Then this guy sees us so he walks over and starts talking to us. I will call him Agent L and the story will unfold. He starts talking to us and asks us all whether we are working or students or what, basically…what our story is. So I tell him where I work and he says that he works there too (different location though) and that I should come by and see him sometime. Then my therapist tells him that I am the funniest person that she has ever met and he says that he can see that. So he decides to go back into the “dance” and us girls talk for a bit more. We finally go in and I take my spot sitting on the stage (I’m not much of a dancer). Therapist is going at it on the dance floor, she’s good, she enjoys dancing. She comes over to take a breather and Agent L comes over noticing that we’ve made our way into the gym, he asks if we are slowly moving towards the dance floor and I told him this is where it tends to stop. Then he grabs my wrist (I have a major problem with wrist but to avoid looking like I freak I just took it and gagged silently to myself). He pulled me on to the dance floor and tried to get me to dance; he even pulled out the Hitch moves and told me where I live. It didn’t help, I always feel like an idiot on the dance floor. Sometimes, if I’m comfortable with the people that are around me I can dance. I have danced before, Oreo was there and we pulled out moves…I can’t recall Sweet Pea being there though…sorry. I just couldn’t dance then. Of course right after that the dreaded slow song came on, Therapist went and got someone to dance with and then it was just Agent L, me, and the girl who had been in the hallway with us. She started to step away, so I did too and said something like, “now’s the time we awkwardly step away from each other.” He laughed a little but I didn’t just walk away, even though I’m uncomfortable with people I’m still well aware of what is rude. Naturally we danced because if two people just stand in the middle of the dance floor during a slow song that looks weird. I warned him that I’m not good at slow dancing either and he said he’d help me out. We did the “Deacon shuffle” and if you don’t know what that is it’s probably the most awkward slow dancing two people can do. Knees and elbows locked and you just waddle back and forth. Oh I almost forgot, while we were talking in the hall Agent L said something and therapist said that he was a liar (I wish I could remember what he said) so I stuck my hand to my forehead with my fingers making the L-shape. He was a bit offended but I told him that it stood for “liar” and not for “loser”. (The Agent part of his name comes from interactions on Sunday but we must talk about one day at a time here). After the dance Agent L came up to talk to me for a bit and then I ran into another guy that I had met that previous Monday. I don’t have an interesting name for him, Right now I can’t think of what would make him stand out to me. But he was talking to another friend of mine. A bunch of us decided to go to IHOP and he asked me if I was going. The Enforcer came to IHOP too and we got to sit together. To let you in on a little secret I have a little bit of a crush on The Enforcer, I’ve had one on him for a while so to be sitting next to him is pretty exciting for me. Unfortunately he is in love with a girl who relishes in the attention, but has no intention of ever being romantically involved (she’s one of those girls who all the guys want but she’s not willing to give up the attention from so many different people that she won’t settle for one of them and therefore keeps all of them…if only these guys would get a hint from the dancing analogy in A Beautiful Mind.)
Anyway, so Sunday after Sacrament both the guy from IHOP…how about I just call him IHOP? I don’t think it will get too confusing. IHOP comes up to me and we are talking and then Agent L comes up and starts talking to me too about how he’s glad to see me in the ward (because we just met at the dance but we had been in the same ward for months). I felt weird talking to both of them at the same time, I’m not sure why I felt this way but I did. Some of it may stem from the fact that I may be A.D.D. and when two different people are trying to get my attention neither one can. It’s much easier for me to hide my handicap if only one voice is going at a time. Sure enough I wasn’t able to have a substantial conversation with either one. We moved on to Sunday school, the first time that I’ve really gone to Sunday school in a long time. I saw Agent L across the room so I kept hoping he would look over so I could do the L-sign at him but he didn’t. After Sunday school though he was walking past and we made eye contact and I threw my hand up to give the signal. He pretended like I threw a dagger at him and it hit him in the heart. Jelly Bean only saw bits and pieces of this interaction and was left completely confused. Before Relief Society started though I was talking to Jelly Bean and I happened to catch Agent L leaning in the doorway of the room and he ever so quickly made the L-shape on his forehead and disappeared. I almost didn’t catch it, I happened to look over at the exact second he was doing it and I don’t think he was even going to attempt to make sure I saw it, just get it out there and see if it worked I guess. So I got up quickly and went out and told him that he may think he was clever and stealthy but I saw him! I came back and sat down and IHOP was in the row behind me talking to this girl that we both grew up with (but the two of us hadn’t met until recently). A girl got up to start the class and IHOP gets up quickly to get out and I turn around and called out to him and told him he should stay. He just smiled and got out. I don’t know why guys get so embarrassed about being in Relief Society when it first starts, they act like they just walked into the girls shower room by mistake and they have to rush out of there.
Jelly Bean called me a flirt (not just with IHOP but with Agent L), but I corrected her. I wasn’t flirty I’m just friendly, and he should have felt welcome in Relief Society. After church The Enforcer was interrogating Jelly Bean, Diva, and me because his car got pranked the night before (yeah sure it was us but we were in denial). Agent L joined our conversation shortly after and I was on the other side of the circle then him so I slowly backed up to where he was standing and talked to him without facing him like we were trying to talk without anyone noticing that we were talking. His ride came and I rejoined the main conversation. The Enforcer kills me, yes, as I have already admitted, we pranked his car, it was Jelly Bean’s idea to use pads and tampons on the cars that we pranked (there was more then just one car). I personally don’t like the use of feminine hygiene products during pranks. Anyway, so The Enforcer was going off about the “stickums” and I asked a question about that and he gets this upset look on his face and says, “Stickums…pad stickums.” He was so serious and had such a serious face while saying a word like ‘stickums’ that I busted up laughing. We ended the conversation after we were certain that he was convinced it wasn’t us who had pranked his car.