This whole story probably wouldn't even be worth the effort I am investing in it, if it wasn't for the effect that it had on daily life for the next year and a half until I graduated college. I think the situation that developed from that really defined my perspective on relationships and dating for many years. In reality, asking someone to a dance is really not that big of a deal, but it was the first time in my entire life, that I had outwardly expressed interest in a girl, and to her directly. I had never even talked with other people about feelings like that, let alone with the object of my interest. I had also never had anyone do that to me, so I had no idea what her perspective on that would be. I basically had no idea how to act around her after that, and felt like she was probably watching everything I was doing, whenever she was around. So that made me slightly insecure around her, or more accurately, completely incapacitated.
Somehow, I would always know, about 5 seconds before I would run into her. I have no idea how that happened, since it is (on paper) impossible, but I always knew. That was just enough time to get nervous, for my blood pressure to go up, and for my brain to just overload and "reboot" if you will. By the time she would come around the corner, or through the doorway, I was basically frozen, at least mentally, and I figure I must have had a deer in the headlights look every time. She probably treated me reasonably normally, with a "Hi Mike" anytime that was the appropriate greeting, while I would maybe get out a stuttered "Hi," if I could pull myself together that far. This usually happened in some form everyday at school, a bit different each time. I didn't have any classes or other regular interactions with W, but the school isn't that big, with only two main hallways, so it is bound to happen at random.
The next dance was the Sadie Hawkins, about two months later, where traditionally the girl asks the guy to go with her. This is probably good thing, from a practical growth standpoint, allowing student to experience things from the opposite perspective; Girls seeing what its like to have to take the initiative, and guys being at the mercy of the girl's interest. So while the emotional side of me had high hopes, the rational side of my brain didn't let me get too carried away. I don't think she had given any signs about how she felt about me, and even if she did, I wouldn't have been able to interpret them with any degree of unbiased accuracy.
So similar in timing to the previous event, things got interesting on the Thursday a week before the dance. I was eating lunch with Gus, one of the other students in Thunderpaw, and we were the only two left at our table near the end of lunch. W was eating a few tables away, and as always, I was very conscious of her presence there. We had finished our food, and were just talking at that point, but most of my focus was what was going on at W's table, way off to my right. She was standing up, and her friends were waving and encouraging her to do something.
She headed towards us, which definitely got me hear rate up. She covered half the distance to my table before pausing, turning around, and darting back, which led to a little more commotion with her friends. I have very good peripheral vision, so I can stare at something without pointing my eyes at it. I probably appeared to be very focused on Gus and our talk, when in reality I was closely observing what was going on over there. As the pattern began to repeat, I realized that Gus was talking about taking off, and going to work in the lab. I panicked a bit on the inside, and was quick to point out that there was another class in there at the moment, since they had the opposite lunch schedule. That was true, but that didn't usually prevent us from going in there and working during lunch. I just didn't want him to leave, because then I would have no good excuse to continue sitting there, to see what happened next. I don't just sit around doing nothing very well, it just feels awkward. That makes me a more productive person, but means I rarely really relax. Based on my preference against having an audience when approaching W, it would have made more sense to let him leave, but I wasn't thinking very clearly at the moment. So we continued talking, as I pretended to ignore that W headed over my way two or three times, but never got all the way to us. Eventually she sat back down, presumably giving up, and the bell rang shortly thereafter.
It would perfectly reasonable, both at the time and looking back now, to assume that with a little wishful thinking, I was probably jumping to conclusions about what had been going on there, if it wasn't for what happened after classes got out for the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment