Boyfriends and Whales

I've never actually been 'asked out', which is something most students ages 5-10 have been. I'd like to think it's not because I am undateable in the eyes of a third grader, but really just because I'm not the kind of girl one would think to date.

Of course, it happened to everyone at some point. A cute little note passed under a desk, slipped into a lunchbox, stating in cute little handwriting something equally cute such as "I like you" or "Will you be my girlfriend?" And I was always such a magic-killer I'd say there's no point to being someone's girlfriend unless you get married or something, and no one should get married because marriage doesn't work.

Granted, this was the same kid that got dragged out of kindergarten for actively shunning the belief in Santa.

So I guess you could say there's this piece of my childhood missing. And I never really felt it was there, of course, until yesterday.

Things are always getting thrown at me. Usually on accident. And though I always pick up every piece of paper I come across, I have learned that most of the carefully folded and crumpled notes students throw to one another have nothing inside once you open them. Plus you look really stupid while doing it.

So I turned and looked and saw one very wide-eyed, very frightened boy and one laughing-mouthed, excited-looking friend.

I ripped a piece of paper to throw back. (Spanish is a very boring class.) Just as a thought, right before launching it, in case they might think to open it, I drew a whale.

And, a few seconds after throwing it, heard this:

"Oh my god. Oh. My god. How did this happen. She didn't OPEN it? How could it not have worked?! Our tactics were so certain to succeed! The plan was so sure! Oh my god!"

So I frantically searched under the desk until I found an almost invisible little folded up scrap of paper which read, with all the eloquence of a prince...

This really isn't the kind of thing that happens to me. I had no clue how to react. So I drew another whale and threw it back.

And got a second attempt:

And sent this:

And got this:

And sent this:

At one point, one of the pieces of folded-up paper hit the kid sitting in front of me, causing such a loud and sudden panic from the three in the back of the classroom that he quickly and nervously gave it back to me.

Class was almost over and I was very confused. This is because,

1- Keegan is a complete stranger,
2- No one ever wants to date me anyway, and,
3- This kid would probably run and cry if a girl held his hand.

And as I packed up, I overheard the friend coaching this Keegan kid:

"Dude. Dude. Dude. You have to go over there."
"I can't!"
"You have to get an answer OTHER THAN a whale."
"No."
"It's the only way, Keegan. She can't answer with a whale drawing if you ask her in person."
"But what if she does?"
"It's a chance we're willing to take."

After the bell rang I called Lafflin for advice.

He explained the situation of the whales to his mother, who was laughing loud enough for me to hear, and asked her what I should do.

"She said to be honest."

"Tell her she is very wise."

There is only one way to be honest.

MORAL OF THE STORY: When you can't say yes and you can't say no, say sea mammal.

a lonely heaven

"We're all dying together," said the kid who never says anything.

He was sitting under a bright red maple tree, clean white bark at his back. Each word was filled with silence. We watched him as conversation of heaven and hell slowly crumbled. He wore a lumberjack shirt and soccer cleats and he stopped juggling my train set and looked at me, realizing he had actually opened his mouth.

"Well, some people die faster than others, I suppose. And some lives are lived alone."

Use of a Misplaced Word

"Don't misplace us."

It was sudden and solid and fell like a brick through the conversation. Lighthearted banter lurched to a stop, tires leaving marks over white lines and swerving to avoid collisions.

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

Eyes round and brown and watery, just as I'd remembered. Flecks of sunlight reflected under shadows. A small moment of silence passed, and the wind blew backwards as he watched me.

"I won't."

The Story of Stolen Carrots

I hadn't packed a lunch on the day the carrots were bestowed upon me.

It was windy, I think, and I was sitting in the grass as the others ate their lunches, and I was trying not to think about food when, suddenly, a bag of carrots fell out of the sky at my feet.

"Holy cow," I thought. "Carrots."

I waited for someone to come claim them but no one did.

People were filing into the building then, and lunch was almost over, and though my conscious will fought against it, my stomach reached out and I took the carrots off the grass and stuffed them into my hoodie.

Just then, a small group of girls walked over to where we were sitting, and one of them said,

"Dude, where are the carrots? Where could they have gone? They aren't anywhere,"

and I looked into my jacket at the poor bag of carrots, pleading to rejoin their beloved master...

and I said nothing. I watched them walk away and held it all in and let them believe their beloved carrots were gone forever and ever.

I was a thief and a kidnapper, and there was no going back.

I ripped the bag open like an animal, furiously eating the stolen food against my own true will, which was slowly being torn apart with each and every carrot consumed.

They were far from gone by the time I got to class, and so I ended up sneakily eating stolen carrots during a geography test.

Carrots are not passive in their death. They do not accept their tragic fate, giving in to the fact that they have been taken from their homes and will be eaten by someone they do not belong to. Carrots die in protest, yelling and fighting their way to dust.

You do not notice this is the case until you have tried to eat carrots silently in a silent room.

Even if you succeed in muffling this sound even a little bit, the smell will give them away. I knew it would. It must. Nervously tapping pencil to paper, reaching from pocket to mouth, I continued eating carrot after carrot, constantly awaiting the teacher to, at any second, suddenly leap from her seat and shout, "THAT IS THE SMELL OF STOLEN CARROTS!"

It never happened.

What happened instead was an empty plastic bag that smelled like dirt and a terribly empty conscience.

Because, see, I had expected to feel guilty. I had expected to repent of my thieving ways and swear to never again eat such a thing as stolen carrots, to await my fate of inevitable punishment and take it more graciously than the carrots.

But I didn't choose the carrot thug life.

The carrot thug life chose me.

And there was no going back.

I saw the carrots' rightful owner in the next class, and by this time, my stomach was no longer in control of my mind and I could do as I pleased. For I was now a carrot thief and carrot thieves do what they want.

"So, um..." I put the question forward. "You been missing any ... carrots?"

And she laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed. And laughed. And I laughed too because maybe the carrots had fallen from the sky and maybe I wasn't a thug and wow what a day to be alive.

"This girl brings these disgusting carrots to lunch every day," she said, "and never eats them. And every day, we end up just throwing them at each other, waiting for someone to eat them. The carrot war got so bad today, I took the bag from them and held it to the sky and shouted 'THIS HAS BROUGHT US NOTHING BUT MISERY', and I threw it as far as I could.

"That was the last we saw of the carrots. And we hoped they had found someone who could put them to better use than we had."

MORAL OF THE STORY: Don't steal things even though it sometimes turns out perfectly because most carrots that fall from the sky are already cursed.



(The worst part of this story is that my parents had forgotten to tell me that we qualify for free school lunches.)

Congratulations

"Wait what? Who's getting married?"

"Chr-sh-c- Ms. Comma?"

"NO WAY."

"WHAT."

"Yeah."

"NO."

"NO WAY."

"Yep."

"..."

"..."

"...did she tell Brady?"

"Yep."

"How's he taking it?"

"As well as can be expected."

a small moment of disappointed silence

"Wait who's she even marrying?!"

"Is it Taco Bell guy?"

"I think his name is David."

"..."

"..."

"...That's a dumb name."

"Yeah. I don't know. I think he loves her."

"Dude when is the wedding?"

"Soon."

"You don't know?"

"Not exactly."

"What if we all just showed up and crashed it?"

"HAHAHA-"

"This is just so exciting. So exciting. I'm so happy for her."

"Me too."

"She's so happy."

"Aww."

"Wait - Shady."

"What is it?"

"What's his last name?"

"Something that sounds more like Massah than it should."

"..."

"..."

"...ohmigod what are we gonna call her now?!"

"Ms. Massah?"

"MRS. Massah!"

"I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE."

"Brady's so cute I can't - ugh"

"Wait - guys, there's still that question."

"What?"

"What?"

"What are we supposed to get her for a wedding present?"

"..."

"..."

"Doughnuts? A towel? A tablecloth? Next month's rent?"

"..."

"Cheesecake."

"Brilliant."

"And we'll write 'Congratulations Mrs. Taco Bell Guy' on it."

"Brilliant."



(Congratulations Christie :)

binoculars

"When's your birthday?"

"Day before the fool's."

"I'm getting you binoculars. They seem fitting."

"Shut up."

There is a Moral to this Story.

Last night, I found myself with the urge to rip up scraps of paper and write "positivity messages" on them. Such as "Happy autumn" and "Your life is beautiful". These would be distributed through wind and curiosity, ending up with whoever finds them, in the hopes of brightening someone's day.

It's a good thing, right?

Right.

Full of good intentions.

Last year, I followed a kid around everywhere in fear of his getting hurt. This ended in a strange and unusual friendship consisting of me following him home and him not getting hurt and me being called "creepy" and me continuing to be "creepy". Bad stalking is following someone to hurt them. Good stalking is following someone to avoid their being hurt. Like Spiderman.

It's a good thing, right?

Right.

So very full of good intentions.

I have my first class off every other morning, and this morning I decided hey, why not go for a walk around the neighborhood and stick these little paper slips around in little places people look - you know, on windshields, in the flags of mailboxes, cracks in the sidewalks, things like that. So I did.

I walked for a while, spreading nice things.

Then I turned a corner, by unconscious muscle memory, and realized it was a street without any mailboxes. That meant I couldn't actually stick pieces of paper in the flags of the mailboxes - which is, by the way, probably illegal. Do not repeat this.

It was then that I noticed, you guessed it, Lafflin's house.

In front of his house is a white electrician's van. And on the van is a warning illustration of a man being electrocuted. But when I passed by the first time, I was walking too hurriedly to really get a good look at it, my logic being that I didn't want Lafflin's brothers to come outside because I was suspiciously looking around their car.

In the end I decided I had really better get a closer look so I turned around and came back the other way, circling the van, when I looked at the house and noticed that the blinds were no longer drawn.

And I had almost gotten away when I heard a "Shady?"

And I turned around and said "Hello."

"What are you doing?"

At which point I should have explained about the positivity messages but instead I just said, in a voice of an extremely unconvincing lie,

"I have a class off, and I was going for a walk, when I saw this thing on the van, and ... I ... wanted to see it."

"..."

"Is it a guy getting electrocuted? ... Yep. ... Guy getting electrocuted."

It kills me how completely honest I was being and how awfully it must have been received as a total lie. "No, Mrs. Lafflin's mom, I was actually just walking around the front of your house because I am the opposite of a danger to your son and if we can all just learn to get along and if such things were socially acceptable then I wouldn't feel so nervously guilty for doing the not-wrong thing and I would sound less like a paranoid phony."

"Um."

"So how are you doing?"

She was wearing morning clothes. Maybe they were pajamas. Or they were just everyday clothes. Mostly though they just looked like morning clothes.

The sun was slanting and I was wearing the exact same thing I had been wearing the last time she had seen me three months ago.

"I'm good, how are you?"

"Good...good."

Isn't it weird how when somebody asks how you are, you always, always have you say you're good? Even when you're not? I tried saying "well" for a while but it just freaked everybody out.

"That's good."

"Sorry for running away last time."

"Oh that's okay." She was smiling and wearing glasses that I don't think she had been wearing last time.

Their three dogs were barking hysterically in the front window. The last time I had been there the dogs had loved me. Then I figured, with a flash of brilliance, that these dogs were probably the cause of why Lafflin's mother was standing on her front porch talking to a girl who called her son her son. It was a paradox, a horrifically awkward paradox - talking with my son's mother.

She went on, smiling confusedly, begging forgiveness. "I'm just not yet used to this whole...social...interaction."

Almost as awkward as me in the situation, really.

"Oh me neither. I'm not too used to...having...friends."

This is a lie. I am very very used to having friends. I do not, however, walk to their house accidentally on purpose while they are in school and have to explain myself to their mother.

(I may also have been playing the innocent-lonely-teenage-girl card to avoid a restraining order.)

A loud, nervous laughter followed, and a sudden shiver of sameness came between myself and the woman standing on the porch.

I waved a little and shuffled sideways, wishing to leave the situation WITHOUT literally bolting (as I had last time), and she waved back, calling, "I'll tell Lafflin you stopped by."

I shrugged, shoulder over shoulder, hands out as if weighing the options, saying, "Or...not...?"

"Or not!"

"Okay cool."

"Bye Shady."

"Bye."

I did not say her name though I knew her name because I did not want her to know how much I knew.

And I laughed the entire way back. Laughter being a nervous response to pain.



There are many morals to this story. One of which is

and another which is

but mostly just