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
but mostly just
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
Your lifes a lot more interesting than I suspected, fabulous writing, by the by. You should, I don't know, write a book or something... -The Carrot Bestower
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