Wednesday, 11 April 2007

• of boys and lattes

  I think I'm a wimp.
  
  While at work today, I saw a guy in the lobby, sitting at one of the tables and talking to his dad. For some reason, he looked oddly familiar. I knew that I hadn't talked to him in awhile and my first instinct was to go back to the back room. But who was he?
  
  Then it hit me. It was Rizzard, the Albanian boy from my first college swim class. The one who had followed me around campus like a lost puppy. He asked me out to lunch one day and since we were at the cafeteria, I did what any smart girl would do. I took him to Tasty-Tuesday, the free lunch hosted by the Southern Baptist group, and then I gracefully asked Eric, my dear friend from highschool, if he would PLEASE get Rizzard to leave me alone...hopefully by getting him really involved in the Christian group. It seemed to work and I'm talented in the ice-queen department.
  
  I still saw Rizzard in swim class but most of the time we were in different lanes. I liked it that way and I didn't give him much say in the matter. Then the health and safety fair that our swim instructor was putting on came up. It was during my second term at the school and I wasn't in a swim class. I was wading through the deep waters of Biology, Anatomy & Phisiology as well as College Math. It was NOT my favorite term. But I digress. I was carefully weaving my way through the crowd in the building, watching to see which booths were giving out freebies and which ones were enlisting people as either environmental protestors or soldiers. It didn't seem like a good day to enlist and I was happy to grab a free frisbee from some random college organization. Then, it happened.
  
  Rizzard found me.
  
  I don't know how he did it, there must have been a few hundred people crammed into the room and I'm not really one of those people who stick out in crowds. I'm just another blonde in a sea of Britneys. He sidled up beside me and asked how my term was going. Now, there's nothing wrong with the guy but English isn't his first language and so he takes awhile to process and respond. Interaction takes a long time and while you're waiting for him to respond, he's just sitting there with his big brown eyes looking like a lost little boy who wants you to lead him around by the hand. I told him that my term was going great, I missed swimming, etc. and he took the opportunity to ask if I wanted to go watch the dancers with him because he'd "really like it if I would go watch them" with him. Now, while the idea of skipping Biology was tempting, the thought of skipping it to hang out with a boy that blatently stares at me wasn't. Add to it that we would just be watching a bunch of half-naked, un-naturally enhanced, on the make frosted-flakes wasn't incredibly appealing to me either. So I mumbled a "I gotta go to class" and booked it up the stairs to Bio.
  
  The next term, I lucked out again. No classes with the boy. Instead, I kept running into this kid named Joe who had a longboard and thought it was cool to suck on cancer-sticks, but he's a whole different story in his own right. I can't even remember where he came from but it was some class first term. Anyway, I found myself cornered in the bookstore. The line snaked around the whole building and I had already been in line for an hour, trying to find ANYONE to talk to on my cellphone, when Rizzard walked up again. Actually, he was behind me in line and then he cut so he could talk to me. We chit-chatted for awhile and he told me that he had gone on the Tasty-Tuesday missions trip to Las Vegas (or was it Reno?). However, he was severely dissapointed in the fact that they wouldn't let the kids gamble and that they thought the slots were a sin. I however, thought it was a good sign that he went on the trip at all given the fact that he was pretty much an atheist. We soon parted ways and I didn't run in to him again sin ce I transferred to Verity. Oh sure, there were times when I saw him in the library but I'm talented in the fine art of hiding in the stacks. There was a time when I saw him in the parking lot, but I felt safe because people generally don't get out of their cars and chase people down just to say hi. I was breathing easy.
  
  So what did I do when I saw him in the lobby, looking over at me with those large quizzical brown eyes?
  
  I sailed right on by him, ran to the car and went to the bank. Granted, he was still there when I got back but I managed to avoid him again. I don't know why he unnerves me so much but he does. Maybe I'm just a wimp but I'd like to think of it as being in possession of a healthy dose of self-preservation.

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