american heritage, first semester, freshman year.
while there were more than 400 people in my section, there were maybe 22 people in my weekly lab. i honestly had no interest in getting to know any of them.
my campus routine was always the same.
pull on my shoes, shrug on my backpack, put in my headphones.
walk to class.
if i arrived more than 7 minutes early, i would go to the bathroom or peruse the vending machine until it was appropriately early to go to class.
swing off my backpack, slouch into my desk and wait until class began to wrap up my headphones.
silence for the duration of the class.
bell ring, headphones in, backpack on, out the door.
most of the people in my lab had a similar routine. not many people participated. only two or three students answered questions on a regular basis, and it was generally more out of wanting uncomfortable silences to end and less about having a genuine desire to contribute to the 'discussion.'
once, the grad student who taught our lab asked if anyone could describe the difference between a flat and a progressive tax. silence. i thought of the debate i'd had with a group of guys the night before on the very subject, and as time and silence dragged on, i reluctantly raised my hand.
at the same time, one of the regular-participants also raised his hand, and our instructor sighed and called on him. as i put my hand down, the grad student noticed my movement and cut-off the fellow student with an almost urgent tone.
"michal! did you have your hand raised?!"
"....yes...?"
"oh! please! go ahead! sorry!"
and then i went on to give a very eloquent and riveting answer, i'm sure.
anyway, about a month after the semester ended, i met that very fellow student whose answer i'd stolen.
and a few months after that, i fell in love with him.
it wasn't like weird high school "i love you" after three weeks kind of love. i didn't even actually think it was love at all.
it was like... i never had the urge to touch him. granted, i'm fairly well-known for my
aversion to human touch, but still... usually when i'd had interest in a
boy, i'd had serious interest in touching them. hand-holding, at the
very least. but never with this kid.
i just wanted to be around him all the time. he was smart and interesting and adorably awkward. never-kissed-a-girl-and-probably-wouldn't-be-interested type of awkward and i thought it was all just incredibly charming.
and, because i was kind of intense and overbearing at the sweet age of 19 and he was kind of terrified of women, he freaked out and stopped talking to me so i made out with his room mate who was actually dating my room mate and it was this big stupid mess that kind of ruined my otherwise wonderful freshman experience, which probably isn't the ending you were looking for, but my point is---
for 4 months, i sat next to someone who i still, to this day, wonder about. it's been 4 years, and sometimes i'm still like... what if things had gone differently? you know?
and for those 4 months, i didn't know his name or even look at his face.
and that, my friends, is just the most hilarious case of love-life foreshadowing you could probably find on this earth.
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