Reappearances

My sophomore American Studies class was great. I had two intelligent teachers, and I always felt like I was learning things. I know that this is the point of school, but it really doesn't happen very much for me. I had plenty of previous friends in that class, and it would turn out that many more of my classmates would eventually become my main circle of friends. One of these classmates was Jane. Jeff no longer had a crush on her - as far as I knew - and I wondered if I would have an excuse to talk to her. Luckily, fate intervened. When we were first assigned to tables, Jane and I were placed together. I still didn't entertain any ideas, however. I am horribly shy around girls, and I knew that even sitting next to her didn't guarantee anything.

Thankfully, I had two things going for me. First, Jane is the nicest and most engaging girl you'll ever meet. She is extremely outgoing and if a girl decides to talk to me, I'm actually not that bad at maintaining conversation. It's the starting conversations part that has me beat. Anyways, the next thing to help me out was our first big report. There were only so many topics that we could cover for our first term paper and consequently we were allowed to double up on each topic. I chose Fruitlands, a transcendentalist Utopian community that ultimately -just like every other Utopian community out there - failed. As you might have guessed, Jane chose that topic as well.

We shared ideas together, and I admit, as the first term went by, the cheerleader Kibby fast faded from my mind. The last thing I will mention in this post is an event that was both confusing and bittersweet (a combination that I have grown accustomed to when dealing with Jane and perhaps girls in general). I had a hard time finding books on Fruitlands, and I had talked to Jane about borrowing a couple of her books. One day she was in the commons area with a gaggle of girls around her. For reasons unbeknownst to me, I decided to walk up and ask her if she had those books for me to borrow. Girls are always most dangerous when they are in a pack, and I knew this despite my lack of age and experience. I guess Jane's outgoing and friendly attitude had made me a little overconfident.

I kneeled down behind her, because she and her posse were all sitting down. A kneel was the correct way to go, was it not? I didn't want to sit because that would imply I meant to stay for a while, and standing seemed ridiculous as well. Regardless, I tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around and all the girls burst into a fit of giggles. Man, I hate giggles. Among the exclamations was the statement, "He's even kneeling!" Hence, my insecurity about my choice to kneel. Jane eventually stopped laughing and I, feeling incredibly foolish, mumbled something about borrowing books, to which she apologetically replied that she didn't have them at the time. With my tail between my legs I hightailed it out of that horribly awkward situation and was left to ponder the event.

And what sort of ponderings meandered around my head? Well, I was definitely embarrassed by the whole situation. Certainly there had to be something to the giggling. Now, I supposed that they could have been talking about how stupid I was, and laughed at the irony of me showing up at that moment. However, despite a lack of experience with the opposite gender, I still felt that they were probably talking about me, and that it might be in a good light. So feelings of embarrassment mingled with feelings of hope, and I was needless to say, a bit bewildered.