So I recently got an email from my high school chum Arima! Now, Arima! and I used to be pretty close back in the day. We had chemistry together, and stuff. Er, by which I mean the class, not the sparks. But after high school, we sort of went our separate ways, and communication just fell off naturally, the way it does sometimes. The last time I saw Arima! was over a year ago, at which time she told me all about how our mutual friend, Scary Religious Girl, had gotten engaged and hadn�t bothered to tell me. Which was fine, because I had gotten gay and hadn�t bothered to tell SRG.
As you can see, SRG and I have some issues. But this isn�t about her and her weird husband (see, she didn�t bother to let me in on her engagement, but she did send me a post-wedding, �Hey, we�re married!� announcement�to the wrong location�with an impersonal card that might as well have been addressed to �occupant�) (and I guess, to be fair, I don�t know that her husband is truly �weird� per se, having never met the man, but I can imagine [and make shit up] [and I frequently do (like I said: issues)]), this is about Arima!
Now I�ve told you guys before that I�m a bit of a spazz. And seriously, if you really need any further proof of that, let me just tell you that I�ve written and rewritten this one paragraph no fewer than eight times, because it just didn�t �feel right�. Where I was eventually planning to go with this paragraph was to let you know that at some point, as a spazz, you will meet that one person that makes you feel positively square. For me, Arima! was that person.
I was always a bit of a klutz in school -- dropping my books, tripping over my own feet, falling down the stairs (sometimes simultaneously) -- and I frequently did boneheaded things because I just wasn�t thinking (like the time I accidentally dropped my bank card into the deposit slot at the ATM). But then I would hang out with Arima! and my self-confidence was immediately restored. Like the time she practically decapitated herself with my automatic seatbelt (!), or the time she beat a joke to death with her bare hands right before my very eyes, and then explained it for fourteen minutes before smiling innocently and concluding with ��and that�s why it�s funny!�
I guess the honest truth is that our relationship in this matter was somewhat symbiotic. Once, a teacher of ours employed an unfortunate simile while covering some of the ancient philosophers, in an effort to communicate the more bestial nature of man. Being teenagers, we took this �running like a beast� phrase in as immature a way possible. After class and feeding off each other�s energy, we decided to act this phrase out as literally as we could (to mock him, you understand). So we took to galloping through the halls, shrieking and snorting with vigor, until we ran headlong into a group of fellow students, and were thoroughly humiliated.
Except that, with Arima!, you were never thoroughly humiliated. That was the other great thing about her; no matter what happened, or who in happened in front of, Arima! never lost face, because she didn�t care. She didn�t feel like she had anyone to impress, or even that there was anything in her behavior that wouldn�t impress. And this feeling was contagious. For so long, I�d felt the disapproval of upwardly-mobile friends who didn�t want to lose valuable cool points thanks to my irrepressible dorkines -- it was so refreshing, and so liberating, to really let my freak flag fly for once, without worrying about what someone else might be thinking.
So anyway, it�s so cool to see her name in my inbox again after all this time. I�m not sure what she wrote about yet, because every time I go to check it, I get distracted. But I�ll bet it�s a hoot!
Right now I think I probably represent frustration more than anything, because MY FUCKING COMPUTER SUCKS DONKEY COCK!.
