Some humiliations never die.
When I was 13 years old, I made an utter tit of myself over a girl. Actually, I did that about a dozen times over the course of my teenage years. But one, in particular, was particularly cringeworthy ((as an aside, I’m thinking that one of these days I should write a top 5 embarrassing crushes blog post, in the style of *High Fidelity*)). I declared my undying love for a tall blonde girl, wrote her letters, the most hideously gloopy kind of shit. The tragic thing was that she wasn’t the kind of girl who appreciates romance and perseverance and all that, so I really was casting my pearls before swine. She wanted an in-crowd kind of guy, ideally one who was more than 10 years older than her. What was I thinking?
Eventually I woke up and realised that she was a phenomenally unremarkable girl, and that I was actually lucky that she’d deflected my advances for so long. And like that, it was all over. I was civil to her when I saw her around school, but that was it.
Nine minutes ago, I received a Facebook invitation from her. I don’t use Facebook any more, but I have subscribed to the RSS feed of my contacts’ status updates, and I still receive emails when people send me a friend invitation (though I don’t bother acting on them). In her invitation, she made a reference to one of the things that I wrote in one of my love letters. I’m not going to repeat it here, because this is my site, and you can’t make me incriminate myself.
Here’s a brief rundown of all the thoughts barrelling through my head.
* Oh god, she remembers me writing that.
* On the upside, she still remembers me writing that. Must have meant a lot to her.
* Or she’s taking the piss
* She could be taking the piss
* If we assume that, then this train of thought comes to a dead end. Let’s try something else. Let’s assume that she’s not taking the piss, and see where that takes us.
* Maybe those letters really meant a lot to her. Maybe they brightened up a miserable, superficial existence that she secretly despised.
* Maybe they gave her a genuine boost to her self-esteem.
* Maybe her life went downhill once I lost interest in her.
* Oh good, another name to add to the trail of devastation.
* I think she’s probably just taking the piss.
* Thanks for reminding me of all that. Thanks a bunch.