During my second semester at college, I was in a production of Much Ado About Nothing. This production was set in post-WWII Italy, and there were two swing dance numbers. So the director invited the cast to a swing workshop at MIT. "Okay," I thought, "I get to look good on stage, and I can pick up a few moves to impress ladies."
Only a fraction of the cast showed up. We all headed over to MIT together, and we were a little late. They got past the "Here's everything you need to know" part, and had already moved on to the "Grab someone and dance with them" part.
They started playing Artie Shaw or something. I started out with someone in the cast. We were just like, "lol whoops look at us dancing poorly wee," and then they were like, "OKAY, ladies, move to the gentleman on your left." My new dancing partner was obviously from MIT. She looked like a scrawny Velma with very nice glasses. I put my hand on her hip, went, "Uh, okay," and started moving my feet. I stepped right on her toe.
She looked at me with her brow furrowed: "You're leading," she said.
My balls rolled right out the door and down the stairs.
-----
At the start of last semester, on the first day of a lecture class, I was talking to my friend Chelsea, catching up and the like.
"And I got a girlfriend," I said. "Her name's Chihiro. She's really shy."
Two girls in the row in front of us, Katie and Laura, turned right the fuck around. They sort of knew me, and they clearly couldn't believe I had a girlfriend.
"Who is she?" they asked with a mix of pride and fright. "Does she go to this school? What does she study?"
"Um," I said, "I was talking about a video game. I have a girlfriend in a video game."
They looked at each other. They were disappointed, but not at all surprised.
Chelsea told me that the same thing happened to her when she talked about playing Harvest Moon.
-----
So, I don't know how many months ago, I sent in this postcard that came with the FLCL Complete Collection to get a free T-shirt with this design on it. I got it, like, two weeks ago. I like it a lot.
So I wore it when I was asked to fill in for somebody at the convenience store on campus. It was a pretty slow day, classes didn't start until the next day, and I spent most of the time on my feet because I couldn't fit the chair in front of my computer, because they were storing an excess of fountain soda boxes under the counter.
My shirt got a few long glances of interest from some people. Three dudes in all spoke up about it, saying like, "Nice shirt, that show is great." My responses became less and less wordy: "Yeah. There was this postcard that came with the FLCL complete set, and I sent it like a year ago, I didn't get it until just now." "Yeah, I got it for free with a postcard in the series collection." "Yeah, I got it free with the DVD."
Towards the end of my shift, this very, very cute, pale, small-voiced redhead came in and bought a Nutrigrain or something. She used her small voice to say small things like, "That's all," "Here you go," "Just a sec," as she was putting her stuff on the counter and getting her wallet out. After she paid, she said, "I like your shirt."
"Thank you. I got it free with the post card."
"What?"
"Oh. The one that came with the DVD."
I looked at her for about four seconds. I realized that she didn't know about FLCL - she actually just liked my shirt. Now that I had stopped her from leaving, I had to somehow justify the awkward silence by telling her something interesting about the shirt.
"It... I didn't have to pay for it."
"That's... cool."
"Thank you."
No comments:
Post a Comment