She was the new girl in high school, burdened with going to the school where a parent had been hired in administration. An introverted genius who was always so serious. She was most likely depressed, depressed in that slunking slithering teenage way.
That didn't stop Patricia and me from befriending her. We were open minded!
One day she said, "Jesus and Satan were friends. God made them both!"
Ok.
To show you just how open minded we were, when she, one day, furthered the theory that inanimate objects move and mate, even reproduce, we entertained this theory.
Delivered without a smile, without the slightest indication of a sense of humor, but looking into my eyes deeply, she said, "Wire hangers mate in closets. If you look in your closet you'll see more of them in there. Every time you look!"
"Ooohh. Wow! You're right!"
"And yarn. When you're not looking it moves to touch the other yarns and gets itself all tangled up."
"Oooooh!"
As the new girl walked the halls to change classes, she clutched her notebooks and purse to her chest and refused to look at anyone. She hated being there. She was going to bear it without grinning. High school was such shit. When would it all be over?
Patricia and I, still silly and innocent enough to think that the first girl to claim a crush on a boy could expect all other girls to give up, did dump the new girl when she dared express her crush on Smiling Sam. This we were not open minded about. Sam had the most brilliant perfect toothy smile that went on forever. God knows why he was so happy all the time but he was lit from within. Maybe his parents were uncharacteristically unconditionally loving. Maybe he had a bright future in accounting or management. His overall attitude and composure was open and friendly, just the opposite of the new girl who wanted him. Patricia had claimed Sam first and we two were horrified that the new girl wanted him and we had bonded over her dibs on the boy. So we stopped speaking to the new girl and didn't look at her to see her ignoring us when we passed her in the hall.
Sam married a girl from his church not long after high school, a girl no one had ever heard about. He must have been aware that Patricia had an obsessive crush on him. They had talked. She reported to me that he had said to her, "If I hadn't married my wife, it would've been you!" How diplomatic! How impossible!
What made me recall this story?
I have yarn. This morning I wondered how it could've gotten entwined with the electrical wires of my clock radio and cell phone. To detangle, I had to unplug.
Fortunately, all is well in my closet.
C 2021
Seriously, April Fools.
