I'm Facebook friends with a boy from high school. He was the first guy who ever decided that he liked me and it turned out that this was probably a bad idea for him.
He was a nice guy. He played piano or some instrument I can't remember (I know this because I met him in band/choir rehearsals). I thought that was cool. He was always very nice to me and he paid me a lot of attention. Also he was a year older than me which I thought was cool and when you're a freshman in high school boys that are nice to you and pay attention to you earn points (especially if middle school sucked--and it did).
This boy used to see me at school every day and compliment me on how pretty I was, and he liked to read and write which earned A LOT of points with me because, hello, how often do you find a boy who's literate in this day and age? He had this notebook he carried around with him and one day during breakfast he sat with me and read all of this poetry that he'd written about me. It was incredibly sweet.
And despite all of this I just was not interested in him that way. It might sound like I was insane as a 14-year-old who was passing up a perfectly good, perfectly nice boy who wrote me poetry, but I had a few very good reasons for deciding to keep things between us platonic:
Number One: He told me this story about how the year before, he'd punched the glass on the back door of the gym and shattered it completely and the school had to replace the entire door and he got suspended and detention forever. And he was always in detention at that time. I'm not really into troublemakers. I never understood the fascination with bad boys.
Number Two: Despite being well versed in the English language he still relied pretty heavily on slang and ebonics and the phrase "y'know what I'm sayin'?" which drove me up the wall.
Number Three: The cherry on top of all of this was when I asked him what he wanted to do after high school he told me he wanted to be a rapper. And thus my interest was gone completely. Now, don't get me wrong, I want to be a young adult novelist so I don't have any room to tell anyone that their career goal is unachievable (that would've been a huge pot-kettle situation). If he wanted to be a rapper, then by all means he could be a rapper if he was any good--but he was not any good at being a rapper. At all.
Moving on, after I decided to friend-zone this boy, we were at a school function one weekend where we were doing a talent show and I was singing in the choir and we (that being the choir and the three members of band) were standing in front of the stage having some kind of conversation that inevitably led to the subject of boy/girl relationships, as they so often do in high school.
This boy who liked me was incredibly bold, a quality I admired up until this point. That's when, for whatever reason, he decided to admit that he liked me in front of everyone right there.
Social situations are not my thing. Not at all. I am the most quiet, shy, painfully awkward, yet sweet and adorable person you will ever meet. There was a consensus among my classmates in high school about this factoid. Anyway, social situations are bad enough, but putting me on the spot in front of all of my friends was just too much.
And I froze. I didn't say anything. I just looked down at my feet and admired the ugly floor of my gym. I didn't want to say "sorry, I don't like you" in front of everyone, and I didn't want say anything that would give the wrong impression like "oh, that's sweet" or something. I just wanted to dissolve into the floor or turn invisible or disapparte somewhere.
After I successfully showed that I a) not interested and b) too humiliated to even speak by way of my silence, the boy rambled on about how rejected and embarrassed he was. And it was embarrassing for him because everyone proceeded to give him crap about it for the next week or so.
He had been rejected in what seemed to be cold blood by the nice quiet little freshman girl (I wasn't known as Harry Potter Girl until sophomore year). And I felt really bad about it. I honestly did.
But the social anxiety part of my brain was like "You deserve it bitch! Put me on the spot again! I dare you motherfucker!"
After that we didn't hang out anymore and we didn't speak much. He got expelled from school the next year and has since continued his dream of becoming a rapper. He released a mix tape (that he heavily promotes on Facebook) and sometimes posts the lyrics to his songs as his status (which saddens me because he used to have such a way with words and now he's been reduced to nothing more than your run-of-the-mill punchline "Fuck bitches, get money" rappers).
I don't know what life would've been like if I had decided to give him a chance, but looking at how his relationship with his girlfriend down the line was like, I'm quite certain I dodged a bullet. I wasn't envious of her at all. Also, there were certain expectations that I would've had to have met in that relationship and let's just say I would have eaten glass before I decided to put out in high school.
I'm surprised that I had my shit together as a high school student, because I feel like I don't now, but hopefully I'll look back on my days as a 20-year-old and think to myself, "Yeah, I was doing all right."
Fare thee well,
April
Song of the Day: Fifteen by Taylor Swift
