Ohwha Tagoo Siam
I'm still working hard on work projects. When I can't take any more computer crap, I draw endless sketches on bits of paper and then cram the bits of paper under my Wacom tablet and leave them, never to be finished, possibly eventually to be thrown away. The stuff looks like this:
Sophomore year of highschool. I was fifteen. I lived an hour away from school at the very end of a country valley road. We got no TV reception there, no radio, no neighbors, no society. I had books and forests and church and school and that was it. I asked for art supplies for birthday presents, not clothes like my contemporaries. My anti-consumerist parents did not swear and a can of beer rusted away in the back of our fridge. Though educated in sex-ed by my midwife mother, I remained as culturally innocent as the Amish.
I was geeky with lots of geek friends: sophomore girlfriends in my year, my freshman brother and his geek friends, and one geek girl in senior year who I admired muchly, NavyGirl. She was peroxide blonde, wore lipstick, and read SFF. She was sassy and after graduation she was going to join the navy. I was entranced and followed her around. My friends and her friends got together at lunch and in the library, making one huge multi-year geek horde.
MathBoy was a senior, one of NavyGirl's friends. One day MathBoy caught me alone in a corridor and asked me if I wanted to go to a movie.
CluelessKid!Dido: Which movie?
MathBoy: ....Um. Any movie?
CluelessKid!Dido: Well, I don't know. Is there something good coming out?
Remember, my family was like the Amish. Culturally innocent. No access to TV or radio. If there was a movie out there worth seeing, I knew I wouldn't know about it. And I may have had the pocket money to be able to go to see it, but I didn't want to spend my money on the usual crappy horror films my friends liked.
MathBoy: Um.
CluelessKid!Dido: Which movie? What's it about? Is the group making plans for something this weekend?
MathBoy: Uh. No. I'm just asking you.
CluelessKid!Dido: Asking me what?
MathBoy: If you want to go to a movie.
CluelessKid!Dido: I don't know. What movie? Horror or anime? Who all is going?
MathBoy: ... Nevermind. Forget it.
He looked very unhappy and he went away and I stood there for about five minutes trying to figure it out. (Hey, what can I say. I was INNOCENT. Like the Amish.)
And eventually I figured it out that he had been asking me to go to a movie. Just me. Like, on a date. With him. Oh. Well, duuuuuuuh.
Mathboy was quiet; he didn't say much but when he spoke he spoke with the really slow, upper-crust version of the Tennessee drawl. He had blue eyes and had the springy pink look of well-fed veal. He was a math geek; there was likely a protractor, a calculator and a mechanical pencil in his pockets at all times. He was 17. Cute and gentle as a very large lamb.
Dating anyone would have been edutational. Dating a senior, even nerdy MathBoy, would have hiked my at-the-very-bottom status considerably. And I did like him. Gosh.
So I tried to go find him to talk to him. I couldn't find him. I couldn't find him until the next day, when I caught him at his locker. He blanched and ran away from me before I could get a word out.
Lessons learned from this debacle?
1. You have to be able to perceive an opportunity in order to take advantage of it. Doh!
2. Some boys have fragile, bubble-like egos and may run away screaming from small stupid girls. Unless one is good at herding cats, it is useless to pursue.
3. Despite the braces, zits, flat chest, lack of height, ability to look more unfashionable than my classmates while wearing the same school uniform, extreme geekiness, general unpopularity, lack of experience and utter cluelessness--- I could still attract boys. And then instantly repel them! Wow! I decided it must be my personality, since I hadn't anything else. Yay, personality!
MathBoy pretended to ignore me for the rest of the school year. I let him keep his dignity and didn't spread the news over the school that a senior had failed to ask out a particularly dorky sophomore.
I politely ignored him back, except for those moments of accidental privacy when I informed him through the subtlety of sign language of my appraisal of the whole situation.
I hope MathBoy eventually got over the terrible trauma of asking me out and went on to ask other, less innocent, less horrible young girls out on dates. I look back on him fondly, the poor dear.
Oh, well. ;)
Sophomore year of highschool. I was fifteen. I lived an hour away from school at the very end of a country valley road. We got no TV reception there, no radio, no neighbors, no society. I had books and forests and church and school and that was it. I asked for art supplies for birthday presents, not clothes like my contemporaries. My anti-consumerist parents did not swear and a can of beer rusted away in the back of our fridge. Though educated in sex-ed by my midwife mother, I remained as culturally innocent as the Amish.
I was geeky with lots of geek friends: sophomore girlfriends in my year, my freshman brother and his geek friends, and one geek girl in senior year who I admired muchly, NavyGirl. She was peroxide blonde, wore lipstick, and read SFF. She was sassy and after graduation she was going to join the navy. I was entranced and followed her around. My friends and her friends got together at lunch and in the library, making one huge multi-year geek horde.
MathBoy was a senior, one of NavyGirl's friends. One day MathBoy caught me alone in a corridor and asked me if I wanted to go to a movie.
CluelessKid!Dido: Which movie?
MathBoy: ....Um. Any movie?
CluelessKid!Dido: Well, I don't know. Is there something good coming out?
Remember, my family was like the Amish. Culturally innocent. No access to TV or radio. If there was a movie out there worth seeing, I knew I wouldn't know about it. And I may have had the pocket money to be able to go to see it, but I didn't want to spend my money on the usual crappy horror films my friends liked.
MathBoy: Um.
CluelessKid!Dido: Which movie? What's it about? Is the group making plans for something this weekend?
MathBoy: Uh. No. I'm just asking you.
CluelessKid!Dido: Asking me what?
MathBoy: If you want to go to a movie.
CluelessKid!Dido: I don't know. What movie? Horror or anime? Who all is going?
MathBoy: ... Nevermind. Forget it.
He looked very unhappy and he went away and I stood there for about five minutes trying to figure it out. (Hey, what can I say. I was INNOCENT. Like the Amish.)
And eventually I figured it out that he had been asking me to go to a movie. Just me. Like, on a date. With him. Oh. Well, duuuuuuuh.
Mathboy was quiet; he didn't say much but when he spoke he spoke with the really slow, upper-crust version of the Tennessee drawl. He had blue eyes and had the springy pink look of well-fed veal. He was a math geek; there was likely a protractor, a calculator and a mechanical pencil in his pockets at all times. He was 17. Cute and gentle as a very large lamb.
Dating anyone would have been edutational. Dating a senior, even nerdy MathBoy, would have hiked my at-the-very-bottom status considerably. And I did like him. Gosh.
So I tried to go find him to talk to him. I couldn't find him. I couldn't find him until the next day, when I caught him at his locker. He blanched and ran away from me before I could get a word out.
Lessons learned from this debacle?
1. You have to be able to perceive an opportunity in order to take advantage of it. Doh!
2. Some boys have fragile, bubble-like egos and may run away screaming from small stupid girls. Unless one is good at herding cats, it is useless to pursue.
3. Despite the braces, zits, flat chest, lack of height, ability to look more unfashionable than my classmates while wearing the same school uniform, extreme geekiness, general unpopularity, lack of experience and utter cluelessness--- I could still attract boys. And then instantly repel them! Wow! I decided it must be my personality, since I hadn't anything else. Yay, personality!
MathBoy pretended to ignore me for the rest of the school year. I let him keep his dignity and didn't spread the news over the school that a senior had failed to ask out a particularly dorky sophomore.
I politely ignored him back, except for those moments of accidental privacy when I informed him through the subtlety of sign language of my appraisal of the whole situation.
I hope MathBoy eventually got over the terrible trauma of asking me out and went on to ask other, less innocent, less horrible young girls out on dates. I look back on him fondly, the poor dear.
Oh, well. ;)