They say that when a boy is being mean to a girl, it's because he likes her. I don't think that this is necessarily true in all cases, but I can understand some people confusing teasing for flirting when they're trying to gain the affections of someone in particular. This would lead me to believe that the same is true in some cases of girls teasing boys.
When I transferred to a new high school, the only person I knew from my childhood was Jill, who had transferred to said school a year before I did. Naturally, I spent most of my time with her, because I didn't know anyone else, and found myself relying on her social networking skills to help me acclimate myself to my new surroundings. What I should have taken into consideration was the fact that she was just as horribly awkward as I, and she didn't really know that many people to begin with.
One of the girls that she did introduce me to was Amber. We had met a year previous, when we had both attended Jill's birthday party, but we hadn't really gotten to know each other very well. I saw Amber as Jill's mildly overbearing friend with an unfortunate number of opinions, and I'm fairly confident that she saw me as Jill's quiet friend with an off-putting demeanor.
It wasn't until we were both going to the same school, and hanging out in the same circle of friends during our lunchtimes, that Amber and I realized that we kind of hated each other. It's not that we were determined to be uncivilized to each other...at least, I wasn't, but we just butted heads far too much to really enjoy each other's company. I think the issue was that, during the year that Jill and I had been apart, she and Amber had become very close friends, and when I came back into Jill's life, Amber saw me as some sort of threat. Apparently, teenage girls can each have only one person that they refer to as their "best friend."
So a lot of conversations would lead into Amber trying to prove that she was a better friend to Jill than I ever could be, and I really didn't care what Amber thought, so I just sort of ignored her and would tell some childhood tale that Jill and I had shared, and then it would devolve into a bunch of inside-stories that Amber would never know. It was the kind of psychological torture that I'm sort of great at. Things would usually escalate to the point of Amber calling me something really foul, and then I would say "wow, what's your problem?" which Jill would follow up with "yeah, what IS your problem?" because Jill was apparently unable to recognize the fact that Amber was jealous of the history we had. Amber, of course, would see this as me turning Jill against her, and would come to hate me more.
In private, Jill would confide to me that she thought that Amber liked me, whereas I was usually under the impression that Amber was in love with Jill due to her protectiveness of her. There was a certain Peppermint Patty/Marcie-vibe to their relationship that I don't think Jill ever noticed.
One day, while we were eating lunch on the lawn in front of the school, Amber asked Jill a question about something that had happened to the two of them once, which Jill could not remember. After describing the incident, Jill still had no recollection of said events, and I described a similar event that happened to myself and Jill, which Jill immediately remembered and finished off the story for me. It was at this point that I was hit in the face with an apple.
Now, I don't know how other people react when someone throws an apple directly at their face from two feet away, but I was pretty pissed. I screamed "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" and threw the apple, as hard as I could, into the parking lot below.
I'm pretty sure I expected her to apologise to me, but instead she said "that was my apple." Um...yes, it certainly was. And then you threw it at my damn head. She continued to stare at me for a moment, then told me to go and get her apple. I, of course, refused, and told her to go somewhere fairly unpleasant. After a few more failed attempts to try to convince me that I needed to retrieve her fruit, Amber stood up and wandered down to the parking lot to get her meal back. A teenage boy, who clearly knew the rules of karma, happened upon the apple first, and kicked it as hard as he could into the road, where it was promptly crushed by a car.
Amber returned and told me that I owed her an apple, and I'm pretty sure I replied with "you owe me a face!" which is just...an absolutely brilliant retort. I wish I could say that her pummeling me with that pomaceous bastard is what made me ugly, but I only have my parents to blame for that one.
Jill maintained that Amber was just in love with me and unable to express it in a socially-acceptable manner, while I remained convinced that she was just unable to come to terms with her homosexual feelings toward Jill. I would eventually be proven wrong, as Amber is now married (TO A MAN), but I'm still fairly confident that she was far more willing to murder me than she was to date me, and was just jealous of the relationship that I had with Jill.
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