January 9-10, 1997. New year, new classes. (#114)

December 19, 2021December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 3 Comments

I walked down the center aisle of the bus, looking for a place to sit. It was rainy outside, so the bus would fill up quickly, although one nice thing about living a mile and a half beyond the edge of campus was that my bus stop was one of the first ones on the route in the morning.

At the next stop after mine, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a girl wearing an Urbana ’96 T-shirt boarding the bus. I wondered who this was, which campus Christian group she belonged to, which church she went to, and if we ever crossed paths at the convention in Urbana during the break. I looked up, about to ask her about her shirt and point out that I was at Urbana too, when her eyes lit up and she smiled. “Hey!” she said. “How are you?”

Apparently we had crossed paths before. Where? What was her name? “I’m good,” I replied. “How are you?”

“Good! I really like my schedule this quarter. What about you? What classes are you taking?”

“Advanced calculus, Euclidean geometry, Nutrition 10, and RST 141.”

“Two math classes? That’s your major, right?”

“Yeah. What are you taking?”

“English, history, psych, and bio. It’s a lot of work already. How is the Religious Studies class so far? Which one is 141?”

I realized at this point that I was going to have to see this through and act like I knew who this girl was. She was Asian, with dark wavy hair down to her shoulders and chubby cheeks. I felt terrible for not remembering who she was. “John,” I said. “The Gospel and Epistles of John.”

“Nice! Is that with Dr. Hurt?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I had him for RST 40 last quarter.”

“I took that last year,” the girl said. “It was a really good class. But I haven’t been able to take anything else he’s taught. I always have other classes I need to take at the same time.”

“I know what that’s like,” I said. “I had to choose between Hurt’s class and chorus this quarter.”

“I didn’t know you were in chorus! How often do you guys sing?”

“We have a performance at the end of each quarter. We spend the whole quarter rehearsing, pretty much.”

“That sounds fun!”

“Last quarter was the first time I did it. I’m hoping I can still make it to the performance this quarter, to support the people I sang with last quarter.”

“That’ll be nice,” the girl said.

Since I was fully committed to pretending to know this girl at this point, I continued the conversation. “How was the rest of your break?” I asked.

“Good,” she replied. “Pretty boring. I was just with my family, in Willow Grove. What about you?”

“Same.”

“Where are you from again?”

“Plumdale.”

“Where’s that?”

“Near Gabilan and Santa Lucia.”

“Oh, okay. Not too far from Willow Grove.”

“Right. About an hour.” At this point, the bus was pulling off to the side of the road at the bus terminal on campus across the street from the Memorial Union, so as I stood, I said, “Hey, it was good running into you.”

“You too! I’ll see you tomorrow at JCF?”

“Yeah,” I replied. That definitely helped; now I knew she was someone from Jeromeville Christian Fellowship. But why did I not recognize her? And now that I had spent an entire bus ride pretending to know her, it would be more awkward to admit that I did not recognize her. Hopefully I would figure this out soon.

Today was Thursday, which was my lightest day of class, as was usually the case. All I had on Thursdays this quarter was the discussion for Religious Studies. I worked 10 hours per week for the Learning Skills Center on campus, so for the rest of the quarter I would probably have tutoring groups to run on Thursdays. For this particular Thursday, though, I just stayed on campus for a few hours, buying a few things I needed at the campus store and doing math homework in a quiet corner of the library.

Early in the afternoon, when it came time to go home, I left the library and walked toward the bus stop. The rain had stopped by then, but since the ground was still wet, I stayed on the sidewalks, instead of cutting diagonally across the grass of the Quad like I would have otherwise. I looked up at one point and saw Haley Channing approaching. The sidewalk was narrow enough, and the ground wet enough, that there was no way to avoid coming face to face with her. This was the first time I had seen Haley since our serious conversation at the beginning of finals week.

I looked up again to see Haley now about ten feet away, making eye contact with me. I halfheartedly smiled and waved.

“Hey, Greg,” Haley said. “What’s up? How was Urbana?”

“It was good,” I said. “I learned a lot, although I’m still trying to process exactly what it means for my life.”

“Yeah. Discerning God’s will can be like that.”

“How have you been?” I asked in the most neutral possible way, knowing that this must have been a hard Christmas for the Channings.

“Okay,” Haley replied. “It was good to be together, but, well, you know.”

I had never experienced that kind of loss so close to the holidays, but I imagined it was not easy. “Yeah,” I said, nodding.

“Are you heading to class?”

“I’m done for the day. Heading to the bus.”

“Nice. I still have a class and a discussion this afternoon. I’ll be here until 5.”

“Wow,” I replied. “Good luck. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Have a good afternoon.”

“I will.”

That did not go too badly, I thought as I continued walking toward the bus stop. Haley and I still seemed to be on good terms, and I managed not to say anything awkward about her mother’s passing. Although Haley had done nothing wrong by not reciprocating my feelings for her, the situation still made me feel like a failure. This couple sitting across from me on the bus held hands and kissed for the entire ride; seeing them certainly did not help my mood. I would probably never get that opportunity.

None of my roommates appeared to be home when I got home. I went to my room and turned on the computer, clicking the icon for the program that made the dial-up modem click and whir so that I could check my email. I had three messages: one from Mom; one from the TA for Religious Studies, who was starting an email list for our class; and the one I was hoping for, from a new Internet friend named Amy. I skipped the other two messages and went straight to Amy’s.

From: “Amy D.” <ajd1973@aolnet.com>
To: gjdennison@jeromeville.edu
Date: Thu, 09 Jan 1997 15:48 -0500
Subject: Re: hi!

Hi! I hope you’re having a wonderful day! Yes I would love to read some of your poetry! It’s so cool that you like to do that. I’m not a very good writer.

To answer your question, yes I am married… my husband and I got married two years ago. We don’t have kids yet. We wanted to wait a few years. What about you? I’m sure a nice guy like you probably has a girlfriend, right? She’s a lucky woman!

How have your classes been so far this semester? You guys start early! I could never handle taking two math classes… you must be a genius! I hope you have a great day!

Amy (your big sis)

I first met Amy through an email I got while I was in Plumdale the week before Christmas. I had made a personal Web page last year, and I updated it occasionally with the things that were going on in my life. Apparently Amy randomly found my page and liked the Bible verses I had quoted. After the first few emails we exchanged, she started jokingly calling me her little brother, because she was a few years older than me, she never had a brother, and I reminded her of what she had pictured a hypothetical brother to be like. That was sweet.

Of course she would be married. I could never realistically expect a nice girl to just fall in my lap out of nowhere and actually be interested in me back. Girls just never liked me like that. It probably would not have worked out anyway, because she was almost three thousand miles away, in Massachusetts.

I opened the folder on the computer where I had saved my creative writing. Last summer, I was on a bike ride on the other side of Jeromeville, and I rode past the house at 2234 Baron Court, where Haley Channing and her roommates had lived last year. On the ride home, I kept thinking about the first time I went to that house, when some friends from JCF found me having a bad day and decided to include me, and how one of these new friends, Haley, had such a sweet smile and pretty blue eyes. I wrote a poem about that night and called it “2234.” A few months later, when I was struggling with my feelings for Haley, I wrote another poem; I called it “2235,” intending for it to be a sequel to 2234.

while i was in that house that awesome night
a bomb was planted deep within my soul
when bad turned good and everything seemed right
the evil bomber came and took control

today when i am with my friends
i hear a scary ticking sound
it’s growing louder every day

do i run away and hide?
do i leave without a trace?
do i stand here at ground zero
while it blows up in my face?
do i carefully inspect the bomb
so i may then defuse?
do i set the darn thing off right now?
i’ve not a thing to lose

i know the answer will come
but how much pain must i endure
and how many friends must i lose
before it arrives?

During finals week in December, after I told Haley I liked her and she was not interested back, and after Eddie Baker found out I liked Haley, I spent several study breaks writing another poem called “2236,” since that was the next number after 2235.

On this day,
a great weight has been lifted
from my shoulders.

I wanted to run away and hide from you,
to keep from dealing with this.
But God had other plans for me.
So I turned and said hello.

When I found out
that my friend knew all along,
I knew that it was over.
So I let go.

Now there is no more bomb
waiting to go off.
The Lord is doing His will,
leaving me free
to strengthen those special friendships I made
during that cold winter night.

When I wrote 2236, I was feeling at peace regarding Haley. I was no longer feeling so peaceful, and the poem now felt somewhat inauthentic. However, the poem captured a specific feeling at a specific time, which was not necessarily what I would feel forever. I copied and pasted those poems, along with the original 2234, into my reply to Amy. I also answered no to her question about having a girlfriend and explained what had happened with Haley, to give her some context for the poems.

All four of my lectures this quarter met on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, as had usually been the case with my schedule. It was sunny on Friday, so I rode my bike to campus. I parked near Wellington Hall and walked inside to Advanced Calculus. I had left the house a little later than usual, and when I arrived, almost but not quite late, the room was about three-quarters full. I saw an empty seat behind Katy Hadley, a cute redhead math major who had been in several of my classes over the years. I walked toward that seat, wondering if today would be the day I would finally get to talk to Katy. I really only knew her name because I had seen her write it on papers before.

As I sat in the chair, the momentum of my heavy backpack carried me awkwardly out of control, and my left foot swung forward, hitting the leg of Katy’s chair and Katy’s ankle. “Ow!” Katy said, turning around looking annoyed.

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly.

Anton, the professor whom I had had once before, began talking about bounded variation in his thick but comprehensible Belgian accent. I hoped that a mathematics lecture would distract me from the embarrassment of having blown it with Katy, but it did not. About ten minutes into class, I quietly tore a page out of the back of my notebook and wrote on it, I’m sorry I kicked the seat. I discreetly passed the note to Katy.

About a minute later, as I was writing down theorems about functions of bounded variation, Katy turned halfway toward me and placed the paper I gave her back on my desk. That’s okay, she had written, with a smiley face. This was progress, I supposed.

Later that day, after I was done with classes, I ran into Taylor Santiago and Pete Green, friends from the freshman dorm two years ago who I now went to church with. They were walking in the same direction I was, so I walked with them, and we shared stories about our first week of classes.

“I ran into Schuyler Jenkins this morning,” Pete said.

“Schuyler Jenkins!” Taylor replied. “I haven’t seen her since freshman year!” Schuyler was a girl who had lived across the hall a few doors down from Taylor freshman year, upstairs from me. She was short, barely over five feet, and she could be both short-tempered and whiny at various times. She did not speak to me for several weeks that year, after I played a prank which hurt her much more than I thought it would.

I unlocked my bike and began riding. “Where are you guys headed?” I asked.

“Bus,” Pete replied, pointing to the northeast.

“I’ll follow you,” I said, riding my bike very slowly alongside Taylor and Pete toward the bus terminal.

“Greg?” Taylor asked. “Has anyone else told you that your bike might be a little too small for you?”

“Actually, yes. A few other people told me that. I just got something cheap when I first came to Jeromeville; I didn’t get it properly sized or anything”

“It seems like you might be comfortable on a bigger bike.”

“This one is starting to fall apart,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind someday when I get a new bike.” I know now that I did not keep that bicycle regularly maintained. The chain needed to be cleaned and lubricated, and a few spokes in the back were broken, making the back wheel wobble. “Not only is this bike too small, but it makes weird squeaking noises, and it wobbles in the back,” I explained.

“Sounds like Schuyler Jenkins!” Pete said.

“Haha!” I laughed, loudly.

“Wow!” Taylor said. “Greg, you should name your bike Schuyler.”

“That’s hilarious!” I replied I had never made the connection before between my bike and Schuyler. But from that day on, I called my bike Schuyler, and I loved telling that funny story so much that I named my next bike Schuyler II.

I took Schuyler out for a ride in the Greenbelts after I got back from class. The weather was colder than I would have wanted it, but after having rained for a couple days, it felt nice to see the sun again. I showered when I got home, then went to Jeromeville Christian Fellowship that night. I saw the girl I had spoken with on the bus the day before, wearing a name tag that said “Anna.” When I got home, I found my phone and email list for JCF; there was one Anna on the list, a sophomore named Anna Lam. That was most likely her, but her name did not register in my memory at all.

Haley was at JCF that night, but we did not get to talk beyond saying hello. I was okay with that. Haley and I were on good terms, but sometimes I was still going to feel weird about our past. That was normal. So what if Haley did not like me as more than a friend. So what if I had an awkward conversation on the bus with Anna Lam, and my new Internet friend Amy D. was married and not interested in me, and I accidentally kicked Katy Hadley in class. I still had friends who cared about me, and the right people would stay in my life. Hopefully something would work out for me eventually.

Author’s note: Do any of you name your vehicles, and if so, what’s an interesting story behind the name of your vehicle?

Also, yes I did really just painstakingly edit every episode to include the episode number in the title. Maybe if someone who just happens upon this blog sees that it is episode number 114, this person will actually be motivated to go back and read episodes 1 through 113… yeah, that’s probably wishful thinking.

May 11-16, 1996. A montage of awkward moments. (#83)

February 13, 2021December 19, 2021 ~ Greg Dennison ~ 25 Comments

The Associated Students of the University of Jeromeville, ASUJ for short, was the organization responsible for student activities at UJ. They held two major festivals every year. They were less than a month apart, since both involved traditions specific to spring. The Spring Picnic, which began decades ago as the school’s open house and grew into a major festival, was interesting and fun. The other festival was called the Mother Earth Festival, held on Mother’s Day weekend. It was a bunch of hippie stuff, not really my thing.

I attended the Mother Earth Festival exactly once, in 1996. It was a Saturday afternoon, I was bored, and I decided to check it out, so I got on my bike, parked it on campus, and walked around the Quad.

The Quad was packed. Craft and vendor booths lined the edges of the Quad, with a sea of humanity in between. I walked along the row of booths, peeking at what was happening inside. Face painting. Beads. Tie-dyeing. Henna tattoos. These round things with feathers on them that the sign called dreamcatchers. At the south end of the quad, the temporary stage where I saw Lawsuit at previous Spring Picnics was set up, and two musicians were playing instruments I could not identify while some lady in a long skirt with armpit hair frolicked and pranced on the stage. I walked up the other side of the Quad, looking at other booths, before deciding that nothing here particularly piqued my interest. The most memorable thing I remember seeing in the fifteen minutes I spent at the Mother Earth Festival was this girl with big boobs sunbathing in a bikini. She and her flat-chested friend were not dressed as hippies at all, and their armpits were actually shaved. I looked at them for about five seconds, then moved on so it would not look creepy.

As I approached the place where I had parked, I walked past a bench and saw a girl named Maria who was in my Advanced Composition class last quarter, sitting on a bench looking away from me. I took my rolled-up copy of the Mother Earth Festival schedule of events, and I tapped her on the shoulder with it.

Maria turned to look at me, except it was not Maria. This girl had a similar build, hairstyle, and coloring, but otherwise looked nothing like Maria.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you were someone else.” I walked away before the other girl could respond.

Why did I do that? I kept replaying the embarrassing incident in my mind as I rode my bike back home. Maria had not been not looking at me, I had no need to go out of my way to say hi to her, and I did not really want to talk to Maria anyway. The angry political messages on the buttons all over her backpack clearly indicated that she was not the kind of person I wanted to get to know, and I did not find her attractive. And now some other girl probably thought I was a weirdo, all because I had decided to be friendly.

Unfortunately for me, I tended to be just as awkward around girls I actually did find attractive. Two days later, during a break between classes, I was walking around the Memorial Union looking for a place to sit. I held a slice of pepperoni pizza on a paper plate and a Coca-Cola in a reusable large plastic mug. Some division of ASUJ was handing these mugs out free a few weeks ago, to encourage people not to fill up the landfills with disposable cups. Drinks were 25 cents less at the ASUJ Coffee House for customers bringing their own cups. Of course, I had a disposable paper plate, but at least that was biodegradable, and bringing an actual plate to campus would be somewhat unwieldy.

I looked out the window to a courtyard-like area, which was surrounded on three sides by the building. A large round fountain sat in the middle of the courtyard, but it was dry and had been ever since I began attending UJ. Metal tables and chairs were arranged around part of the courtyard. I felt that familiar jolt of excitement and nervousness as I saw Haley Channing sitting at one of those tables, alone. Finally, this might be a chance to talk to Haley one-on-one with no one else around. I almost spilled my drink as I opened the door leading to the courtyard, but caught myself. “Hey,” I said as I walked up to Haley. “May I sit here?”

“Hi, Greg!” Haley replied, smiling. “Go ahead!”

I placed my food on the table and sat down. “How’s your day going?” I asked.

“Pretty good, except I have a paper to write. I’m gonna be busy tonight. You?”

“I’m good. I have a lot of math homework, though.”

“What math class are you taking?”

“Applied Linear Algebra and Combinatorics. Two classes.”

“I have no idea what either of those mean.”

“Linear algebra works with matrices.”

“I kind of remember matrices in high school, a little bit.”

“And combinatorics is about problems that come up with counting combinations and things like that. If I have license plates with three letters and three numbers, and I need to figure out how many possible license plates there could be, that’s a combinatorics problem. At least that’s what we did back in the first chapter.”

“Interesting.”

“It is. I also really like the professor for that class.” I looked up and saw a familiar face walking toward us; it was Claire Seaver from church. I waved, and Claire walked over to our table.

“Hey,” Claire said to me. “How are you?”

“I’m doing well. Claire, this is Haley–”

“Hi, Haley,” Claire interrupted, smiling.

“Hi,” Haley replied with a tone of recognition.

“How do you two know each other?” I asked, trying to hide my shame in not knowing this and being caught off guard.

“Chorus,” Haley replied. “I used to do that last year.”

“I keep telling Greg he should join chorus,” Claire said.

“You should!” Haley told me. “I’ve heard you sing. You have a good voice.”

“Maybe,” I replied.

“How were your weekends?” Claire asked. “Did you guys call your mothers for Mother’s Day?”

“I did,” Haley said.

“I saw this thing on the Internet the other day where you can send someone flowers by email. You get an email, and it’s a picture of flowers with a personalized message,” I said. “My parents just got email recently, Mom loves email, so I sent one of those to Mom.”

“That’s fun,” Claire replied.

“If I’m going to send flowers to my mother, she’s gonna get real flowers,” Haley said. “No emails and pictures for my mother.”

“I need to get going, but I’ll see you guys later,” Claire said. We both waved and said goodbye as she walked away. As I took a bite of my pizza and chewed it, I kept thinking that I was probably blowing it with Haley. I had tried to introduce herself to someone she already knew, and she disapproved of my Mother’s Day gift. After I swallowed my pizza, I attempted to resurrect the conversation, asking, “Do you still do chorus now?”

“No. I did last year, but I have too much going on now.”

“That makes sense. I played piano as a kid, but I was always so self-conscious about performing for others. But I’m starting to get over that. This year I started singing in my church choir; that’s how I know Claire.”

“Nice! Chorus is always looking for guys.”

“Maybe I will for next year,” I said. We continued making small talk as we finished eating, and I hoped that she could not read disappointment in my body language. I could not help but feel like I had embarrassed myself in front of her.

Whenever I introduce two people now, I always ask them first if they know each other; this is a direct result of that incident all those years ago when I tried to introduce Claire and Haley. But that was still not the worst awkward moment I experienced that week.

I was back in the Memorial Union a few days later, looking for a place to study, and I saw a familiar brown-haired face sitting at a table by herself. It was my friend Lizzie, one of those people whom I initially crossed paths with just because we knew someone in common. Lizzie went to high school with Jack Chalmers, another math major who had been in multiple classes with me. Last fall, Jack and I had linear algebra together, and Lizzie had a class in the same classroom right before ours. Jack and Lizzie would say hi to each other as we waited in the hall and her class exited the room. Jack talked a lot, and he talked fast, and sometimes he would say hi to Lizzie in the middle of a sentence with me. He would say something like, “Hey Greg I’m totally not ready for this test and I blew off studying last night Hi Lizzie! so I hope I don’t bomb it because I totally need to keep my grades up.” Eventually, I started saying hi to Lizzie when I saw her around campus, and we had actually had conversations beyond hello a few times.

“Hey,” I said, approaching Lizzie’s table. “Mind if I sit here?”

“Hi!” Lizzie exclaimed enthusiastically. “Go ahead!”

“Thanks.”

“How’s it going?”

“I’m doing okay. Just busy with classes. What about you?”

“Same with me. I have a midterm tomorrow. But the school year is almost over!”

“I know! Are you doing anything exciting this summer?”

“Just going home and working. I need the money. What about you?”

“I’m staying here, taking a class. This will be the first time I’ve been in Jeromeville for the summer.”

“I hear it gets really hot!”

“I kind of like the heat, though.”

“What class are you taking?”

“Computer Science 40,” I explained. “I’m taking CS 30 now, it’s required for the math major, and I love it. There’s an upper division CS class, Data Structures, that counts toward my degree in place of a math class, but it requires 30 and 40 as prerequisites. It’s really hard to get CS classes because there are so many CS majors, and not much computer lab space, so they put a cap on how many can enroll, and CS majors have priority. Enrollment wasn’t restricted for the summer class.”

“Smart!” Lizzie replied. “You’re a math major, right? That’s how you know Jack?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you major in CS, if you like it that much?”

“Because I didn’t want something fun to turn into work. Also, my computer knowledge was several years out of date by the time I got here, and I knew I’d be competing with kids whose knowledge was much more advanced.”

“That makes sense. So you’re just taking the one class?”

“Yeah. First session. I’m not taking any classes second session. I’ll probably just hang out here and try to find something fun to do.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’ve discovered over the last couple years that I like to write. I’m working on a novel now, when I have time and I’m in the right mood.”

“That’s so cool!”

“Just for fun,” I said. “I know, I’m a math guy, I’m not supposed to be a writer.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being both! What’s your novel about?”

“There’s this guy, he’s a senior in high school, but he needs a fresh start, and he wants to leave his past behind. So he goes away to live with relatives. And he feels like he isn’t ready to move on to the next part of his life, so he pretends to be younger so he can have a couple more years in high school.”

“Wow,” Lizzie said. “Where’d you get the idea for that?”

“I guess I’ve kind of wished for that myself,” I explained. “I feel like I really grew a lot my senior year of high school, but then just as life was getting interesting, my friends and I all graduated and moved away and lost touch. I wonder how I would have turned out if I’d had another year or two to grow in that environment, if I would have gotten to experience more things I missed out on.”

“Well, I think you turned out fine.”

“Thank you,” I said. Then, after a pause, I added, “You can read it if you want.”

“Yeah! It sounds really good!”

“I could email you some of what I have so far. Does that work?”

“Sure. Let me give you my email.” Lizzie tore off a piece of paper from a notebook and wrote on it, then passed it to me. I opened it and read what she wrote, very confused for a few seconds, then suddenly frightened and embarrassed as I began to realize the full implications of what I read.

Lindsay’s email:
lkvandenberg@jeromeville.edu

Lindsay’s email. I had known this girl, whom I had been calling Lizzie, for over seven months, and this whole time her name was Lindsay. I had never seen her name in print before. I knew her through Jack, who talks really fast, so when I heard Jack say “Hi, Lindsay,” it came out sounding like “Hi Lizzie.” I suddenly tried to recall every time I had actually spoken to Lindsay, trying to remember if I had ever called her Lizzie to her face. I could not remember. I looked up at her, trying to put the name Lindsay Vandenberg to this face, and it felt weird, because she was still Lizzie to me.

“Greg?” Lindsay asked. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I was just thinking about something. No big deal. But I’ll send you my story.”

“Great! I look forward to reading it!” Lindsay looked at her watch. “I need to get going, I have class, but I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”

“Yeah! Have a great day!”

“You too!”

I never found out if Lindsay knew that I thought her name was Lizzie for seven months. She was never in my inner social circle, and we did not stay in touch after we graduated, but we always said hi to each other on campus.

For some reason, I have always disliked using people’s names out loud. It just feels uncomfortable to me, and I do not know why. But this odd quirk may have worked to my advantage on that day, because it was entirely possible that I had never actually called Lindsay Lizzie outside of my own head. When I saw her, I was much more likely to just say “Hi” instead of “Hi, Lizzie.” But even if I had ever accidentally called her Lizzie, there was not much that I could do about it now. Besides, while my realization that Lindsay’s name was not Lizzie felt awkward and embarrassing, much of that embarrassment was in my own head. If it was unlikely that she ever heard me call her Lizzie, she would have no way of knowing that I did not know her real name for so long.

Most guys have had their share of awkward moments around girls; and, of course, this statement applied to other combinations of genders and orientations as well. I always felt particularly prone to awkward moments, mostly because I had never had a girlfriend, and I seemed to lack successful non-awkward experience with girls. Over the years, I would have many more experiences of getting someone’s name wrong, or saying something that was misinterpreted. But I have seen enough over the years now to know that I certainly was not alone in this. And many others have had awkward moments that primarily happened in their own heads, unnoticed by those around them. I just had to accept the fact that I was not perfect, and the right people in my life would accept me, flaws and all.