He Hates Being Right

The kid was sitting in LA class and they were talking about gender issues. He was not the biggest fan of this subject, in fact he hated it. Not that he had a problem with people who were not sure of their own genders or people who make less money because of their gender, but he hated having to talk about them. He just felt like he was being accused of something. Like he was contributing to the disenfranchisement of those people by not being willing to talk about it. And maybe he was. Maybe he did cause those people to be screwed over. Before finishing that thought he gets thrown back into the conversation.

"You're a huge football fan, right?" Johnny asked and our kid nodded back, "So your parents probably didn't raise you with the hopes that you might play the tambourine, am I right?" Again the kid nodded back. 

He promptly stopped paying attention after this point. But Johnny was right, he could not have spotted a tambourine in a music shop. Though he was wrong on his real point. His parents would have loved him to play the piano and somewhere deep down he did too. He had played it for a while but was never any good at it. Well, it wasn't that he wasn't any good at it, he wasn't naturally good at football either. But he had never had the will to practice like he has for football. There was just something about working out that had simply clicked for him and so he was, by extension, "good at sports." He was never really good at sports, it just appeared that way because he was able to work hard at them.

Somewhere in there he had skipped a step of his childhood. Working so hard he had skipped all of the middle school and early high school parties. While they were probably unmemorable, they still managed to make him be unable to learn anything about god damn relationships. Anyways, he hated being right because he always hated to correct people; especially on their stereotype of him.

There was this girl who hugged him this morning. He had been coming out of his classroom, she stuck her hand out and he gave her a high five. She said something along the lines of,  'That was meant to be a huge." He said, "Oh, awkward," being ever the wordsmith, but made up for it by hugging her in response. They hadn't talked for a while and so it felt awkward. But he could'nt throw the feeling that he had feelings for her.

Later that night, after all of the bullshit of the class had ended, the kid ended up sitting in bed. Just sitting there and nothing more. A text came up on his phone and it was her. 

"Hey, we haven't talked in a while. How have you been?"

This was, by the way, the same girl who had hugged him in the hallway outside his class, for all those who may not have guessed.

"Pretty good, you?"

"Just pretty good?"

"Yeah, you know not too bad but not too great either."

"That's good, I'm trying to fall asleep. I've got a meet tommorow."

She meant a track meet and he knew this because while they hadn't talked in a while, they were still fairly close friends.

"It's not working?"

"Nope."

He took a few minutes to come up with a creative response.

"I think this is why all of those famous athletes have such strange rituals."

"Probably."

"Like what?" She texts back after a few minutes.

"I don't know."

"Eat a pickle."

"A pickle?"

"Yeah, it's good for your muscles."

"I don't have any pickles, I'll pretend I ate one."

"For sure, just tell the other runners that and you'll win for sure."

"Anything else?"

At this point he probably should have ended the conversation by just telling her that she should rest up before the race. But he loved talking to her. It was fun and he didn't want to stop.

"Yeah, but I don't want to talk about that."

The two went on like that until midnight that night, when she finally decided to call it quits.

The next morning he awoke thinking about her. He went over to the the TV room and started playing a game of Madden. He won a few Super Bowls in the franchise mode of the game and then got bored. Don't get me wrong he loved winning Super Bowls with his Seattle Seahawks, but for some reason it could not stop him from wanting to just be with her. So he texted her.

"How's your meet going?" He asked.

About an hour later she responded, "I got 12th place so I'm feeling good."

"That's great!!!" He texted back, not knowing whether or not she was okay with that. He then decided that the best option either way was to hit her back with a little bit of humor, "It was all the pickle, right?"

"Hahaha, yes it was definitely the pickle."

For some reason he thought that she was in the room with him. He felt like she was watching what he was watching. He felt like she was going off the same infomation that he was. Most importantly, (and probably most incorrectly) he felt that she felt the same way about him that he thought about her.

They went on like this for hours later. Each of them was trying to find a new way to impress the other or so he thought they were. He certainly was. And she just impressed him because, well, he didn't queite know. She wasn't the smartest and wasn't the most beautiful, but she was sure something. She wasn't even loyal to him. She had gone out with many guys, because she was very attractive, who were not for her. They looked good and he imagined they could talk a good game, but they did not know her like he did. She was crazy and a little bit of a workaholic and maybe that was what he loved about her most.