A Little Better - 9/11/2006 in 2005 - 2007: High School

After practice Saturday, the band had its annual mandatory party. It was a long, hard, hot practice. (I was very tired and I don't think I was playing or conducting very well. Again.) So we all got to the park where it was and attacked the cheeseburgers and soda and collapsed over the picnic tables. Then we attacked the cake. Then we all experienced sugar highs, followed by sugar lows. The parent and student meetings were both held. The student meeting was held on a jungle gym and run by Eric, and it was very silly. After the student meeting was over, I hung out with Dave for several hours, refusing to play ultimate frisbee, until the band parents stopped pretending to be important.

Really, I wasn't kidding about the jungle gym. I'm not sure why we were there, and I'm definately not sure why so many people insisted upon being on the jungle gym.

We got another tuba player to replace Brian. He doesn't know how to play a note on the tuba yet. He is, in fact, a trumpet player who seems not to have known what he was getting himself into. He seemed very overwhelmed (understandably.) But he did surprisingly well carrying the thing around during practice, at least.

Today was considerably better than any day of last week. It wasn't spectacular, but it was alright. I got up and walked to school. I had a terribly boring gym class, and a pretty standard Chinese class. Third block I had my independant study, and decided to go to first lunch. No one was in first lunch. Except for Julian, who I saw walking towards me as I was wandering around trying to find a place to sit, looking like I had no friends.

"Where are you sitting?" he said to me.

"I don't know yet."

"Let's go for outside."

"Okay."

So we went outside and sat on the wall at the edge of the outdoor part of the cafeteria, and had a rather enjoyable, mature, one-on-one conversation about our classes. More specifically, we both talked about having decided to slack off a little this year, and laughed at some of the sillier aspects of the school, such as concert band, Tri-M, independant studies, psych, and AP Environmental, otherwise known as AP Gardening. (For the past few classes, they have been outside gathering plants.) We talked about my senior exhibition and he pretty much agreed to be in it. Furthermore, I realized that I was not feeling particularly in love with him.

I found this a little hard to believe for a while. The rational part of my brain kept questioning the emotional part to make sure it knew what it was talking about.

RP: So... You don't want to kiss him at all?

EP: ...Not really.

RP: You're sure?

EP: Yeah, pretty sure. I don't feel anything.

RP: And there's nothing particularly beautiful about his smile or the way he moves?

EP: ...Nope.

RP: And you don't think the things he says are adorable, and you're not constantly amazed by his genius?

EP: No... Actually, now that I think about it, he's really not a very attractive person.

RP: No shit dude.

I dunno. There were fleeting moments of cuteness. Like when I was talking about losing some brownie points with Mr. Thomas and he said, "See, the thing about brownie points is that, even in theory, they can't be exchanged for actual brownies. I mean, what's the point?" But mostly it was just like... having a good conversation with a good friend when life has been a little too unsettling.

My independant study was pretty boring. I had a conversation with Mr. Thomas about my plan so far, and then hung around studying for my AB test. After doing this for a while, I decided that I should definately have some music-related things to do in the future. So I went to third lunch and asked Dave if I could bum a ride off of him to the library so that I could take Julian's suggestion and pick up some books on composition to read. (This is actually Julian's solution to most things: get books.)

I took my AB calc test. It was difficult, and I did not do terribly well on it as far as I could tell. I left the room ten minutes after the bell rang, without having finished, incredibly frustrated, again, at the difference between my level of intelligence and what I would like my level intelligence to be. When I got down to the lobby, all ready to appologize for having made Dave wait, I discovered that he hadn't waited. He wasn't in the lobby, he wasn't outside the lobby, and his car wasn't in his parking space. I called his cell phone.

"Hey, what's up. So... You weren't in the lobby..."

"Yeah I know, I was finishing my calc test for ten minutes."

"Oh. Uh... Sorry about that, I didn't know. Well... I'm downtown already, so I guess I could turn around and pick you up, but it'd proabably take just as long as if you just walked..."

"Yeah, whatever, I'll just walk. Bye."

"Bye."

I was a little mad at him. I was also a little mad at the fact that I didn't exactly have the right to be mad at him. It went like this:

"I can't believe he didn't wait for me!"

"Well, he actually could have waited for up to ten minutes. That's reasonable, especially since you didn't provide him with an explaination, and you were mooching off of him anyway..."

"Shut up! He still ditched me."

I got myself all indignant about having to walk. But I didn't have to walk very far at all before Eric pulled over, rolled down his window, and asked if I wanted a ride.

"Uh... I'm actually going to the library." He was headed in the opposite direction.

"That's alright."

I got in. "Thanks."

"No problem."

He did a rather fast, inappropriate U-turn and drove me to the library while we complained about AP French.

So I picked up a book on jazz composition and also a book called "Elevator Music" (just out of curiosity) and then I got an icecream, and then I walked home. I ran into several people I kind of knew, and I don't think I handled any of the interactions well. I dunno. Like, I should have sat down for a minute to talk to that Asian slacker kid that Dave and I made friends with in Hoffman's class. He was obviously glad to see me, and he was obviously trying to strike up a small conversation, so I could have engaged in a small conversation instead of answering his question and walking away. I should have maybe said goodbye to that girl from Odyssey working at the icecream shop when she said goodbye to me. I should maybe nod slightly to people I pass on the street. I dunno. I need to be more friendly. It's not even that I'm "shy." I am not friendly. I don't do it on purpose, exactly. There is just nothing at which I suck worse. Not even pickleball.

Now I have to do my AP French homework. And exagerate a little about how many hours this week I worked on my senior exhibition.