Part XXV - If You Thought The Elementary School Part Was Boring
I'm not really familiar with the layout of George Thomas Martin Bush High School. I had gone there for a while for a math class, but I was just in and out of one building. Emily couldn't have picked a worse tour guide.
So I didn't give her a tour. By this point in the evening (10:15pm now, and I had been up and working since 6:30am), I couldn't give a bald monkey's left gonad about what she wanted. Unfortunately, the school was only graced with a duck pond, which did in fact feature a number of bald ducks (allegedly plucked by the cross-town rival high school's glee club). And I don't even know if ducks HAVE gonads. I really wished there were a monkey there though. Or at least a lemur. All I had was ducks.
And Emily.
I had parked near the pond, got her door, and as conspicuously as possible, started walking WITHOUT offering my left arm in the aforementioned crooked position. I also didn't look back this time. This was war.
Goodness knows what we (she) talked about after this point. I just sat down on the corner of a stone bench by the pond and let the mosquitos bite me. I even tried to use that as an escape at one point.
"Well, I'm getting chewed up pretty good by the mosquitos, what about you?"
"Oh, no, I'm fine. They must not like the smell of my body lotion or something."
Or maybe they just prefer human flesh over she-daemon incarnate! She didn't get up! She repostured her seating to indicate her intentions of getting comfortable! TWO CAN PLAY AT THAT GAME! I assumed the "I'm Meditating" stance. Having been a long-time churchgoer and college student, I had perfected it almost to an art.
The head is carefully cradled with the hands, elbows resting just above the knees, which are placed slightly more than shoulder-width apart. The trick is to place one hand so as to obscure the mouth, the other in a shading-of-the-eyes position. Both are calculated to serve a two-fold purpose. The Mouth Covering both muffles the snoring and acts as a first barrier against the inevitable Drool Puddle. The Eye Shading both facilitates relaxation by filtering out light, and also serves as an effective deception to convince the casual observer that you are in fact pondering some universal truth, or tomorrow night's calculus homework.
I dozed off, I think. I'm pretty sure she just kept talking. Or maybe not. The massive amount of coagulants that were injected into my bloodstream in that short period by the mosquitos must have had an adverse reaction on my hypothalamus, impeding the solidification of short-term memories to long-term.
Even a rousing harmony of "True Colors" would have been a welcome respite at this point.
"Ok let's go."
I came to, looked at my watch (10:45pm) and decided that I had had quite enough adventure for the evening. I thought the most difficult task ahead of me was helping her up and getting her to walk fast enough to the car.
Amazing how a fool thinks he can determine his destiny, isn't it?
