There’s few things that concerns a teenage boy. Usually the list is along the lines of
- Eat lots
- Do well enough at school to pass
- Try and impress the girl you like for that week/month.
Today I was reminded of an experience centred around that last point and our theme for the week on failure. There was this girl, I thought she was rather attractive, she knew my name (which is a plus), and we could even hold a small conversation. The only strange thing was, she wasn’t really into boys at the time, let alone me.
Her birthday was coming up and one of mates thought a big romantic gesture would be sure to move the needle in my favour. However I probably should have been skeptical with the way he [would] have phrased it “girls love flowers and romantic shit”.
It wasn’t until much later in life I discovered the words of Tim Kreider and as an outsider looking onto a situation like the one unfolding how his words ring true.
There’s a fine line between the bold romantic gesture and stalking. The tricky crux of the matter is the it depends to a great extent on how that gesture is going to be received — which factor, unfortunately the impetuous suitor/obsessed stalker has lost all ability to gauge
Tim Kreider
Here was the plan, buy a single red rose from one of the local flower shops, get a girly card and give it to her on her birthday before school.
It’s almost like the start of a bad joke “three boys walk into a flower shop…” But that’s what we did, paid the $7 for a single flower and left. Somehow we managed to carry it back to school and home again. Then back to school the following day on my bike without crushing and killing it.
So with great nervousness I waited, and waited and waited for her to turn up to school. It seems that there is a law that states the closer you live to school, the later you are. I knew kids coming from an hour long bus ride, rocking up to school 35 minutes early. This girl lived quite close by in a near by street, but obviously had timed the journey down to the second, so she could optimise sleep or something.
She finally arrived, the awkward teenage exchange happened and I didn’t feel on top of the world, but I don’t remember feeling bad about it. But given our theme is on failure, I’m sure you can see where this is going. A few weeks later she basically told me to bugger off. To which I did, but the strange thing was a few years later we reconnected and became great friends. In the short term, it felt like I had failed. Not only had I gone from bold romantic gesture, to weird guy, but I was told to piss off and find someone else to stalk. But in the long term, I actually scored a pretty great friend. And I guess that God or the universe had other plans for me when it comes to beautiful girls, because a few years later I meet another beautiful girl, and she still puts up with me, all these years later.