I realized all this when my co-worker, Craig, started reading my blog post from last Friday back to me at work yesterday. Okay, so I actually kind of knew these things already, but to have someone call me out so directly on it really drove the point home. Wow, he must think I am fracking nuts, I thought. I mean, we’re friends so it’s generally okay if he calls me out on things and reads back my tweets in a condescending manner and stuff (which he used to do everyday at 2:00 p.m. sharp), but it made me have this thought that if Tin Roof Kyle came across my blog and read that I’d been in Barnes and Noble the previous week wondering if he’d just happen to come into the store completely by chance, he’d think I was a bullet dodged, one of those crazy chicks who does nothing but sit around and pine about guys all day, and that’s not exactly the kind of impression I want to give off. To anyone. Not just to guys.
This made me remember how before Tin Roof Kyle came into the picture, I always said I didn’t want a relationship or a guy to define me. And I honestly don’t think that’s healthy, anyway, but it amazed me how quickly that changed by his brief appearance in my life. I mean, here I am STILL thinking about him and writing about him and pretty much annoying all of you by blogging about him yet again. Even Craig thought it was weird: “It’s been three weeks and you’re still thinking about him?”
In my defense, things like what happened with Tin Roof Kyle never happen to me, and I hate to admit it, but I think I was a little bamboozled by it. I don’t even know what bamboozled actually means, but it seems to fit the aftermath of the whole thing. I hate even saying it, but there you have it. All of these girlish feelings totally suck, because I think it makes me sound verifiably insane, like one of those teenagers with pigtails and headgear who talk all breathy and generally freak people out. I’ve never wanted to be that person, but I have always been that person. Even in high school. My biggest fault has always been my overactive imagination. In school, because I never had boyfriends except the one, Stephen, when I was 15, I did a lot of daydreaming about being in relationships and what I wanted them to be like. So, obviously, I never had any experience in real relationships. So when something like what happened with Kyle happened, I naturally thought about it to death, until it looked like Voldemort turning to ash at the end of Deathly Hallows Part II and there was nothing left of him but dregs of his former self (obviously I’m talking about the movie’s version of his death, since in the book Harry merely zaps him with his wand and later people move his body off to the side where his lifeless body can’t freak people out).
Sometimes it makes me angry, and I want to yell at God and be like, “Dude! How am I supposed to know how to deal with stuff?” or “Why doesn’t interesting stuff ever happen to me?” And then Tin Roof Kyle happens and I start thinking the way I’m thinking. I mean, really, I guess I should be lucky no one’s put me away yet. Yes, I graduated high school and college and even got accepted into grad school academically, but did I ever graduate from The Junior School of Hormones and Knowing How to Deal with Things? Because I don’t really feel like it. I don’t know how I went from calling Mark Jameson* names in elementary school for being mean to my friend Rebecca to being the sappy, crazy chick who fell in love with him in sixth grade, even though he hated my guts and reminded me of it every day for the entire school year, making sixth grade the worst possible year ever. At least until seventh grade came along. But that’s a story for another time.
I guess what I’m saying is that even with all of my romanticized views on life, I have no romantic experience, and would even go so far as to call myself romantically challenged, and that is why I’m still pondering the whole business of Tin Roof Kyle, because I don’t really know how to digest it. One side of my brain is like, “All of this thinking about this guy is getting on my nerves. Please think about something more productive,” in which case I read or journal or brainstorm new ideas for stories or talk with my co-workers, and the other side of my brain is like, “KyleKyleKyleKyleKyleKyleKyleKyle,” in which case I sit and stare out the window like an unresponsive space alien.
But I’m going to make a promise to myself and to you guys that I will not bring this up again. No more talk of Tin Roof Kyle. Like Craig said, it’s been a month. It’s time to move on. If I happen to run into him again, then great, but it’s time to stop all the obsessive, girlish thinking about him. I mean, there are only so many times I can think back on him saying, “You have really good posture,” until the record has been run dead with scratches and a little hole in the vinyl, rendering it completely useless.