Friday, March 02, 2007

2. An invisible force surrounding a living creature.

I hate Prospective Student Weekend. I'm generally uncomfortable in large social gatherings, but I'm also somewhat fanatical about knowing what's going on at any given time, so, paradoxically and quite unfortunately, I don't like not going to large social gatherings. This weekend promises a large number of them.

I also don't like all the new people suddenly wandering around, or being showed around. I'm very possessive of the place that I work, and I get nervous when people I don't know are around. I hate it how I'll get introduced to the person, and the person will get a short bio of me. "This is Tim. He is a fourth year. He doesn't like the weather here." Which is ridiculous. I love the weather her. I just call it crappy weather because that's what the consensus reality says that weather like this is. Crappy. I like it.

If I'm going to be grumpy, I want it to be nice and grumpy in the sky too.

I was sitting around with some people, and one of the organizers of the Weekend came into the room, and said to herself but also kind of to the room in general, "Now who can I ask to drive visiting students around?" She wandered around the cubicles, walking right past me. I knew that she could see me, because she detoured a little bit around my chair so as not to trip and fall right into me, not that I would have minded that especially, because she is very very pretty, but it was like I had some aura around me that made me invisible. She completely ignored me, both coming and going.

I should have just stayed quiet, but instead I blurted out my thoughts regarding this mysterious aura of mine. And of course, now I have to drive some students to a party. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

This same aura virtually guarantees me a seat to myself on the bus. It is uncanny the lengths to which some people will go so as not to sit next to me. Especially girls. Creepy guys, on the other hand, are completely unaffected by my powers. Naturally.

Also in the category of my paradoxical dislikes and desires, I found that this year, like all of them in the past, I have been almost completely unapproached to have anything at all to do with the visiting students. Someone did actually ask me to meet with a student for ten minutes, because the student is meeting my advisor right after or before, and I expressed my wonderment and at my general uninvolvement. She suggested that people are probably trying to concentrate on getting younger students involved, who will be here for a long time with the prospectives should they choose to come. But this is no different from any other year.

The one time ever that I was asked to go out to eat with a prospective was when the prospective was my friend and was actually staying with me. And even then it was almost iffy.

So I think that being involved would be a horrible uncomfortable nuisance, but at the same time I am grievously offended that nobody wants me, or thinks to want me, involved. It's this aura. It says "Go away." Or it sets something off in people that makes them want to go away.

This is not a good aura for a lonely person to have.

No comments: