Naiveté (Crap I Remember)

I suppose a little background info is going to be necessary here. I am 21 years old, female, and a sophomore in college after taking a 2-year hiatus from intellectual life after high school. Okay, so that gives you a time frame. Now for some people. My 3 best girlfriends are important to most of the stories I tell, and for the sake of their own sanities I am going to give them nicknames. The first is going to be Disney, who I met back in middle school, and is a FABULOUS cartoonist, and a little bit obsessed with all things pertaining to animation (of pictures, not corpses or anything like that).

 The second I am going to call Antics because she has got lots of them, and I really can't think of a more meaningful tag name for her, and the third I will call Draper after Mad Men's Don Draper, because it's somehow suitable.


BTW, I apologize if this story gets convoluted.


Well, I've actually known Draper since kindergarten, where we used to play pretend together and romp around the playground all livelong day. You could say we have a history. When Draper was very little, she had a stuffed unicorn she used to carry around with her, whose name now escapes me. When she was in preschool, a little asshole who I shall call Abs (for reasons to be explained) threw that unicorn down a muddy hill. Now, Draper has a habit of holding grudges, so when Abs turned up and continued to be an asshole through part of elementary school, she told me about this little incident, and we started a sort of kid-vendetta against him. I mean, he deserved it, he WAS an asshole, but after he disappeared partway through elementary school only to turn up again in middle school, she still hadn't let the thing go. To make matters so much worse, he also blossomed in the time he was gone from our sight into a handsome, sarcastic, artistic, sultry person. It sucks, trying to hold a years-old grudge against someone to whom you are suddenly and vehemently attracted.

Well, needless to say, that grudge died fairly quickly, but we still didn't get very close to Abs. Eventually, he started dating another friend of mine (at the time) who I shall nickname Tickle-Me-Freud.
Tickles is a tiny little thing whose entire hand literally fits into my palm. At the time she had a little emo haircut, and was entirely obsessed with Freud, as if she were channeling the old fucker (at least she seemed to think so). Anyway, Tickles and Abs dated for years, but I suppose he finally tired of her, because he broke up with her during high school. I have never known another human being to be so held up over a lost love than Tickles after that. I mean, she obsessed over him for 2 solid years. She'd call him at weird times, send him crazy IMs begging him to take her back, cry during school because she happened to see him in the hallway. It was INSANE. Then, to make matters all the more awkward, she started dating Abs' best friend. Now, that little detail is important, remember that.

For those who are not up to date on your "girl rules," this is where you run into a really big rift between guys and dolls. Girls DO NOT date their girlfriends' exes. It's just not done. Guys seem to take a certain pride in sharing some women, but girls---no. Tickles thought it was totally cool to go ahead and date Abs' friend, but when Draper showed interest in dating Abs, Tickles really went off the deep end. (Guys, imagine another dude coming into the bathroom while you're already in there, and using the urinal right next to you. It was like that. But way worse.)

Tickles dropped the whole "I can't be friends with you if you do this" threat, to which Draper replied with a debonair "I don't even like you, fuck off."



So here's me:  when the gloves come off, I'm siding with Draper. But I always seem to gravitate toward the middle in exchanges like this, and they ARE both my friends (at the time), so I am trying to mediate all this bullshit. One day, I'm walking with Tickles down the hallway wasting time after we got back from a sort of special field trip thingy, and she's spouting her usual load of tripe about how it's such a "terrible idea" for the two of them to date, and it's "just a mistake," and he's "just going to regret it, there's nothing good that can come out of this." I did say I'm trying to mediate. I'm not solely giving in to Tickles' insanities, I'm trying to help her snap the fuck out of it. So I take this time to impart a few words of what I believe are wisdom, hard-won products of a harsh upbringing where fate keeps waiting around corners for me with her foot held out. I tell her something along the lines of "Well, Tickles, maybe it isn't a bad situation for him. Maybe it's what he really wants. And besides, any circumstance can be turned into something worthwhile, as long as you learn something from it, and walk away a better person."

Good response, wasn't it? I was kind, I was motherly-- Just the right blend of gentle but honest.

What does Tickles say?

We're walking down the hallway, and she bows her little head just enough for her little emo hair to fall across her face like fucking Charlie's Angels or something, and she says in a little voice, "I think you're very naive."

I think my jaw hit the floor. Seriously, I think I made one of those horrible little incredulous-choking noises and spluttered for a minute. I had no idea what to say. I mean, really, what do you say to that kind of pretension?


This is one grudge I still hold, to this day.