Recently I've been reading the Sandman comic series by Neil Gaiman, which I've given my personal seal of approval to. Yet, with all the questions the series arises along the lines or morality, responsibility, life, death and religion, there is one line that is seemingly insignificant that stood out to me. Issue #6 (of 75) tells the story of a group of people in a diner who had the misfortune of running into our current villain when they did. The waitress, Bette, is a writer in her spare time and pleases herself with her ability to give all of her stories happy endings. While discussing this, the following line appeared "All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop." This line stuck with me, and in a short time I found myself in a position to put it to use. So lets once again step in our telephone booth (graciously supplied to us by Rufus a.k.a. George Carlin) and go back to the beginning of my current semester for the purpose of constructing a story!
As has been stated before, and will surely be stated again, I am a graduate student who serves as a TA to get paid. For this semester I was appointed to be the TA for a senior level course. It was to be a project-driven course so I was looking forward to getting to know and help each of my students as the semester goes on. I was also required to attend the classes since I did not know some of the materials taught in the class, and what help would I be otherwise? Being the man that I am, I took to looking around at the students during the first couple of classes in an attempt to remember faces in the cases I would have to meet with them at a later date. I do not find it weird to point out that while looking at these faces, I noticed that some of them were aesthetically pleasing, and most of them were very close in age to me. Students are people and one notices when people are attractive, don't read too far into it.
Anyways, one day on the way to class, I found myself in the elevator with one of these noted students and as I tend to do in elevators, I made conversation with her. Despite not remembering much about this meeting at all, I do remember that it was pleasant and she made nice conversation. This sentiment was expanded when a few months later she showed up to my office hours (as many students did the day before a homework was due) but what many other students didn't do was take me up on my offer, "If anybody has any extra questions, I'll be in my office a little bit longer." She had a few questions that were answered easily enough, but then I felt obligated to ask her about her project, in which we proceeded to chat about all kinds of things. The next thing I knew an hour or so had passed, and I left my office shortly after her thinking to myself, "what a nice girl."
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| Welcome to my lair! |
So at this point I was delighted by her, but didn't think much more about it. But without any delay my mind decided that it would be fun to play tricks on me. That very same night I fell asleep and found myself dreaming about her. For the record it was not a sex dream by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a dream where the two of us were together and more than friendly. That made the next day's class a little awkward in my own mind as I kept looking at her and remembering how inappropriate the last night's dream was. This feeling faded slowly as the semester went on and I had time to wonder whether or not it really was weird. In general I decided it wasn't weird at all that I found her to be both attractive and endearing, but if I was to ever make a move, it would have to be after the semester was over and I was no longer her instructor of sorts. There were two things that made this difficult, first she was to be graduating. Second, her group for the class project was the only one that had gone to get help and I worked with them a few times.
After speaking the situation over with a few friends and spending a moderate amount of time thinking it over, I decided the proper plan of action was to send a friendly email after the semester ended. Well the semester ended, and I deliberated for a short time before actually sending the email, in which time I tried to distract myself from waiting as much as possible. To distract myself I went out to the local bars with a friend who happened to be in the area for the weekend. Finding ourselves at a bar we don't typically frequent and dancing, which we typically don't do, my friend and I navigated the crowds searching for fun. Instead, I heard my name from behind and turned to find this newly-graduated former student standing in front of me. I respect my readers enough to think they can tell exactly who it was.
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| It was clearly Alfred |
I stood in shock over seeing her for what could have been up to 5 seconds before coming to my senses and talking with her like a regular human being. I told her of the email I sent, and congratulated her on graduating and said if she were ever in the area again I would like to have a drink or coffee with her. To each of these she responded with "that's so sweet" and finally gave me a hug for all my sweetness. I enjoyed the gesture of the hug and proceeded to talk to her about various odds and ends, the whole time nothing going through my mind other than the urge to tell her she was beautiful, that I loved the fact she laughs at all my jokes and all these other grand acts of professing the fact I was attracted to her. But I didn't do that, and I said goodbye to her and tried as hard as I could to not follow my friends pushes for me to ask her to dance. The next thing I knew, she was gone and I couldn't find her again, its more than likely I will never see her again.
So why did I take the time to make my intro about happy endings and then follow with this story of how I had a crush on one of my students, especially since nothing came of it? The truth is that this was a happy ending as far as I was concerned. Every story can have a happy ending if you know when to end it. In this case it didn't feel right to me to have made a move on her, especially in a situation where it would be hard to get a relationship started, not to mention maintained. So I swallowed my pride, held back whatever I wanted to say and settled to make this a story about the most perfect goodbye I have ever said. And she will never have to know about what I was really thinking...
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| Happy endings everywhere!!! |
