Slow on the Uptake

A lot of these posts are kind of making me feel like a bad person.  But that's okay.  It's probably just because I am :)

Many years ago when Vindi here had just started high school, there was a lot of pressure to have a boyfriend.  Everyone had one.  Hell, most kids had them in junior high and sometimes even elementary school.  I had to get one for myself! 

So, about a month into school I started hanging out with a group of nerdy, reject kids like myself and there was this guy there that seemed to really like me.  He was tall and lanky and had glasses, so of course I was totally smitten with him--at first.  We didn't really have much in common, but he thought I was cute and I thought he was cute, so he asked me to be his girlfriend and I gleefully said yes.

We would hang out at every lunch break and sometimes in-between classes.  I never saw him outside of school, but I was really busy with extracurricular stuff.  After "dating" him (I use the ironic quotation marks because we never actually went out on a date haha) for about a week I started to notice some weird stuff.  We didn't have any classes together, he would take a lot of my jokes seriously and he talked about his mom a lot.  Things just weren't adding up somehow.

He was always telling me how smart I was and how much he liked me.  It was really sweet.  One day he asked me for help on his homework because he said it was really hard.  I told him to let me see it and then everything came together.  He was a sophomore in high school and the first question on the paper was: "Solar energy comes from the: A.) Moon  B.) Sun  C.) Earth".

Oh shit.

Apparently no one in our random group of friends knew it, but my new boytoy was in special ed.  I didn't know what to say.  All these things started going through my head.  Things that I thought he was joking about were not jokes.  "Oh you like my shirt?  My mom picked it out for me."  "I like cutting up my food real small so I won't choke on it!"  "Do you like 7th Heaven?  That's probably the best show ever!"

Fuck.  I really had no idea what to do after that.  I quietly helped him out with his homework and plastered a smile on my face the whole time.  He was a really sweet guy, but it wasn't going to work out.  I even tried it out for the rest of the week to see if I could overlook it, but it wasn't happening.  I decided I wasn't going to tell anyone else what I knew, but I was going to end it.  I ended up breaking it off on a Friday afternoon so that I wouldn't have to face him for at least a weekend.  I felt really scared and sad because I had never had to break up with anyone before.  So I kinda panicked and did something weird.

There was this girl who lived down the street from me who was really weird and religious and he reminded me a lot of her.  So, to make myself not feel so guilty, my breakup speech went a little something like:  "Hey, we need to talk.  I'm really sorry, but I just don't think that this is going to work out between us. But... THIS is Michelle and I think you guys have a lot in common and would make a way better couple. Alright.  Well, you crazy kids go have fun!  I'll see ya around!"  And I just darted off before either of them could say anything.

Oddly enough, it actually worked out!  They ended up dating for like six months!  So, yeah, maybe I'm a bad person for not being able to date someone who was mentally challenged, but I tried to atone for it!  I still think it would have fallen apart eventually anyway, but what do I know?  Apparently he wasn't the only one who was a little slow.  Geez.  Yeah.  Going to Hell.