An adventure in stereotyping
One summer, I took a biology class that was only supposed to meet every other night, so I could take volleyball on the alternate nights.
Naturally, it turned out to be a pre-med biology class, requiring a lab session every other night.
In that small class of about 25 students, there were two people I particularly thought were odd or annoying and hoped to avoid. He was loud, and pushy and seemed to know everyone and had to speak up about everything even though he was clearly a dumb jock. And she wore a striped engineer’s hat with engineer’s overalls every day – and just seemed to live in another dimension.
Naturally, when it came time to team up with lab partners, I ended up with them…
Karen and Bob became my very close friends that summer.
She was a talented and imaginative artist. I only lost touch when she moved away and I graduated college and had no real forwarding address.
And he fell so deeply in love with me that he moved into my apartment building to be near me (and within walking distance of our college) and proposed to me many times during the next two years. (No, I didn’t fall in love with him. He really was a dumb jock, who was also a sloppy drunk.) But he and his friends did take care of me when I needed friends – and they taught me scuba diving and got me certified the following summer.
It was one of the most wonderful and compelling experiences of my life.
Eva Rosenberg (Tax Mama)
www.TaxQuips.com