ENGL233

The one legitimately cute girl in my History of Film class is only made more attractive by the fact that she spends all her class time doing the Red Eye crossword instead of paying a modicum of attention to her "education." While everyone else in class is intently listening to the professor (or at least pretending to), their ears pricked up, their bodies leaning forward. She listlessly fills in the puzzle's boxes, her body in a constant sight, her head resting on her free hand, while I glance over every now and then, flipping between feigned interest in the lecture and being a creepy stalker.

The people who speak the most in class are either extremely smart yet too showy (as evidenced by their need to hear their voice), or are extremely dumb yet can't help but let everyone know that their IQ is lower than everyone else's. Obviously this leaves the people who don't talk and don't seem to care- the smartest people in the class. Cute girl falls into this category (coincidentally, so do I. Funny how that works). This is supremely attractive to me. So girls, just letting you know that aloofness is hot.

On the flipside of this, any outward and unnecessary show of intellect makes me want to vomit. Bragging, cockiness, or just talking about yourself too damn much will physically pain me. Confidence is sexy when it is silent. Which is why I hate it when someone is asked to describe themselves either in a Facebook "About Me" or anything like it and they put a simple, "I'm awesome," which simultaneously says nothing about someone and everything about their insecurities or their self-love- both of which are terrible qualities. In my life, these issues manifested themselves in my longest relationship to date. This girl, who will hereafter be referred to as "Sandy," (Luckily, this is also her actual name. Also, I'm not very creative) is one of these "I'm awesome" people. Which I'll give you, can be endearing (aka, thing that should be annoying but you delude yourself into liking) up to a point, until you realize how vapid and self-serving that statement is when verbalized or written out.

Obviously, people should think they are awesome, but should do this by just being awesome. By our 2nd or 3rd break-up pretty much all our "conversations" became an implied, sub-textual pissing match. I frequently disagreed with her just for the sake of disagreeing because her "I'm so smart, look at me" attitude clashed with my "I'm smarter than you, stop overcompensating" attitude. To everyone's surprise, this relationship was destined to fail.

But here's the thing, I think I'm awesome. I just don't like to advertise that fact. I want to be secretly the coolest person you know. When people say "OMG, I didn't know you ______ !" I like it like that. People constantly redefine themselves and the "you" in the moment is the only real "you" there is. The fact that I work in two restaurants, that I tutor at a writing center, that I'm in a band or that I want to be a teacher is not always relevant to who I am.

Ugh. Now that I've done all this talking about myself I feel gross. So um... in conclusion I suck, I have a terrible sense of humor and I look funny.

There we go. That's better.

PS. An hour later and she's doing the Sudoku now. Hot.