-=(Sagien)=-

We all have our stories

Valentine's 2006.

We all have our stories..

DISCLAIMER: There is a much earlier version of this story I'm about to tell. Read it first. I think this version(with the girl named differently[so much for my stellar memory]) is much better than the original one. You be the judge.

There really hasn't been any Valentines Days that have stuck out to me as overly romantic, since I am not really the romantic type.

Today seems rather promising though.

I woke up this morning to droplets of saline solution going into my eyes. I don't particularly like refering to any point of time before I can see again as being awake. This is when the phone started ringing.

I knew it was the paper route people, so I chose to ignore it. I tested out my nicely working eyes on the clock on the Comcast box. 4:45 it said. Perfect. I'm late again.

My phone starts to ring again. I sighed and answered it. Someone squaked something at me from the other end.

"Yep," I said. Then I hung up.

We all have our stories...

[insert wavey flashback lines]

It's the old country. Barbaric, hot, and lined with rainforests. Thankfully, it isn't Valentines Day. Unfortunately, it was much worse.

I'm dancing with Christina.

[more wavey flashback lines]

It's two weeks ago, in fourth grade music class. The teacher was rambling on about the dance competition that our entire fourth grade class is involved with. We'll be putting together a dance number which'll mean that a group of eight guys and eight girls will be getting together to do some native style folk dancing to some native style folk song wearing some native style folk costume.

Filipino + Chinese = amazingly gorgeous children.

Amazingly gorgeous children are quite few and far between. The teacher is staring right at me.

She just asked the entire class as to who was going to be volunteering for this endeavor. She was staring right at me.

I sighed and raised my hand.

The University of St La Salle in Bacolod City, Philippines is an all boy school. Well, it was an all boy school up until we hit fourth grade. There were eight girls in my fourth grade class, and about ninety boys.

I grew up not knowing what a girl was, except for this one girl in kindergarten named Fumiko and she hated me because I thought it'd be funny to introduce her to my spiders... but that's a different story.

Anyway, I had raised my hand, and the teacher was elated. I don't know where she got the idea that I can dance, since I've never exhibited any kind of grace whatsoever in my life.

We were told to line up, from shortest to tallest. I was second to the last in line -- I'm a rather tall kid, by Asian standards. The girls were told to do the same. I looked across the way at my counterpart.

Christina.

"Damn!" whispered my best friend Raffy, from behind me. One of the words one can use to describe the girl he was paired up with would be "tall." Another would be "fat." Yet another would be "unattractive." You get the idea.

"Wanna switch?" he asked.

Christina was my height. She had long black hair, not too skinny, but "fat" wouldn't be a word to use to describe her either. She had the prettiest smile, and there was definately a brain behind those pretty eyes.

"Nah, I'm too short for your partner, man," I said, not keeping my eyes off of Christina.

The next two weeks was spent practicing whatever tranditional Filipino dance it was that we were dancing. Now, you might think that I'm in some kinda bliss, dancing with and touching a pretty girl. In any other scenario one would call normal, then yes, I would be in bliss.

However, I am not the only one who grew up not knowing what a girl was. There were 89 other guys in my class who's spent their entire young lives in ignorant comraderie with 89 other guys up until now.

Nobody knows what to do with girls, and nobody knows what to do with guys who get to touch girls. The most obvious course of action was to tease the living crap out of them.

This is precisely what happened to me.

So here we are.

It's the old country. Barbaric, hot, and lined with rainforests. Thankfully, it isn't Valentines Day. Unfortunately, it was much worse.

I'm dancing with Christina.

And every person that's the age of 11 or younger is snickering at me. Everyone except for Raffy. Raffy was glaring at me.

I don't even remember how that dance ended up. I just wanted it to be over.

Looking back on it, I think that Christina really liked me.

Flash forward to my last day in the Philippines. I was sitting alone on a bench in the hallway.

Christina came up to me and said..

"So you're really leaving?"

"Yeah, I said."

"Aww."

Posted by sagien at February 14, 2006 08:14 AM