Que Sera Sera

Love and War

Sept. 5, 2002

When I was in high school, I wasted a good 15 months dating a completely average, pale and dull boy with whom I had nothing in common other than the fact that we both liked to make out in his pick-up truck after eating at American grill-style restaurants. He was very nice, and I was very nice, and we were sixteen, so I figured why knock a good thing? After a year, however, I got so used to him being around all the time that I became convinced that we were in love, and so I was horrified to learn that he was cheating on me with a nasty little girl named Mandy. She was pale and dull and average in the same way he was, but she was not at all nice, and would always narrow her too-close-together eyes at me from across the cafeteria.

He succeeded for months in preventing me from breaking up with him, and everytime I relented, because he was so nice that I believed him. Then one spring day in his truck on the way to the state basketball championship game, I looked down and her blue plaid scrunchy was wrapped around his gearshift, and if that isn’t high school code for the boy is mine, I don’t know what is.

They got married two years ago. I saw them recently, and he’s still nice, and she’s still not nice. After years of thought, I’ve determined that he was just too nice to admit to me that he was doing something not nice.

I wonder if their kids’ eyes will be too close together.

Copyright © 2001–2004 by sb
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