Yes, I’m this shy
Tue Jul 14th/09 The Past 10 comments
“Hi.”
Inside, I was a little startled, but I didn’t show it. I continued sitting on the ladder, staring in the distance, as if he never talked to me, even if he was. The mumbling of boys’ talking was behind me, the seagulls, although far away, shrieked loud at each other, and the wind whipped around the trees like there was no tomorrow. So even if he was talking to me, I had an excuse not to answer.
“Hi,” he repeated. I knew he was actually to talking to me, so I turned around.
“Oh,” I said, in a tone that meant, I didn’t realize you were talking to me. “Hi.”
Feeling self-conscious, I stared at him, and his two other friends, for only a few seconds before turning away. They started talking, but out of habit, I tuned them out. I knew they were kind of talking about me—how shy I was, how I didn’t hear… but I didn’t want to hear it, have it confirmed by total strangers. At one point I was curious so I stopped listening to everything else and concentrated on a line I heard.
“… ‘hi’ can be very scary.”
Or something like that. I inferred they thought I was scared—which I wasn’t. They were hear before, and I heard the year “1997″, so I guessed they were in my age group.
I kept thinking I should have talked back, started a conversation, even try that walking-on-the-tire bridge challenge they’ve been doing the whole time I’d been there. But hey: they were strangers. Boy strangers. Boy strangers who had more confidence than me. Or perhaps rudeness. Either way.
Then, right then and there, it slowly dawned on me that the only people in the park were me, the confident (or rude-and-trying-to-joke-around-and-embarrass-me) boy, and his two friends.
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Mr. Benjamin Franklin
Wed May 6th/09 The Past No comments
Mr. Benjamin Franklin is just the name of the wonderful, Umbrella-loving gerbil owned by my sister. He was a wonderful gerbil, but unfortunately, he died one Wednesday afternoon in May. What day was it? Wait, it was the seventh?!
*checks calender*
Darn. I’m a day off. Oh, whatever, I’m really close.
I didn’t have many pictures of him, but here’s 1 of 6 in my Flickr set
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