Conspiracy

It was summer today. I walked around with a jacket that I didn't wear. I also skipped class--the second time all year. It was a little upsetting because when I skip classes, I think of them in terms of dollars. And that in itself is again upsetting. But I had a midterm I didn't study for and I needed the few hours in the morning.

I had time last night to study, but I bumped into a friend and we took a walk around the field. We said we'd go to our rooms after that, but ended up sitting outside and talking for longer than we could afford. Her mother had met her father in Mexico City. They were students from other cities doing one week's worth of research there, and at the end of the week, her mother was on the bus home, crying because she thought she was leaving the man who could've been her husband. Fortunately for her, that young man found her lab notes, looked up her address, and delivered them to her in person. He proposed four months later. Yes, very fairytale.

Funny, because the conversation started with her telling me that I am too much the hermit, because I'm never alive enough on Fridays to go do anything. She was worried that I have low self-esteem, demonstrable by my refusal to encapsulate myself in a single, hyperbolic adjective! I beg to differ. Somehow, we got sidetracked to Denmark Vesey's rigged trial and the court transcripts which markedly lacked Vesey's own self-defense. He was a brilliant man. He was hanged.

I say funny, because my friend was genuinely worried that I'm insecure. She gave me a pep talk, of sorts, interspersed with hugs. It was kind of her, and I love her for trying. I told her things as if she were Christian, and she understood up to a point. But I realized that my nonChristian friends will never completely understand. Well, not that my Christian friends do either. And maybe neither do I. What does it mean to be understood anyway.

Funny, because last night I was looking at my friend looking at me, and I thought two things--one, that she has enormous eyes; and two, that Christ was sitting there with us.

I don't laugh as much as I used to. Maybe that's the problem.