Say Hello | Teen Ink

Say Hello

April 12, 2015
By KatieKat417 SILVER, Roswell, Georgia
KatieKat417 SILVER, Roswell, Georgia
8 articles 1 photo 1 comment

I wish I had one more chance to say “Hello.” Then, I probably wouldn’t have stumbled across the auditorium and said, “Hey, I think you’re really cute and I want to have your babies and give you both my spleens,” the first time I ever spoke to you.  But then, if I hadn’t introduced myself with such anatomical and social atrocity, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with your sense of humor and relaxed attitude when you said, “You only have one spleen, but thanks for the offer.”  I thought that would be the peak of humor in our presumably short relationship, but I was fortunately wrong. 
I continued to awkwardly follow you around the stage like a lost puppy as you searched for props and people, perfectly in control of your slim mind and sharp body. No, no, that’s not… slim body and sharp mind. Yeah. You strode around with purpose and I tripped around behind you, humorously awkward, the same as our conversation.
“So, are you into theater at all?”
“No, I hate it, I just spend all my time in the theater and act in all our shows because I’ve got nothing better to do.”
“Oh… haha yeah, it stinks… not really. I love it. I really do. I hope you do.”
“No, I hate it.”
You stared at me with the most stone-cold expression you could muster and held it until I was about to burst. Right before I spontaneously combusted from your eyes digging into my soul and my soul screaming back, “Don’t eat me!”, you laughed and said, “Just kidding.” Apparently the first rule of our new friendship was that you would terrify me for enjoyment, and I wouldn’t laugh until I caught my breath ten minutes later, but I would love it. You said you didn’t mean to startle me. I said I wanted you to be as scary as the T-Rex in Jurassic Park because I liked the idea of you making me skip a heartbeat.  You told me that sounded good and you’d do your best when I came to visit you at the haunted house where you worked. Not if, but when, because I was now required by law to see you outside of school.
“Oh… that’s.. yeah, I love haunted houses almost as much as your skinny jeans and haircut. I think we should be best friends or something. Is that okay? I don’t know.”
You looked at me with a crooked smirk and said, “You are one of the most awkward people I have ever met.”
Blood rushed to my face, and then away from it, and back and forth as I internally panicked over deciding if this was a strange compliment or honestly saying that I’m an unbeatably awkward human. I probably looked like a flashing fire alarm, going from maple-leaf red to ghost white, but I guess that was okay with you because you said, “I will be waiting for those TWO spleens at the movies this Saturday.” 
So, maybe I shouldn’t wish for another chance to say hello, because it appears that went pretty well. Now, when I say, “Want do you want to eat?”, you can say “your cousin Betsy” because we both know how truly awful she is. When you ask, “Want to watch Batman?”, you laugh at me insisting you call him Catman because his ears look like a cat’s more than a bat’s to my screwed up brain and I’ve never actually had the attention span to watch any of the movies. When I tell you, “I aspire to be Robert DeNiro’s anger translator,” you tell me I can be anything I want to be as long as I don’t pretend to be Puerto Rican because your whole family calls me Gringa. Sometimes when I see you, I get so excited that my words can’t keep up with my thoughts so I just end up saying, “This carpet is super soft, like my cat before it died,” but you understand that I meant to say, “I think you’re really great, like my cat before it died.”
I guess I’m pretty glad I said hello by offering you two organs, only one of which I could actually provide, because now I think we both know that we’re lovely and fascinating even though we’re just us and nothing more. I’m glad we both understand that because I don’t know anyone else who could express it so clearly as to say, “If you were a straw, you would be a crazy straw. Not because you’re crazy, but because that’s my favorite. But also because you’re crazy.”



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