Wednesday 28 March 2007

criminality

Today in criminal law we were doing assault and we digressed, for a while, onto the crime of stalking (s 192 of the Tasmanian Criminal Code). The other important thing about criminal law today was that I was sitting next to crim girl (or law girl, as I am more comfortable calling her). Let's have a little history.

I first spotted this girl in our first criminal law tutorial. Which isn't really a valid assessment... I'd seen her before. But this was when I noticed her existence. I did so for two reasons. Firstly, she wasn't with anyone; she was sitting semi-alone. Secondly, she was smart. Still is smart, in fact, I assume. She knew answers to questions and stuff. I noticed her the next crim tute too; she stood outside waiting with the rest of us, not talking to anyone. I was doing the same. We were both eavesdropping on the same conversation, but from different sides of the room. Worse still, that conversation involved the only people in our tutorial to fail the compulsory assignment. They clearly failed dismally. *sigh*.

Anyway, so I've been vaguely noticing her when I see her. In the stalkerish way I do things before deciding to befriend someone - or rather, before actually managing to say hello to them. So, this morning, just prior to crim, I'd been sitting outside the law school feeling sorry for myself and unable to even go to the law cafe and purchase food because I was having a fairly substantial social anxiety attack. It happens sometimes. And today was the day she sat next to me in the lecture (primarily because she was last there of the group of three in which she sits, and the other two had taken the seats second from me and one from me, respectively). And of course I didn't actually speak to her or anything, but during the surprisingly extensive discussion of stalking, I did take notes, because I love irony just too much. Also because I was thinking about making her a character in a story, as I like to do, but I've decided against that.

Also, for clarity, I do know her first name at least. But crim girl is easier :P. Without further ado, my notes:

Crim girl:
- favourite colour: green (lime)
- mac person (&&ipod nano)
- two rings - paired silver
right ring
left middle
- silver watch
- earing in non-lobe (stud)
- jeans
- brown belt
- brown hair, eyes

Important addenda: she wears her hair in a single plait, it's about mid-back. I know her favourite colour is green because it's both the colour of her ipod and the colour of the tabs (i.e. customisable bits) on her computer bag. Her background was a pattern, rather than a photo, and the laptop was a 9-15 month old PowerBook (the type with the independent keys on the keyboard, with hard plastic between them - they're cool). Her tshirt was dark red and grey (or so) horizontal stripes. She wore a lighter grey jacket over it, but took it off once in the lecture theatre. The stud in her ear was simple silver, uncoloured. She has in the past worn some of her more favoured tshirts: oscar the grouch (well-worn, you can tell because it's that plasticy stuff that comes off eventually) and wonder woman. One of the Three is a girl from friends who I can't really remember. I would say Phoebe, but it's not. The ring on her right hand was crossed parallel on the top (like a strip of metal twisted by an amateur into a ring shape, it overlaps, but doesn't actually *cross*) and had a diamond (or more likely, zirconia) holding it together (but both parts of the strip were next to each other). The ring on her left hand was thinner in the body but had a two stones in it, larger, set in squares rotated pi / 4 (i.e. 45 degrees). One was dark purpleish, one was yellow, or something similar. Maybe red. They were substantially larger than the width of the ring itself, perhaps by a multiple of 2.5. They aligned on one side of each square, resulting in a similar overlapping pattern.

Her sense of humour was sufficient to laugh at John Blackwood's better jokes, but to ignore some of the worse ones. Eyerolling was appropriate. She was not a prolific note-taker, but benefited from using the unit outline side-by-side with the notes she was taking. Each lecture forms a different Microsoft Word for Mac 2003 document. She's not a computer nerd but knows how to use her computer effectively. She didn't talk with her friends during the lecture but did animatedly beforehand. She is studious but it's not because she has to be to pass, it's because she does well.

It's surprising how good my memory is sometimes. And also a little creepy.

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