how things change

Before we begin I'd like to mention a very high pitched noise I'm hearing as a result of having plugged in my phone. I'd also like to say briefly that I bruised my toe.

When I was younger I had no sense of humour. I appreciated wit but I didn't find it funny. I would read Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams books and not laugh. Seriously. I loved and understood them, I just... I just didn't see them as funny. They were just good stories. And so it was that I didn't laugh when reading the Adrian Mole stories. I didn't see them as funny, I just saw them as a description of life. I quite liked them. They were educative. I'm still quite a fan of the Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4. A great book. But never one that I've seen as funny. Only some years after reading them (between when I was aged twelve and when I was aged fifteen I read them) did I read the blurb which elucidated the humour. And I see why people would find them funny. But they're not funny at all, really. They're just... real life. Or a life, at least.

Thanks to someone's blog entry I was reminded of this recently. I was specifically reminded of a time Adrian and his girlfriend break up because she won't show him one of her breasts. So he dumps her. He was fifteen by this stage, I think. (One of the reasons I found it so real is because when you're that age everything that's so humorous really is just as important as the book makes it out to be). Everybody in his class is talking about their sexual escapades and how one particular girl will have sex with anyone for four shillings and a pound of grapes (or something like that; some money and a pound of grapes). So he gets one of his friends to arrange a date with him and this girl. They go to a roller-skating rink and he wears his PE shorts because they're all he has that matches his friend's description of what people wear on dates. He takes her the pound of grapes and is unceremoniously rejected, then ridiculed for bringing grapes, since she has no idea why she'd want them.

Interestingly, I was once Adrian. Not necessarily Adrian Mole but I was called Adrian as part of an internet pseudo-relationship stalking thing that happened a few years back. Well, last year. Beginning of 2006. Crazy, crazy times. And my name was Adrian because that's what happened. And the more I think about it the more Adrianish I am. But then again other friends have said there's no Adrian to me at all. Quite possibly true too.

I'd like to move on now to a completely different topic. Conversations. I don't start them, because I don't like to be rejected. Especially on MSN. I also fear the rejection of text message or email communications where I send the last message and get no reply. It has to happen eventually but there's inevitably no "goodbye" message. So it's one of those "you hang up first" things. I'm disheartened by how often I send the last message. It could be because I always reply even when totally unnecessary but ... I don't know. It's just disappointing that I want to talk to them more than they want to talk to me. It makes me feel reliant. Like I'm being their friend and they really don't want me around. I know it's stupid - I know that, but I still feel it sometimes, to some small degree.

Sigh.