"You Kids and Your Social Life"

Tori and Ashley and I spent the afternoon out together.  We ran into Erik, one of the boys we went to school with.  Erik and I had been in a gym class together my senior year.  I knew him because, at the time, he was dating one of my friends.  We had bonded over a mutual love of metal music.  Erik is now at MSU with so many of my other friends, though I don't know what he's studying.  We run into each other sometimes at MSU, but today we ran into each other at my hometown.  It was nice.  He is lucky enough to have a job this summer. 
I came home.  As I was taking off my shoes, my Dad came in.  "You want to get dinner?"
"Can't.  I have to shower and then I am going to see a show with Madison and some other people."
"You kids and your social life."
I've been thinking a lot about my Dad and his social life, or his lack of it.  Everyone else in our house has got stuff to do.  My Mom is running a business, taking care of my Grandma, and getting ready for a convention.  My sister is taking a class and has a job.  I'm working on and off, writing, applying for jobs and internships and catching up with old friends.  My Dad isn't doing any of that.  He mostly just gets up early and watches tv and go out for drives.  I think it's why he balks so much at everyone else being gone.  He has nothing else to really think about, which is why I get such frantic calls from him about what I'm doing.
Because of the time, I had to hurry to get ready.  I showered, ate some dinner (Lemon Rice soup, a favorite of mine), and got dressed.  I had texted Madison to ask what I should wear.  She said just a t-shirt and some jeans.  I was going to go for slightly fancier, since it is always better to be more dressed up than not.  For the first time since my steampunk convention, I used makeup.  I almost never wear makeup, and I'm proud of myself for only using it occasionally. 
Tori came and got me and we went over to Madison's.  When we got there, we found Lisa and Michael sitting in Michael's car outside Madison's house.  We chatted a bit.  Tori felt my arm and was like "Oh!  So soft."  She took my arm and stuck it into the car.  "Feel."  Both Lisa and Michael felt my arm and agreed.  With other people, this might have been a weird thing, but we've been around each other for so long that it didn't really faze me.  It was like when I spent time with Paul.  Paul and I lay all over each other, and neither the two of us or anyone else gets worked up about it.  And, to be fair, Tori, Lisa and Michael are not the first people to comment on my soft arms. 
We went inside and found Madison and her boyfriend Ted hanging out.  I haven't seen Ted since New Years' Eve.  He seems like a pretty cool dude.  Michael wanted to play some piano pieces he's learning, and he did.  He's an amazing piano player.
As we sat around waiting for Ashley, Tori told us that we should have told Ashley a half an hour before we meant her to show.  Ashley is notoriously late, and we almost always run late when we get together because of her.  I once showed up to something a half an hour late myself, and Tori was like "No worries.  You still beat Ashley here."
We sat around and chatted about things.  We talked about Michael's Dad, who drives Michael a little crazy.  I mentioned to everyone that I had met Michael's Dad, but that his Dad didn't acknowledge me, so maybe he doesn't remember me.  Michael laughed and said it was true.

The Date We Never Had

I went over to Micheal's house.  He was packing some stuff to go back to MSU, so I was helping him.  As he was looking for something, I happened to notice a Ponyo toy sitting out on a piano.  Last week, Michael had mentioned that he had an extra one and that I could have it.  I've actually never seen Ponyo, though I want to, since I'm a big fan of The Little Mermaid and Hayao Miuzaki.  I went over and squeezed its stuffed tummy.
And then I saw a bunch of framed pictures laying on the piano next to it.  I picked up the top one.  I was Michael's Dad, which slightly less crazy hair, and Michael's Mom, who I've never met.  She had crazy wild hair too, which made me wonder how Michael could be born with completely straight hair.  They were both smiling with a baby sitting in between them, Michael, I assumed.
The picture after that was similar, but instead of one baby in between, there were two.  Michael never mentioned siblings.  Had I just somehow missed that detail about him?  Maybe something had happened to the other sibling and Michael didn't like talking about it?  Maybe it was from a previous marriage, of, based on what the baby looked like, probably his mother?  I wanted to ask but I don't think there's any good way of beginning this topic.
I noticed then that there were no pictures on the actual wall of his house, anywhere.  It looked like a tornado had sweep through, which had distracted me to the lack of actual pictures on the wall.  I wondered if someone had tried to paint the walls recently or if they had moved.  It didn't make a lot of sense.
After that, we got into Micheal's car and headed over to a friend's graduation party.  The guy had just graduated from engineering at MSU and had found a job in Grand Rapids.  Kid was set for life.  Would probably be making five figures right out of college.  (What was I thinking pursuing English as a degree?)  I just graduated myself, but I figured no one actually had graduation parties to celebrate graduating from college.  With my Grandma being all sick lately and me not having anything exciting to say about where I was going, it's probably just as well, but now I have missed the opportunity to have one of these parties twice. 
I was a little nervous to go there, just because people would see me and be like, "Oh, you must be Micheal's girlfriend," when the truth was I was friends with his girlfriend Lisa.  But I didn't feel like it was my place to be picky. 
And, indeed, I totally called it, because everyone shook my hand and treated me as Micheal's girlfriend.  They asked where we had met.  Michael said through Lisa, and that got a few eyebrows.
It's actually a lie, the meeting through Lisa thing.  We met about six months before Michael and Lisa met.  I was sitting on a park bench reading Phillipa Gregory's The Constant Princess and Michael walked by, saw me, sat down, and then tried to pick me up.  No kidding.  We obviously did not end up dating, but it occurred to me then that if we had, this is probably what it would be like.  Again, I was wondering if I was going to regret this hanging out with Michael thing.
It was a normal, though sparely attended, graduation party.  The host's mother was very gracious to us (she knew Michael) and I helped myself to a Root Beer and chips and some Chinese noodles.  They had this interesting wooden servers that were like huge fork ends.  I joked that they were Wolverine servers.  A woman standing there asked what I was talking about, and I explained that they looked like the claws of Wolverine the X-Man.   

Out With Friends

I went out last night with some of my friends.  We first went over to one of the local coffee shops for treats and conversation.
One of the things that's always a bit of a problem is volume.  Tori and Ashley are particularly loud.  (You know things are bad when I think people are loud.)  There were a few brief moments where this looked like it was going to be a problem, but it was mostly okay. 
I was surprised by Tori and Ashley.  Ashley usually does not like being told that she is wrong (she's picked fights with me over very little) but Tori basically schooled her in Islam last night and Ashley didn't react as badly as she usually does.  Ashley's in anthropology, and anthropology has a bad reputation for being racist, misogynistic, homophobic, etc., and even though Ashley doesn't go for the racism and homophobia, I have heard her say some pretty misogynistic things on occasion.  This time, she said some pretty awful things about Muslims, and I sometimes wonder how it is that we grew up in the same community.  We knew a lot of the same people, including a lot of Muslims (we live in an area where there is a high population of "Middle Easteners") and yet Ashley has a totally different (i.e. mostly negative) point of view about them.  But Ashley didn't do as she always does (repeat herself until you give up), so maybe that's a sign that she's changing? 
I talked mostly to Michael, Lisa's boyfriend.  He's a really nice guy, but I always feel like he's hitting on me.
This brings up one of the many problems I have.  Apparently, I am too nice to guys.  Josie says that I make people feel way too good about themselves and Dan has commented before that I am easy to talk to.  Josie believes that a lot of guys think that I'm interested in them because of the way I behave around them.  There are a lot of guys I'm interested in, but never, it seems, the ones who are interested in me.
The other problem is that I'm not sure how to strike a middle ground between being nice and being nasty.  I know how to tell someone off (some of my readers have seen me do it), but I (apparently) don't know how to be normal around people, not overly nice and not mean.
So, with Michael things are always a little weird, because well, Lisa's right there.  And I'm honestly not interested in him, and not just because of Lisa.  I met Michael before Lisa did, and I decided against him.  And I really don't want to make Lisa unhappy.  She's been very nice to me over our seven years of friendship, and it feels silly to throw that away, especially over a boy. 


Later, we walked over to a store to do a little shopping.  While walking there, some one was playing "Boom Boom Pow" and I danced in the parking lot to it.  (You can all blame Gary for getting me into that song.  Boy is a much better dancer than he looks.)
We went to look through cards, which is something that is super foreign to me these days.  In my family, we're not allowed to buy cards, because my Mom makes them.  So I haven't been in a card rack in almost a decade.  I mostly made terrible suggestions to Ashley, like saying she should get a Grandfather-themed Father's Day card for her Dad.

Lisa is a cute whore, and she got really excited when she saw cards that were from Hoops and Yoyo.  Am I totally out of the loop here?  I've never even heard of Hoops and Yoyo before, though their website has so much sound stuff on it.  Lisa was giggling and carrying on about how cute they were, especially this one slug character.  I honestly don't ever worry about buying Lisa a present.  If it's even a little bit cute, she'd probably love it.