Scuttle and Love

Last night I went to Buffalo Wild Wings for the reunion of my ENG 304 class last semester. Now I know what you're thinking, "What kind of an odd college student would want to attend a college class reunion?" Well, I wanted to attend! I even passed up a trip home to go! I know, hard to believe! Well, this wasn't just any ordinary class. This was pretty much the best class ever. The subject, you ask? Well, it was called Backgrounds to Composition Theory and Research. Let's just say it was an Education/writing class. I had to do this huge portfolio with tons of my writing in it for the midterm. I was pretty proud...

Well, this class was amazing. The professor was the one and only Don Daiker (pronounced diker...), a 70 year old man who resembles Scuttle from the Little Mermaid. He has the thickest and most wild eyebrows one has ever seen, and however much we loved him, the class often made comments referring to tying him down and taking a weed wacker to his eyebrows (All for his own good, of course). But despite his bushy eyebrows and old age, Don still has the heart of a young college student, with the life wisdom to go with. He may have taught us how to be better teachers, but mostly he taught us how to be better people (It sounds mushy, I know, but it's true). Needless to say I become fairly close to Don and many of my classmates, so this reunion was going to be awesome.

I arrive twenty minutes late because of course, there are no buses going up town at the time and I had to turn around and come back to my dorm after walking for five minutes or so because I forgot my cell phone. Once I get there, only three other girls have arrived, and by the time the whole party gets there only seven girls from the class (including me) plus Don are there. It turns out this was a really busy weekend for most people...so it wasn't as excited as I'd hoped it would be, but of course, any chance to see my old friends is a good time to me. And although I only got to talk to them for about an hour before I had to leave it was very interesting to say the least.

One by one Don would ask us how we were, and we'd shout across the table as loud as we could what we've been up to. (I don't know if you've ever been to Buffalo Wild Wings, but that is one loud place, especially when you're trying to talk to a 70 year old man with bad hearing.) So when it came to my turn Don looked at me and shouted, "So, Katherine, how are you? Are you in love?" Now normally this would seem like quite an odd and personal thing to say to one of your former students, but you don't know Don and his class. Personal was normal, personal was expected. You see, the reason Don asked me specifically was because during the approximate 3 1/2 month span of his class I went from being happily and madly in love to being shot in the heart to the point where I couldn't even go one day without bursting into tears. At the time, Don knew this, so did my classmates. It was personal.

So here I am, all eyes on me, and Don is asking if I am in love. I want to say, "Yes, but I'm waiting to get over it; I HAVE to get over it because he doesn't feel the same way." But I can't say that. It's been four months. Hearing that is just depressing, and I'm so sick of being depressed and people seeing me depressed. So instead I say, "I'm working on loving myself." Which is basically true. I haven't loved myself these past four months. I want to get back to the person I loved before I had my heart ripped into a million pieces. The truth is, I'm in love with the wrong person. I need to be in love with myself. So that IS what I'm working on. And all this may be too personal to share with all of you, but with me, personal is normal, personal is expected. So if you're going to read, it's what you're going to get.

Peace out!

Katherine