The Ninth Gate

I have been experiencing quite the upswing with my attempts at swooning a girl these last 2 weeks.  I just erased the jumbled summary of everything we did this week because recounting them brings me more joy than it would for you.  All I'm trying to express is that I have a positive outlook now because things are going well.

This leads to the logical assumption that I have a negative outlook when things are not going well.  This is sadly, most-often true.  I often joke about how high school turned into Hell for me in my 10th grade year.  There are a lot of potential reasons for this.  I had a lot of people wish me ill fortune, I had a lot of bad luck, and I wasn't firmly believing in God, Jesus, or anything spiritual.  Despite all these things that no doubt contributed to the misery I felt on and off over the next few years, there is a recurring character woven throughout all of this.

This girl's effect on my story will not be impossible to sum up in a single entry, so I will bestow upon her the alias, Rose.  Rose will resurface several more times in my Chronicles but this is her introduction.

First, let's rewind to 8th grade.  I had a history class taught by a short, pudgy, bearded man.  He was funny and I think this was around the time I was starting to feel like a funny kid.  I must have been, because I started being able to make everyone laugh.  This class was probably my best audience, though, since it wasn't through the gifted program.  My jokes were so funny, in fact, that several girls developed crushes on me.  I'm sure my bleached highlights, hemp necklaces, and AE wardrobe may have helped.  Rose was one of these girls at the time as it turns out.

I wasn't really interested in any of these girls in return.  I didn't even know who Rose was until she beat me in our period's finals for the school-wide Most Influential Person in History debate, where I did no research and called her person (JFK) a rapist.  When I did know who she was and found out she liked me I thought to myself, "She has that big mole on the side of her face.  I don't wanna date her."  Therefore, I never let on that I knew she liked me and hoped in would just fade away.

When I started high school, Rose and I were both in International Baccalaureate (IB) together and had Spanish together.  Over the course of the year, I realized she was much prettier than I thought in junior high school and realized that I now had a little bit of a crush on her.  I remember writing her a speech in the spring of 9th grade, asking her out.  I was going to give it to her sitting on the couch that our Spanish teacher found necessary to have in a portable of horny ninth graders for some reason.  Fate intervened.  I overheard her say to a friend at lunch earlier that day that another boy in IB asked her out that day and now they were dating.  I had missed my chance.  This was my punishment for being snobby the year before.

Apparently, Rose still crushed on me through all of 9th grade, summer, and a good part of 10th grade.  We had had some good pre-date hangouts/incidents throughout this time.  She was part of a group movie trip to Scooby Doo 2.  I also lent her my Spanish book or something I remember.  I bided my time/got distracted though.  It wasn't til right before Valentine's Day, 2005 that this story really begins.  This is all a light-hearted background.  Rose and I have a lot of moments that will make interesting blogs but they'll have to wait.