This is very embarrassing.
Have you ever been in a situation where you've been with someone for a while and you don't know that person's name? It's too late to ask, but you know the longer you go without asking, the more awkward it will become. So even though you feel really stupid, you finally just have to bite the bullet and say, "By the way, what's your name?"
That's how I'm feeling right now, only in reverse.
By the way, my name is Alton Richards.
A talented author would have skillfully slipped that in earlier, probably on the very first page. "Alton, come tell your favorite uncle how much you love him." Something like that.
Part of my difficulty, you have to admit, is my name. If I tried to slip Alton into the conversation, you might not have recognized it as a name. You might have wondered, "What does that word mean?"
And if I tried to slip in my last name, chances are you would have thought my name was Richard Alton. A number of teachers have called me that.
I'm seventeen years old. I am five feet, ten and a half inches tall, and I weigh 150 pounds. My hair is brown, and more fluffy than curly. I have dark, "intuitive" eyes and a "warm" smile.
My ex-girlfriend, Katie, is the one who described my eyes as intuitive and said my smile was warm. That was before she dumped me. Afterward she probably would have said I had a pathetic stare and a goofy smile, but since I'm the one writing this, we'll stick with intuitive and warm.
I asked Katie what she meant by "intuitive eyes." She said I could see right through all her phoniness and I always knew exactly what was in her heart.
The truth is, I never had a clue.
Maybe that's why I fell in love with her. People are attracted to mystery. No doubt I once seemed mysterious too, but by the time we broke up, I was to her, just as I am to you, an open book.