Tuesday 9/19

The problem with appearing smart and carrying around a book written by Jane Austen, say, is that people who are actually smart—like Brady, for instance—want to “discuss” it with you. Like, in front of a certain other person—a gorgeous male person, for instance—and you end up looking a whole lot like the OPPOSITE of smart. Take, for example, this actual conversation in my life, which occurred yesterday at my house:

BRADY: Cool, Deel, you’re reading Emma! That’s my favorite book.

(That’s the point in the conversation when I suspected I was in for some level of embarrassment.)

GIULIO: My mother loves Jane Austen and reads her books over and over and never stops talking about them.

(That’s the point in the conversation when I realized it would be a humiliation-fest. So I attempted to send it off on a tangent.)

ME: That’s great! Having a mother and all.

(This produced chuckling from Giulio, but not from Brady, who was now in a serious-literature-discussion zone.)

BRADY: Do you know that most popular chick-lit is based on Emma? The movie Clueless is pretty much exactly that story.

ME: Now that you mention it, yes. They both are set in Beverly Hills, right?

BRADY: Uh, no. The similarities are more about the actual plot. So, when you were first introduced to Mr. Elton, did you think he was interested in Harriet?

ME: Well, yes, I suspected that all along, Brady, but ESPECIALLY prior to Mr. Rochester arriving on the scene.

(A pause.)

GIULIO: Isn’t Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre?

ME: Yes, that’s right, Giulio. He’s in both books. Sort of a spin-off story situation. Jane Austen liked doing that, I hear.

BRADY: But Charlotte Brontë wrote Jane Eyre.

ME: I’ve heard that, too, yes. Very nice angle on the subject, Brady. Anyone up for some fries?

Eventually, Brady had to leave. She said she had to “hole up in the cage to get her swing back before first pitch.” I was afraid to ask.

And then a surprising thing happened. Giulio didn’t leave. Our little book chat had obviously not swayed him from respecting my intellect, because he asked—get this—if I could help him with his homework. To which I answered, YESSSS!!!!

(I hope I didn’t seem too eager.)

He needed to study for a biology test, which, admittedly, isn’t the best homework-helping scenario for me, since biology is not my best subject.

What is my best subject, I wonder? Tough to say, since I stink at just about all subjects. Or, at least, all subjects THIS school seems to teach. But maybe—to cut my brain a little slack, here—it’s not an intelligence thing. Maybe it’s just that I lack INTEREST in every subject this school has classes about. Yeah, that.

So, to make up for what I lack in the actual science area, I kept my little help session lively by running random Google searches on words from the vocab list at the end of the chapter. This produced some very unexpected results. For instance, when I plugged in the word “keratin,” something altogether disgusting appeared on the screen. That’s when I flipped the monitor off and said, “I think the computer may be broken.”

“It’s not broken,” Giulio told me. “You just push this button.” Then he turned the monitor back on, and a full-screen, zoomed-in image of yellow toenail fungus appeared. (I’m shuddering just thinking about it.)

There is actually a really good reason I stay away from the study of biology. I get that thing—psychosomania, I believe it’s called—if I even THINK about illnesses. When I was looking at Giulio’s biology book, there was this box about chicken pox on one page, and I was scratching away at my arms and legs within seconds of seeing it. I flipped to another page, and that one had a picture of a flesh-eating bacteria. So I screamed and slammed the book shut. “I think the book may be broken,” I said when I recovered.

(This got another adorable little laugh out of Giulio.)

So, I’ve given up—for good—being smart.

I mean, pretending to be smart.

Even though the homework session was fairly worthless at accomplishing actual, uh, homework, it was successful in another, more important way. And that is that Giulio was clearly amused by my attempts at, uh, amusing him. And—after I informed him that he was definitely ready for the big test, and we could quit—he asked me to GO somewhere with him. GO, as in go ON something. The same way you’d use the word GO with the words ON A DATE. Only it was Brady’s game that he wanted to go to, so it wasn’t a date, since dates don’t usually involve watching a person’s girlfriend play a sport. But there’s no need to be all technical about that.

At the game, Brady continued striking out, which is truly weird beyond words. After the last inning, she sat down on the bleachers with us and said, “I don’t get it. I don’t GET it. I was slamming ’em full-on in the cage.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, scooting away from her, ever so slightly, so she wouldn’t take it personally (that she smelled bad and was covered with dirt).

“I was hitting the ball just fine in the practice area, Delia,” she said. (A little testily, I might add.) “I’m getting my eyes checked.”

“We can stop in that eye place at the mall,” I suggested. “While we’re shopping for my new football wardrobe.”

“You don’t call athletic wear a ‘wardrobe,’” Brady told me (still a little testily). “And you don’t even need any special clothes to manage the football team. But I’ll go to the mall with you. Maybe some new socks would help me get my swing going again.”

Though this was clearly crazy talk, given her recent mood, I decided to let it pass without asking any questions. I’d never been introduced to this ‘losing’ side of Brady before. Not very pleasant, it is. But that’s okay! Best friends put up with little quirks. Especially when said quirks could, possibly, turn out to repel mondo-cutio boyfriends who will soon (in eight days, but who’s counting?) reach their date-life expectancies.

While we were at the mall—specifically, standing in the sock department of Model’s Sporting Goods—she explained about baseball superstitions. There seems to be a whole lot of OCD behavior going on in that sport, according to Brady. Players tend to do these ritualistic things, like taking exactly five practice swings every time they come to bat, or kicking the dirt exactly seven times, or rubbing their heads three times, etc. This is because, apparently, they’re convinced that if they change ANYTHING they will ruin their game.

“Sometimes,” she said, “players have to add accidental things into their routines, like if someone wipes sweat off his forehead and then he hits a home run at that at-bat, he has to always go through the sweat-wiping thing from that point on.”

“Oh, I get it!” I said. “So, like, if they happen to accidentally poke themselves in the eye before they hit a triple, then they have to add that into the routine?”

“Exactly,” Brady said. “My favorite is when someone scratches his butt and then gets a hit.”

And then we started suggesting other things, like sneezing and nose-picking, which got us both cracking up, and thankfully got Brady out of that loser mood she was in. We were fairly out of control by the time I put farting on the list and were attracting some attention from the Model’s staff.

“How do they have enough time for all that, anyway?” I asked, trying to pull myself together.

“Well,” Brady said, “the players stop some of the things when they’re in a losing streak, or they change what they do. Sometimes a whole team will change something together, like their socks, or pants, or something else.”

I was going to make suggestions about what, exactly, “something else” could be, but I figured we better not risk getting kicked out of the store before Brady selected her new socks. Of course, Brady didn’t end up getting new socks. She got all worried that her coach would get mad if she didn’t match the rest of the team.

“How about a new sports bra then?” I suggested. “You don’t have to worry about matching the other players with that. At least I hope not, considering all the other players are boys. I was just going to find the rack of sports bras, myself, because I need one.”

Brady started laughing again, which wasn’t—in my personal opinion—a particularly funny moment.

“What’s so amusing?” I asked.

“Why do you need a sports bra for managing a football team?” she asked.

“I thought I might actually start doing some of the warm-up laps with the guys,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, with that up-eyebrow look that means: “. . . and?”

“And I’ll be running,” I said. “You know, RUNNING.”

Same look from her, only with the added palms-up effect, which shows you’re REALLY waiting for the punch-line.

“The bra stops the bouncing,” I said.

“What bouncing?” she asked.

“I bounce,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” Brady said. “And, believe me, I know bouncing.”

“You just watch,” I told her. And I started jumping up and down in the middle of the sock department. “See?”

“That is not a BOUNCE,” she told me. “A jiggle, maybe, but DEFINITELY not a bounce.”

“This is no JIGGLE,” I insisted, jumping with a level of energy that might have gotten me recruited by the basketball coach if she had been there at Model’s looking at socks. “I think I may even need a medium-size bra for THIS major bouncing going on!”

Right in line with most of the other things currently happening in my life, this occurred: Giulio returned from his mission to find new shin guards. And judging by the smirk on his face, I’d say that I, again, provided him with some amusement.

Later, after I emerged from the dressing room with my (sadly, SMALL) selection (which makes me look like a nine-year-old when I am wearing it), I found Brady with her sports bra tucked under her arm (large) (large bra, not large arm) (although, her arm is kind of large) (at least compared to mine). She was tossing around a hacky sack with Giulio and looking ridiculously athletic. I may have to kill her. It would have to be a way that requires no strength, though. Like poisoning.

The Colonel has walked by my desk three times today while I’ve been writing, and each time he has nodded very approvingly to me. More than approvingly, he looked at me as if I were the star student in his class. Which didn’t seem at all right, considering he had made the strong suggestion that we at least TRY to use some of Emily Dickinson’s writing techniques, such as “unconventional broken rhyming meter” (whatever that is) in our journals today. How UTTERLY frustrating to be treated that way when you’re going OUT of your way to IGNORE all parts of the lesson he’s spent over an hour teaching. I may complain to my guidance counselor.