I'm approaching my 47th winter, if you count the first one, during which I arrived. I've only recently learned to make friends - in the manner of, "Hello, I like you. I would like to play with you. Do you want to come over?" sense of things. I've even more recently discovered that the reason I spent much of my 2nd grade in glass rooms with men in suits showing me inkblots very likely has something to do with what today's parents and teachers would recognize as Sensory Integrative Disorder. Sometimes if you are talking to me and I appear to be ignoring you, it's not because I don't value you or even want to interact- it's because my sleeves are speaking louder than you are. And they are telling me that my nervous system will go on strike if I don't adjust them- so I cannot hear you.
Add to that the tendency toward ADD-ness I've always already had, and a somewhat Aspergerian approach to social gatherings and interactions in general, and you're maybe not surprised that I was one of the "odd" kids in school. But it was the 80's and that kind of aloof was actually cool in some circles, so it went unnoticed except in those cases where it was my 'signature'- a kind of 'weirder than thou' gesture of general disregard.
It is ironic then, looking back- to remember a teenage girl with such fondness. I remember the moment of thinking, "Wow, I really enjoy being around her. She's smart and hysterically funny and I always enjoy time we spend together. But if I tell her so she will think I am coming on to her, and that would just be weird, so..."...
Fast forward to 30 years later. I'm still not coming on to her, I still enjoy her just as much, and now I'm able to say so.
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