When I was in seventh grade, a boy from the eighth grade table turned, tapped me on the shoulder, and grinned. With a mouthful of food, he pressed his hands to his chest and sneered.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you think you would want to go out with me?\u201d he asked, barely able to keep from laughing. He swallowed his food when I didn\u2019t answer. \u201cI heard you\u2019re dating, and\u2014and I just thought that you should go out with me.\u201d He started laughing before he swallowed that, too. The people at his table were smirking and snickering amongst themselves. I was both startled and appalled. Why would he be asking? Why was <\/em>he asking? And why was he acting like it was a joke? Speechless, I turned away and kept eating. The seventh grade table was all looking at me. I could hear the eighth grade table burst into raucous laughter.<\/p>\n It took me a while to figure out why this happened, though if I\u2019m being honest, I\u2019m still not sure how it spread. Apparently, a rumor was created that this boy\u2014we\u2019ll call him Ed\u2014and I were dating. Why is this such a big deal? I\u2019m not sure. Perhaps it was because Ed was a larger boy, chubby but sweet. Perhaps because I was a scrawny redhead, soft-spoken and unsure of anything. Ed had invited me to go see a movie with him. It was a movie I wanted to see. I asked my mom, who said yes, and with excitement, I told him it was on. I had gone out with boys before. My best friend was a boy. I didn\u2019t see the big deal until my mom, who contacted Ed\u2019s mother about times said something rather alarming.<\/p>\n \u201cThey can sit in their own row and everything, we can sit further back, and they can get their own popcorn and all that! It\u2019ll be so cute!\u201d Ed\u2019s mom chimed.<\/p>\n Mom blinked. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, what?\u201d<\/p>\n She recounted the conversation to me. I had the same reaction. We decided my father was out of town and my mom couldn\u2019t leave my brother alone for a few hours like that, and I needed to stay home with her. The date came and went. I avoided Ed at school for a while.<\/p>\n But then, of course, the eighth grader incident happened. And then it happened a second time. I was equipped with some famously witty quips to fend it off, though. My first exercise in defending myself.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you want to go out with me?\u201d he inquired, having thankfully spoken to me without food in his mouth. He was still snickering though, and those around him were acting just as giggly. I arched a brow.<\/p>\n \u201cDid it take you all week to figure that one out?\u201d<\/p>\n I know. Pretty witty. It\u2019s a wonder he didn\u2019t just bow at my feet at that point, because clearly I was the better quipper.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, I\u2019ve just really been wanting to ask you. I just think it\u2019d be great if,\u201d he snickered, \u201cif we dated!\u201d He burst out laughing. I rolled my eyes and turned back to my food. I told my mom. My mom\u2019s expression turned hard.<\/p>\n \u201cWow. He\u2019s really <\/em>clever. Super funny, too,\u201d she said, her voice dry. \u201cYou should talk to Ed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cReally? I\u2019ve been kind of avoiding him,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cWho else knew you were going to a movie?\u201d<\/p>\n I frowned. Mom had a point. Had Ed said something? Had he told people we were dating? Had he made a big deal about it, and now eighth graders were harassing me <\/em>because Ed said something untrue? I found Ed during recess. In classic Western fashion, we stood off against each other, and by the end of it, one of us was hurt, and the other walked away unaffected.<\/p>\n I asked him why people were asking to date me. Why did people think we were dating in the first place? I was furious he had done this. Clearly he had <\/em>done this. He insisted he hadn\u2019t said anything to anyone and he didn\u2019t know why there was a rumor about us, but these weren\u2019t answers. Not the answers I wanted. I went back inside the school.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until years later, when I found him on Facebook, that I apologized for the damage I likely caused. But I never found out who spread that rumor. In a highschool as small as that, it wasn\u2019t unlikely someone just managed to overhear us, but no one had been outside when he asked. He had waited until everyone had <\/em>left. That is, everyone except the teacher who stood nearby, making sure all the students got home safely and into the right car. Could the teacher have said something to another member of the staff? Could a student have overheard? Or maybe it really was as simply as Ed gushing to me to other classmates, enough that it reached the ears of antagonistic eighth graders?<\/p>\n I always wonder about that. But more so, I wonder what I did to even give the impression that I was interested in Ed in that way. Since when did movies equal a date? I ponder this a lot at twenty-four years old. How did he mistake me as something other than a friend? And why did he like me? Why didn\u2019t he just say he liked me and want to go out? The whole thing could\u2019ve been avoided. My answer would\u2019ve been abundantly simple.<\/p>\n \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was in seventh grade, a boy from the eighth grade table turned, tapped me on the shoulder, and grinned. With a mouthful of food, he pressed his hands to his chest and sneered. \u201cDo you think you would want to go out with me?\u201d he asked, barely able…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[283],"tags":[435,241,158,157,12,376,238,464,114,454,97],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27tjX-m2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1367,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions\/1367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}