Fluids and failures

Yesterday was a day which seemed designed to demonstrate in a myriad of increasingly humiliating ways why I shouldn't be allowed to leave the house, ever.

After waking up at eleven and having my customary two hour breakfast in bed (fifteen minutes to eat my toast, 1 hour 45 to drink my coffee) (mornings make me grumpy, so I think it's important to delay getting up for as long as humanly possible to optimise my mood for the day ahead) I trotted along to the library prepared for at least one to two hours of gruelling studying.

The first sign of my abysmal lack of even the basic qualities required for mingling with other human beings came when I noticed a large and inderminate stain on my jeans. It had the consistency of a thick paste, could not be rubbed off and was whitish-brown in colour. Closer inspection revealed it was in fact the last existing remnants of a banana. (Note - this was not even a banana I had eaten earlier that day. I don't really like bananas but sometimes I feel compelled to buy them because my mum tells me to. So I bought it, then didn't eat it, then left it lying around my bedroom for a day or two until it rotted and split open before somehow transferring its gummy residue to the thigh area of my favourite jeans.) (I've chucked it out now.)

I shrugged this discovery off, being used to a lifetime of presenting a sub-par appearance to the world, and found a desk in the library. The next sign came when I delved into my bag to get my notebook. The hand I removed was slick and glistening. About this time, I also became aware of a vague odour of...fish. It was strong and unmistakeable, and coming from my bag. The mackeral salad (drenched in olive oil) I had lovingly and a little smugly prepared that morning had leaked its liquid contents from its tupperware container over the bottom of my bag. The container itself was wet all over with fishy juices, so I opted to save my bag from further damage by moving it to my desk, where it emitted wafts of mackeral scented air which hovered in a thick and sickening cloud over my head. I was Fish Girl. Passers-by sprinted from my desk, trying in vain to suppress their nausea. The seat next to me had a turnover rate of 60 students a minute. I was as much of a pariah as it is possible to be in a library already filled with geeks.

The denoument of my day however, the real cherry on the pile of shit, came at a later stage. Leaving my fishy belongings behind, I had gone to seek out some books for an essay due next week. I was trying furiously to not be anxious, a challenging task when most of the books I needed had already been taken out, and had about fifty million holds on them. (Yes, I know I shouldn't leave things to the last minute. Now stop lecturing me and go back and look at the title of this post.) I got to the film noir section, but a vaguely familiar looking girl was blocking the shelf I wanted to get to, reading the contents list of one of the very books I wanted. As I stared at her in a vain attempt at mind control, she turned to me with a smile, and said "Hey, how're you doing?" And I grunted. Although a grunt doesn't accurately describe the sound I made, which in reality was like the deformed love-child of a grunt, a snuffle and a snigger. It was not attractive. It was not cool. It was the sound of somebody failing epically at the business of social interactions. The thing was, I did not have a clue who this very friendly girl was, and frankly at that moment in time I was more focussed on the book she was holding. That book, I was convinced was the Key to my academic success. That book was all that was standing between me and flunking out of uni. It all came down to That Book. And as I watched, she responded to my grunt by walking away, still holding the book.

I slunk out of the library shortly after that, bookless but stuffed to the gills with Omega-3. I realised today that the friendly, book-stealing girl is someone I have sat a few rows away from in my film noir class for the last ten weeks. And actually spoken to several times. Ah well, another fledgling friendship shot down before it ever took off.