So What?

I never liked people who said "so?". Perhaps it was the condescending tone they said it with, or perhaps it was the fact that after it was said, I had nothing more to say or boast about, and the conversation would end ("my lunchbox is better than yours"... "so?"). I myself have never been a "so?" person, and if I have said it perhaps once or twice, it has never been with the cool air of superiority and condescending tone that true "so?" people have.

"What's wrong with your hair?" I asked Jim. The hair, which was normally carefully spiked up was today gelled down. It was... interesting.

"Why do people say that?" He asked, offended. "Why does it have to be 'what's wrong with your hair?' - why not 'oh you changed your hairstyle' or something?"

Because it looks dumb. I wanted to say. But I didn't. The only reason for this is that the night before, I had had a dream in which I insulted some guy's television, and he had become depressed and suicidal.

"So what if this was your TV", the guy in my dream asked, showing me a ripped out magazine ad for a plasma flatscreen, "and I insulted it, how would you feel?"

"I wouldn't care", I replied, with the how-could-you-even-think-that-I-would-care tone you use when the ex boyfriend that you hate declares, for the fiftieth time, that he is going to kill himself. The guy shook his head at me, like I was some kind of lost cause.

Back to Jim.

It's not like I'm mean all the time. I thought as I sat there, wondering how to respond. I can be nice - I give compliments where due. I told him his new haircut looked good.

"It just looks... different."

"So?"

This is not the first time he has made me feel stupid. I remember the first time we talked, he made me feel stupid about numerous things amidst trying to make me believe that he had turned down an offer to be paid $40,000 for 500 horus of programming work because he thought it was worth more (later, the story changed to the work was worth over $40,000 but he never got paid because the company couldn't afford to pay him).

I turn around from the conversation that has abrubtly ended, and wonder what it was about him that had ever had me "in a state".

Two days later, I reflect on this while picking off crumbs of bacon and egg pie from my jeans, and decide that it wasn't Jim himself that had had me in a state, but the fact that he had a crush on me.

Would I even have noticed him, had I not noticed him noticing me? My $18 shaped eyebrows fur with the frown of contemplation. Would I know Mike today, had I not seen the smile he gave me three years ago?

First year, when I didn't make an effort and could attract and abundance of guys with my bushy eyebrows and atrocious taste in clothing.

Jim had been the first guy to notice me for a long time.

What had changed, I wondered. Was it because I was no longer an innocent first year (now a wise postgrad)? Was it because I was bigger? Were my clothes not as hip as I thought they were? Were my eyebrows too thin?

We are stopped at a red light. I fold up the sun shade on which I had been examining my eyebrows (they're not too thin) and look out the window. In the lane next to us, the (hot) guy in the red Prelude turns and grins at me, raising his (manly) eyebrows in a suggestive manner.

Or perhaps I do still get noticed. I think as the light turns green, and we pull away. Perhaps, I just don't realise because I don't really care.

previous - next; thanks, diaryland.