Back in grammar school, I did not tease girls. It was not my…not my…
Idiom, sir?
Yes, idiom. My idiom consisted of puppy-eyed longing from afar, followed by tragically romantic love notes, sometimes in conjunction with a back-channel whisper campaign extolling my many but unvaryingly abstract virtues. This engendered little more than epic disinterest, which I naturally interpreted as a sudden but inevitable betrayal, bringing on a mournful but grandiose suffering during which I would often carve my cruel beloved’s monogram into the sole of my boot so I could tromp her name into the dust with my every petulant step.
Others boys had other, more direct methods. Sitting in our rank and file desks, the girl who sat in front of such a boy was a constant target. If the girl had long hair and the boy was deft enough, he might tease out a single strand and–quietly, gently–tie that glossy thread around the body of a housefly he’d caught. Released, the fly would buzz up into the air, quickly reaching the limit of the strand. A clever boy could tie two, even three in place before releasing them to zip around her head like fighters around the mothership.
I don’t know if their methods worked better than mine. The desired culmination of this pre-teen proto-courtship ritual was never thoroughly clear to me. My personal goal (a kiss) was never achieved, but the other boys may have achieved theirs, hazy and conflicted though they were likely to be at that age.
What I do know is that at least one of those boys grew up and got a job at the Smithsonian Institution.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 