A Couple Benches

Rob was really cute. He was so cute I wondered if he was wearing makeup. No one had skin that perfect or a face that pretty. Honestly, he was a creature out of my daydreams. One specific daydream, in fact. When I was in school, there was no phrase more welcome than, “We have a new kid in our grade.” That was the only way you were going to meet someone new in a school that went from kindergarten to grade twelve in Magrath, a town that was six blocks by six blocks. I remember practically putting my hands together and praying, “Please let it be a boy. Please let him live across the street from me. Let him be handsome and let him think I'm pretty.” I remember passing this guy in the halls and thinking, Lord, you got part of it right. He's a boy. He's handsome. He doesn't live across the street from me. He has no classes with me and we'll never know if he thinks I'm pretty!

Or at least, I thought I'd never know. Such a compliment was valuable from Rob because of his extreme good looks. I mean, if a young man was used to good looks on that level and he thought I was worth looking at, that was a pretty hot compliment. In retrospect, only wanting a compliment from a hot guy is a pretty low ambition, but honestly, that was all I wanted.

Back to the story, I was sitting on the bench at the ice rink. I didn't have any skates and my class was skating for gym class that day. The boy and girl sitting on the bleachers a bit up from me were in the same boat, Tamsin and Rob. I glanced at them shyly. Not because of Tamsin. It was Rob. He was like a unicorn to me since I had no classes with him. I didn't know him, so I couldn't say anything to him, not to mention he had his hands full with Tamsin.

She was fawning over him something fierce and I had to admit the temptation would have been hard to squelch. She had a list from the yearbook committee and was asking him all sorts of the same question. “Who do you think has the best smile?” she asked him, giving him her best grin.

He looked at her like he had no idea what she was talking about. He answered, “I don't know.”

I wondered if the reason he didn't know was that he skipped an insane amount of school or if the full force of Tamsin's charm was too much for him and had short-circuited his brain. Actually, the whole thing was incredibly amusing. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, as Tamsin didn’t know she should put on the brakes.

She pestered him to answer her questions, fishing for him to say that she had the best smile, best butt, best what-have-you.

She got to the question, “Who has the best eyes?”

And he looked down at me and said, “Who's that girl?”

She was less than impressed and snapped her tongue. “That's Stephanie.”

“Put her down.”

And Tamsin obediently wrote my name down. I couldn't believe it. If I had been her, I might have refused, but I also sympathized with her at every turn. Perhaps all she wanted was for him to think she was pretty too.

Regardless, she was still over the top. I wanted to go up to her, pat her on the head, and say, “Lay off a bit, babe. I know this guy is so pretty, flirting with him would be hard to resist, but he's only praising me to give you the hint to back off. Give him a break.”

So, I didn't take his compliment seriously.

Much later, maybe years, I was at the Movie Mill sitting on a bench. I had just finished a film and was waiting for my boyfriend. Rob was also on the bench and we got to talking. He was also on a date, but she was getting snacks. So we talked, and I have no idea what we talked about, just that the mood was so good, I would have expected him to quit whatever he was doing and join up with me for the rest of the night, except no, because of our dates.

His girl showed up before my boy and when she saw Rob, she had this look on her face like, “Here we go again.” The competition for his attention was non-stop. She literally hauled him up from the bench and pulled him bodily to their theater with him dangling behind her like a kite, but a kite that had eyes only for me.

I smiled. Ambition achieved.