Three Feet From My Head

I was sitting in the library at one of the computer stations at my high school. I was excited because I was expecting an email from my long-distance boyfriend. There were only four computer stations. Three were in a row and one was off a bit by itself. That was everyone's favorite computer, but Emily was already seated at it. So, I had taken one at the end of the row. It took forever to log into a computer, get your browser up, and open your email in those days. I was in the middle of the process when this guy sat down one seat away from me.

I had known him for so long that I didn't remember meeting him. The only things I knew about him were that he was in the grade below mine and that some girl had scratched “Morgan McNeil is a sexy beast” inside a bathroom stall at the Movie Mill in Lethbridge. Otherwise, I had utterly no interest in him.

He turned to me and asked in level tones, “Stephanie, why are you always such a snot?”

My first reaction was to answer without looking up, “Because I am a snot.” I didn't say that though, because Emily was sitting three feet from my head. I had been close friends with her when we were kids, but we drifted apart over the years because we enjoyed different things. However, I heard her comment in seminary. I thought she was a person with brains and a beautiful moral compass. I did not want her to hear me blow his guy off as rudely as was my custom. It surprised me to realize that I cared what she thought. I did not want to seem like I didn't have a similar set of ethics/manners. I did, and it was time to prove it.

So, instead of silencing him with my rebuttal, I answered, “Morgan, I have never purposefully been rude to you. If it came off like that, then I'm sorry.” It was not a lie. I wasn't the kind of person to go out of my way to put someone down.

However, he would not accept my apology. He had never wanted an apology in the first place. He wanted something else as evidenced by his next move. Without further ado, he launched into a manipulative speech where he progressively worked to pin me in a corner with his argument. Either I was going to be his friend or I was a snot.

At the appropriate intervals in his speech, I responded with noncommittal phrases like, “Oh, did it seem like that?”, “I don’t remember that,” or “Really?”

At first, I wondered why Morgan wanted to be my friend. As far as I could remember, this was the first time he had ever spoken to me. I thought about the guys who were my friends at school. I had four boy cousins in my grade and I thought about what perks they got being my friends. Not much. Then I remembered the sexy beast thing and I realized that he didn't want to be my friend. Saying he wanted friendship was just his way of getting his foot in the door. I was a conquest. And he was getting awfully big for his britches if he thought he was getting anywhere with me.

He talked a lot and I got impatient. If only Emily would leave! He was giving me chills, unpleasant chills. I needed to lay this guy out flat and I wasn't sure I could effectively do that with my barbed tongue if she couldn't stop listening. But she didn't leave.

Finally, Morgan had talked himself out and his trap was set. I was going to be his friend or I was a snot. Frankly, his strategy for manipulating me lacked brilliance. It would have been more successful if I was afraid of having a bad reputation or if I needed to be a nice girl. I was perfectly fine with being labeled a snot and much worse. Once he finished, I was finally ready to forfeit Emily's good opinion in exchange for the opportunity to pull the plug on his ambitions.

“Listen, Morgan, I have never purposefully been rude to you because I never think about you. Summer is coming. I have a list of things I want to do before school lets out and none of my goals have anything to do with you. So, no, we are not going to be friends.”

I turned back to my computer and tried to read and write a decent email to my boyfriend, but I was simply not in the mood. I logged out of the computer and left the library with nowhere to go.

The next day, Emily approached me in the hallway. “Can I talk to you?'' she asked.

I thought she was going to lecture me, and I was ready for it. I had shut Morgan down the day before expecting consequences, so I said okay and we moved out of the way of the general stream of traffic.

“I hope you don't mind,” she said, “but I heard what you said to Morgan in the library yesterday.”

“It's okay. You couldn't have avoided it.”

She nodded and said, “I just wanted to tell you that I really admired what you said. Of course, you have plans and why should they have anything to do with him?”

She might have said more, but I didn't hear her. I was so delighted that she agreed with me that I felt that surge of blood rush to my head where I couldn't hear anything anymore.

That is, without a doubt, my favorite memory inside my school walls when I was a teenager.