Are you going home for Thanksgiving?, I asked.
"Not hardly," she said, staring off into the hills as we walked toward the dining hall. "I was raised by wolves, but placed with a small Maryland family in some kind of twisted
witness protection program."
She was dressed in her
National park service grey shirt with white bicycle pants and ballet slippers. I looked (one time too many) at the way her thighs stuck out from under the tails of her shirt.
"Oh, please " she groaned. "Don't start with that stuff again." She hated it that I continued to have this bizzare fear/attraction for her. But she allowed me to walk her from class to lunch and more recently watched me eat D-hall food while she drank tea and munched on the box of
Pringles she took with her everywhere she went.
Today's class had been about personality disorders and she could no longer contain herself.
"It's wrong", she shouted to the group. "If a woman likes herself she's a narcissist, if she hates herself she's Borderline and if she is depressed shes Bipolar. What the hell?! Why not just put the red A back on be done with it!"
Some of us tried to redirect her (we are all rescuers in this class, she reminds me constantly, "Stop throwing the damn life preservers!" ). Someone starts a discussion of taxonomy and classification systems, but she was in the zone.
"It's a no win. Express your opinion- you are psychotic, keep it to yourself -neurotic. Repress it- you are stunted, share it- you are antisocial. Why don't we get to pick the damn box- NONE OF THE ABOVE!"
She was going to leave it at that, and finish up the class in a quiet surly rage, but that guy had to say something.
Guess it takes one to know one. Ha!
"Hey, dirtball", she pointed, index finger one inch from his perfect roman nose, "you don't even want to see my interpretation of echolalia all over your face"
The prof rushed over to intervene but she had already returned to her seat.
"I'm sorry", she smiled, "let's hear some more about passive aggressiveness, 'K?"
end of part 2