People laugh at me when I tell them that such a small world as public school has its own system of politics. Whenever they laugh, I tell them this story. It's about me, in a way, but it's more about the system.

My life has intricacies which I'd rather not share, even on such an open-minded place as E2, because they drag the story down.

I never was an incredibly social person. The occasional small party around a cluster of XBOXes, that was about it. Still, everyone has needs, and around November of my Senior year, I asked a girl out. Yeah, I know, no big thing, right? Well, for me, it was. See, I'd been labeled as "gifted" since I was very young, and shunted aside into special programs with the same group of students, day in and day out for thirteen years. This severely impeded my social capabilities.

Anyway, I forgot about the fact that she already had a boyfriend. Still, even that doesn't excuse the harshness with which she brushed me off. Her exact words were "I'm not romantically interested in you." A chilling phrase in any context. I worked my way through the distress this caused by writing up my situation and e-mailing it to a friend of mine. He, without telling me, e-mailed it on to the girl I'd asked out.

I've got excellent taste in friends, I know.

At that time, I ran a website to showcase my various writings. Kind of like LiveJournal, only without the stalkers, message boards, and lack of eloquence.

The next day, I get called down to the Vice Principal's office. He talks in obscure language and metaphors, and I practically have to beat him into showing me which piece of my writing has gotten me there. Finally he does, and my face blanches like a Southern belle in a heat wave. The VP tells me that he got a call from the girl's mother about this, and that she had wanted to involve the cops. He tells me that he called me down because it had made the girl "uncomfortable" and he "just wanted me to be aware of the situation." Any action I want to take, he says, I can take on my own. I'm still curious as to how the hell that document got into her hands to begin with, so after kowtowing and fleeing the office, I get on the horn with my so-called friend.

He eventually comes clean, apologizing the whole way.

I crank out a poem about my situation and put it on my website, because I'm confused and need to express myself. It was fairly decent, given my love for iambic pentameter, but that's not the point.

The point is that the next day, I get called down to the VP's office again. This time, I'm greeted by a fellow wearing dark blue clothing and a handgun.

Apparently the "timeliness" of my poem's appearance has agitated the family even further; specifically because of the line "Mom's love has got a dark side, children know." Whatever the reason, I was in over my head. So what did I do? I told the truth, and finally convinced the mother to come down and give me a chance to explain myself. She did, but she had to have the police officer and the VP in the room, and she could leave whenever she chose. Now, I'm wondering if she thinks I'm a threat, but I keep my mouth shut, because I'm only 5'6", and the two men around me look like linebackers. Have you ever noticed that all of the high-level administrators are jocks?

From the moment the mother walks into the room, I get the feeling that nothing I can say can change her opinion of me: I present a threat to her child, therefore I am the enemy. So I babble a vaguely coherent explanation of my situation, and mention that what I do with my writing is almost the same as what millions of users do with blogs. I mention that her daughter has a LiveJournal, and before I finish the word "Journal," she snaps back with "I know what my daughter does on the internet."

I get out of there with the belief that I will never be explained to the daughter, and the VP telling me that I'm not to discuss or post anything about my relationship with the girl anywhere where she might see or hear it.

Two days later, I find out that the girl's going to be Valedictorienne.

Long story short: I tried to ask the valedictorian out, and got put through the grinder by the school system because her parents got nervous.

By the school system. Isn't it something that the very system we trust with our children's education has to handle their love lives as well? That those parents had to act using the system as a proxy because they didn't want to confront me directly? And isn't it amazing that the school actually obeyed them?

They overreacted, and I had to pay the price.

Sure, I could just be bitching about how I got wronged, but if you look deeper, you find that I'm bitching about how the school system let it happen and didn't send anyone to come to my defense. Oh, well.

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