I spent a lot of my time in childhood just watching people quietly. It’s something about people’s reactions to the little moments that intrigues me.

I like to think most of the time I’m very discreet about my watching people and that they don’t see me watching. If that’s not the case then I don’t mind, and I hope they don’t mind (like I would - do I hear a sing song voice saying hypocrite?).

Today I remembered, again, a girl I knew who’s name I can’t remember but whose face is still quite clear to me. She was a gawky girl. And she wore glasses. Thick geek glasses at that - simply ‘cause it couldn’t be helped.

I can’t express at this point just how fascinating glasses are to me so naturally I’ve found their wearers to be of particular interest perhaps, even, of more interest. Unsurprisingly then this girl became the unfortunate subject of my gaze.

The next interesting thing about her apart from the glasses was that anytime something happened she’d have varying degrees of red creep up her face and rest on her cheeks. In my own experiences with personal interactions I recognized in her a shyness close to my own and could immediately place a reason for each red shadow that clouded her face at times... a lot of times actually.

She was quite pale so I almost felt sorry for her but it was a porcelain doll-like pale, so I didn’t really. I reckon that that’s another thing she had going that she probably couldn’t see at that pubescent age. Sometimes I wished we could change skins just so I could give her a chance to hide like I could from the embarrassment of shyness.

She was really smart too so the teachers would sometimes call her out and despite her appearance of confidence, I’d notice some pink creeping up her face from her neck where the blood made its ascent. A little scarlet here, a little cherry there - after having been handed a compliment or asked for homework help or any other thing that would seek her out of the comfort of herself.

The brightest crimson I ever recall seeing was when a guy she liked went over to talk to her; a sweet looking, good looking, kind hearted guy might I add. She was unaware as he went over and when she looked up to find him there her chest went a deep red that flared up towards her face in a tide of colour.

One thing I found comforting was that the red subsided pretty quickly afterwards and rested on her cheeks and the hollows beneath after the conversation got going. I don’t remember more on this memory, neither do I recall following up on her, so I can’t tell you if they worked out or not. I hope they did.