Weddingbee

Part I 

I now know Mr. Petunia did poorly on that assignment because he only skimmed the assigned novel the night before the paper was due. And guess what? Turns out he didn’t give a hoot about Robert Frost either — the boy was just trying to impress!

(It is true that Mr. Petunia is well read, but I must be honest. He’s really a math/science/video games kinda guy. He will be absolutely horrified at my saying this publicly, but these days, if it’s not Calculus or the latest EGM, any other kind of reading Mr. Petunia does only takes place in a certain room of the house (actually, the EGM has often seen the inside of that small room, too). I won’t say which room, but you can try to figure it out. Is this a man thing or what?)

At any rate, after the semester ended, Mr. Petunia continued to visit me in my office often. We would talk about what movies we’d recently watched or what books we’d just read; he told me which Harry Potter book was his favorite; I told him how much I loved Rent.

One of my colleagues started to tease me about these visits. Why, you ask, was I so slow to catch on? Well, I didn’t want to see what was in front of me for two reasons. Professionally, I didn’t feel comfortable with even humoring the idea of dating a student, even a former one (I would have never dated a current one!). Personally, I had just gone through a heart wrenching breakup.

Plus, the boy had a girlfriend! He’d mentioned her (so I can’t say he was keeping her a secret), and once, I had run into them at the local mall…I guess at the time, I didn’t think too much of the possibilities…

• Recovering..
• Getting Gussied Up