Note: This diary entry was written a few years ago when I was a senior in college.

+++

I’ve been in a weird mood for the last couple days, again. 

I’m back in school now…. it always feels good to be back. It isn’t that I don’t love being home with my Mom… but I think I feel like a more independent person every day. I used to think I would be with my Dad forever… and now I sort of feel bad that I now only have my Mom to lean on, and I do, sometimes. It’s complicated… but I know that when I’m on my own, and don’t see her face every day, I’m not confronted with my guilt.

And my girlfriends… in every sense of the word… are all in the town where I go to college, and they welcomed me back vigorously. I actually made sure to get to my new dorm room a day early, because I knew I would need a day to rest before classes started, after they were done with me. 😉

But school started on a Tuesday, and I hit those classes, finally a senior. And then, as usual, I had a chem lab on Friday, from 5pm until 9pm. That’s the one to which I was assigned Freshman year, and it sort of became a tradition with me. People think I’m crazy that I choose that time slot on purpose, as a senior, with first pick of classes. But hey, whatever works, right?

So I grab a muffin from the coffee place on the quad, and go to class. The lab is full of those 2-person tables, and I chose the one front and left of the room… another tradition… but before I sit down, I pull the Clorox wipes out of my bag and wipe down the table. I know for a fact no one cleans those nasty tables, and other nasty things get spilled and/or dissected on them. I don’t touch them without applying bleach, first. Missy doesn’t do biohazard.

Anyway, seven or eight others file in, most of them I’ve seen before, in this class or that… it’s been a cozy 3 years, and we’re the ones who are left. I exchange pleasantries. They’re nice enough, but I’ve been partnered with most of them on some project or another in the past, and I’d really rather not do it again. I hate being the one doing all the work.

Time for class comes, and goes… we’re waiting for the grad student TA… actual profs almost never hang out for the labs. Finally she shows up, actually tinier than me, arms full of folders and a bag over her shoulder, Asian, hair up, a pencil in her mouth, looking very flustered.

She takes out her book for roll call and is half way through when another student shows up. He’s a sight… he seemed tallish, taller than me, anyway. Thin, short brown hair. Glasses. A brown checkered shirt, and jeans that look slightly too short for his legs. He looked like a gangly, walking string bean… and from now on I’ll call him “Bean” for short, to be discrete. 😉 The TA takes one look at him, “Ah, you must be Bean, the child prodigy. Find a seat.”

He nods, his eyes almost look panicked, behind his glasses. I don’t know what prompted me, but he was looking around, his choices a completely empty table, or the empty seat beside me… I waved him over. Without acknowledging me he sat beside me, putting a heavy backpack on the table in front of him. I took a longish look at his profile… the poor boy has a few zits… how old is he? And… child prodigy? But now the TA has finished roll call and is getting ready to hand out the syllabus… for the moment I’m all business. But I can smell him, a little…