Aaron. Pffbbtt! – 332.5

Ah, the old irritation is coming back to me.

As we have already covered, I knew Aaron through basketball. We went to the same high school, same university, and same church, which was a fair amount of commonality, but it did not quite bond us. Generally, the church members on the teams were not the players to whom I became closest—probably a coincidence. However, I did bond with his family and loved them a lot. I thought his parents were wonderful, and really liked the two little brothers that were usually at the games. (There were more siblings, but I mainly knew those two.) Generally, I liked the parents and siblings of most of the players, but I was generally a little scared of the fathers, and I was not scared of Aaron’s dad, so they meant a lot to me and I was glad for the association.

I loved his family, but I was not so keen on Aaron. Looking back now it seems clear to me that he did not respect me, and that I sensed this and was extra bratty around him. Now, I have a strong brat side, so I guess I could have been bratty first, and that started his dislike, but I really think he started it, and then there was this cycle where we were never overtly hostile but we weren’t exactly cordial either.

He would probably have remained a minor figure in my life, but I became friends with his girlfriend, Becky. They were both a year older than me, but they kept going steady after graduation. My senior year in high school was Aaron’s first year in college, and the separation was hard on them. Eugene is really only a hundred miles away, and I know she did visit him at least often enough for her to make friends with some of his teammates, but it did create a strain.

I only really knew about the strain because of another unhealthy pattern, but it was only a pattern for this particular circumstance, and I never repeated it with anyone else. I think it usually happened on Sunday nights, but maybe it was on different days of the week. It just seemed like every time I called Becky and we would start talking, she would suddenly start crying because she’d had a fight with Aaron. I would talk her through it, and then I would call Aaron and talk to him, and they would talk to each other and make up until the next time.

Couples who cannot stay together without a third party negotiating peace talks, should probably break up, but she would sound so sad and I like helping people, so I did this, more than once. The talks with Aaron were never exactly fun, but I guess it did bond us some, and I lost the hostility, at least temporarily.

Back to the prom. Kevin and I went to the dance alone, but for dinner we went with Aaron, Becky, Aaron’s roommate Darren, and a mutual friend of Becky and I, Tammy. They walked around the waterfront while Kevin and I were at the dance.

I had reservations at one place for us, but Becky wanted to go somewhere else instead. We tried going there, and they were packed so we needed to go off to a third location, which was nobody’s first choice. Maybe I should have just held firm, because it was my promo—they had all already had theirs, but I was lucky to have a date, and I caved easier then. It did not ruin the evening, but it was irritating, and the next time we were together I made some crack about all the driving around.

Somehow I hit a nerve. I don’t know if the others had bugged her afterwards, or if she was just having a bad day, but she said something about me just wanting to go out with a basketball player. Honestly, I don’t remember the exact words, but I can still bring up the exact mental image of the place we were standing and the look on her face. She had hit a nerve too.

Maybe she just felt that I was being immature and shallow, but what I felt like was that she was kicking that inner part of myself that was not okay with never having boys like me, or ask me out, where I did need to have someone fix me up for senior prom, and having someone with actual popularity set me up on a blind date was the best I could do. It hurt.

If we were still at school together, or if it had even been in the days of e-mail, we would probably have made up. As it was, it was really easy to just not talk to her again, and lose touch completely. I wasn’t going to hear news of her through Aaron, because shortly after that they broke up, as they probably would have done months ago without me interfering. They were probably both better off that way.

So, I worked through summer and fall, went off to school for winter and spring term. Somewhere in here, Aaron left on his mission, and we wrote to each other. Somewhere in there, I also cut ties with Mike, and maybe I just can’t go without having someone in my heart, and distant ones are always appealing, so I just started to like Aaron. Not only did I like him, I really thought we would end up together. We had the schools in common, and religion, and basketball, and then I would have his really cool family too.

It was perfectly logical, and perfectly wrong, in that not only were we not attracted to each other, we didn’t really like each other even as friends. I had just forgotten all of that when we were connected through Becky, and we hadn’t spent any significant time together since then to remember.

So, this is not a great romantic story, but it also is probably not really a justification for the raspberry I am blowing in the title. That only makes sense in light of things that occurred later, and those only make sense if we talk about Mitch (formerly Gerard.)