Paper Gangsta (An Interesting Conundrum)

Yet again with people contacting me!

This time, the person in question was that of my old swimming teammate, Owen. We met sophomore year on the swim team, and had a few classes (German only) together until May 2005. The following year, he completely changed tracks and headed to McCallie, a boarding/military school. He has always wanted to be in some branch of the military.

He chose the Navy.

I hadn't thought too much about him (except for the occasional memory that would randomly pop up). I was somewhat distracted when we were in close quarters during high school, and got irritated with everything at the drop of a hat. I was mentally drained from mom's illness, and then there was the happy distraction of my boyfriend at the time. I never even looked much in his direction. He was more of an irritation to me in the sense that he would "tug at my pigtails" because of my refusal to acknowledge his presence. He was "the hottest guy on the team" but I had no interest. The fact that he irritated me was enough for me to keep ignoring him, which made him try harder....with zest.

The other day, I realized I never read anything in my yearbooks that my mom bought me. While perusing through signatures and the traditional "have a good summers", I come across Owen's familiar scrawl in my 2005 edition of The Paragon.

He had gone to prom with me and my boyfriend as my friend Megan's date. The humiliating events of that night came flooding back to me in living color as I read what he had to say.

"Kristen,
Prom war so spass (I cringed here and edited this after reading; I'm somewhat of a grammar Nazi in German). Really, you looked great and I had a great time. Erik is a neat guy, so good choice anyway.
Bye,
OK"

This message seriously left me going, "WHAT. THE. HELL." So I asked my friend Matt, who I later found out knows Owen, about his thoughts on the matter. He seems to think that Owen might have had some sort of crush on me back in the day....which gave me a conflicted feeling. If this were true, how could I not have seen this?

I then showed him my message I had written Owen on Facebook, and also Owen's reply. I am supposed to be in Florida about an hour and a half away from the Naval base where he is in May (for a bachelorette party for my friend Susan, but also to visit mine and my sister's grandmother) and wanted to know whether or not Owen would be interested in meeting me at all for lunch one day in order to catch up on things.

His reply? "Sure! That would be great! Pensacola is fun."

Matt reiterates, "Yeah, he has a thing for you. He knows how that was going to be read. There's no way in hell he would be so enthusiastic if he didn't, or if you were just a friend."

So I'm confused now.

Stupid boys.