Sometimes persistence can be a VERY bad thing...

Oh boy. Where to start.

~a little background information for the unaware~: Last summer, when working out at the YMCA, I had a very interesting and uncomfortable encounter. To make a painfully long story short, a guy with whom I had never before had even the smallest conversation, asked three painfully-awkward questions:

1) How old are you? (that's right, he started with that one.. not..."how's it goin?" or, maybe "what's your name?"
2) What's your name? "I'm ----" -->(for the purpose of this post we will call him Bob. Bob the Stalker, if you will.)
and 3) Do you think we could hang out sometime?

all in the span of about a minute. Slow mover, I think not.

my thoughts: WHAT? I don't even know you. We are not friends. We have never been friends. You have never spoken a single word to me, EVER.

Needless to say, it was awkward. And it led to a couple other awkward encounters of such persistence, later that summer, which could be two or three posts of their own.

but this summer: today, in fact, I saw Bob again. He happens to attend the community college mentioned in this post. Grand. Just Dandy.

I saw him a couple of times around campus and quickly ducked into the trailer or behind a sign, in hopes he wouldn't see that it was me.

Well, my efforts were fruitless. He came up to my booth today, so obviously NOT there to buy something (which he didn't even do). We talked for a few minutes, which consisted of him asking me several awkward questions:

I remember you, I mean, how could I forget? do you remember me? (Why is it people only remember me when I DON'T want them to?)
do you go to school? (yes, during the year....oh how I wish I was there..)
do you think we could hang out some time? (what I actually said: I don't really know you.)
what do you want to know about me? *standing awkwardly, waiting for an answer* (um....i don't know..let's start with...NOTHING)

and one very uncomfortable admittance of feelings:

I missed seeing you around the gym. I thought I would never see you again (yeah, me too). But I'm glad I did. I still want to see you/hang out with you sometime...

*nauseated feeling in my stomach*

Um. NO. I used the same lame excuse I used ALL last summer:
"I'm working a lot and I don't really have much time."

you know what he said? "That's such a bad answer"

guess what? I DON'T CARE.

he closed with this, the natural conversationalist (NOT):

do you want me to come by again? I mean, I don't want to if you don't want me to; I don't want to be annoying... (what I wanted to say: any person with basic social skills would know that you have passed that point! you are not only annoying, but slightly obnoxious, obsessive and CREEPY! Of COURSE I don't want you to come by!)

what I really said was, "you are welcome to come by and buy something, anytime you want. I'm not going to stop you. But I really don't care if you do or don't."

I just don't GET it. As if it wasn't awkward enough last summer, when he tried to ask me out three times before ever actually carrying on a normal conversation, why would he want to put himself through that AGAIN. It's/I'm NOT worth it!!

And if any of you are thinking, "that poor guy, rejection can be so tough." Stop it. Right now. Yeah, I understand it sucks, and that it's not easy to get the courage up to talk to a girl. But this guy must be a masochist, because I have never once given him the impression that I want him to come talk to me. There are these things called signals, they help us understand if the person is at all interested.

There is this other thing called having-a-normal-conversation-with-a-person-before-you-try-and-ask-them-out. It can work beautifully.