This long post is worth the read if you like hearing about me in strange and awkward situations.

I’ll start with the strange situation, which isn’t as interesting as the awkward one, but I thought it was kind of funny… and sad. I didn’t get any sleep on Tuesday night because I was working on homework (one of the assignments, I later found out, wasn’t even due the next day). At one point in Drawing II the day after the night I had no sleep, I was standing up along with the rest of the class listening to our teacher talk. I began nodding off while standing up, and actually fell asleep. Well, I WOULD have fallen asleep, but you know that thing, when you’re about to sleep but you get that falling sensation then your body jumps? Yeah, that happened to me, except instead of just a falling sensation, I was actually falling. I jumped and startled a few people, understandably. It was kind of embarrassing. In 2D Design, I fell asleep while supporting my face with my hand until the teacher saw that my eyes were closed and woke me up. The students sitting around me were impressed, because I guess I looked like I was awake. That night I tried staying up again because I had an assignment due in Art History (I couldn’t do it the day before because I was at school all day, until 9:30). I decided rest was a good idea when I started hallucinating on my paper and making marks with my pencil that didn’t make any sense.

Ok, now for the “awkward” section of this post. There is a really creepy guy in my 2D Design class. I’ve been having nightmares about him; that’s how much the guy bugs me. He does something worth telling a story about every day I go in there. I’m going to start with day 2, since that’s the first time I noticed him. He must have been at the other end of the room the first day or something. Anyway, on with the awkward:

Day 2: Creepy guy. Staring at me. I didn’t even have to look to know he was doing it, I could FEEL his eyes. Guhh. I couldn’t look in his direction, because we’d make eye contact, since he was already staring at me. But of course, it happened, and when it did, he did that thing where you squint your eyes and shake your finger at someone as you say something like, “I remember you from somewhere,” or, “you look like the kind of person who would be into (insert band/show/activity)”… something like that. Whenever I made eye contact though, I would immediately look away, and only saw him doing this out of the corner of my eye. Since I wasn’t looking at him though, I pretended not to notice and looked away further, and he didn’t say anything. This exact thing happened twice within a couple minutes.

Day 3: The guy decided to sit directly across from my table on this day, and has been sitting there every day since. This is bad, because I can’t ever look up, because since he’s almost always looking at me, I would make eye contact. Makes it kind of hard to watch the teacher’s power point presentations. I have never made so much accidental eye contact in my life; I don’t know how it happens. I guess if I just look in his direction, my eyes go to him because.. well, it’s a human face and it is turned in my direction. My eyes will just go to it. I don’t know about you, but eye contact is a pretty personal thing to me, and it gives me the creeps every time it happens with this guy.

Anyway, class was ending and the guy walked up to me and said something that didn’t make any sense. “Where.. about… are you?” or something like that. “What?” I said. “Are you asking me where I live?? Why are you asking me that??” He went on to say “Or phone number or screen name..” and trailed off. I said “Why?” to which he replied, “In case you need help with homework.” This is the point when my teacher saved me. She walked up to him and said, “Oh, you like helping people? How wonderful! You should ask about being a tutor here!” As he babbled about how he only likes helping people to a certain point, I scrambled on out of there.

Day 4: I was talking to the girl and guy who sit on either side of me in class about Miyazaki films. The guy sitting next to me talked about how he thinks Miyazaki has a foot fetish because of how much emphasis there is on feet in the animation. He expressed his disgust with foot fetishes, at which point, creepy guy goes, “Well in that case, I guess I shouldn’t talk about it, since… I am guilty of…” he trailed off and no one said anything about it. I think we all tried to pretend creepy guy did not just tell us he has a foot fetish.

Day 5: Creepy Guy told the guy next to me, “You need to take that thing off.” “What thing?” guy sitting next to me said. “Your patch,” said Creepy Guy. “You need to take it off. It reminds me of this song that I hate.” The guy sitting next to me was wearing a banana patch on his jacket. He looked at it and said, “What, you mean Banana Phone?” Creepy guy grunted loudly and said, “No! Don’t even say the name of it! I hate it so much. There’s this cartoon online…” For those of you who don’t know, there’s a flash animation of a guy who gets Banana Phone stuck in his head. It’s pretty funny, it’s on Newgrounds, and I’m pretty sure it’s the reason the song got so popular all of a sudden. So, he hates the song because a guy in a flash animation hates it, and that is the only reason. I think that’s kind of funny, but I thought he was going to kill that guy for wearing a damn patch. Kind of scary.

Day 6: I think I almost made him cry. Creepy Guy was talking about Gold Digger, one of his favorite comics, and I said, “I met the guy who made that.” It’s true, I met him when I was at Anime Weekend Atlanta. Creepy Guy was awe-struck and said “Oh my god, I hate you,” and started describing him. “He’s.. a big…” I interrupted and said, “Black guy? Yeah, I met him.” He buried his face in his arm, which was on the table, and started beating the desk with his fist. It was frightening. Funny thing is, I’ve never even read the comic, I’ve only met the guy who made it.

What was even more frightening than his reaction to my meeting Gold Digger guy was when the teacher made us take our head phones off, which I think was the same day.. I can’t remember. Anyway, the teacher had us take off our headphones, which I didn’t think was a big deal since she told us it was against the rules at the very beginning of the semester and it’s written in the syllabus. I thought I could be slick and do it without her noticing, but she caught me, and it was no big deal… but apparently it was a huge deal for him. He got all pouty and slammed the head phones on the desk. She touched his shoulder and said “Cheer up honey,” and he said, “No! Just… don’t touch me.” She walked off somewhere and he was working for a minute or so, and then grumbled “You take away my music, you take away my creativity.” I said “Dude, it IS against the rules, it’s not like she’s being unfair.” Then he said “If she won’t let me listen to my music, she’s going to pay the consequences.” I wonder what consequences he was talking about. Was he going to do a shitty job on his project? Thinking, “That’ll show her”? I don’t know, but at this point, I realized that not only is he creepy and has no social skills, he also has an anger issue.

Day 7: It was the end of class, and he was showing off some jewelry that he made. He asked if I wanted a closer look at it. I don’t even care about jewelry in the first place, but I looked at it and said something like, “I don’t know much about jewelry. All I wear is this necklace.” I held up my amethyst necklace and he asked to see it. My first reaction was to pull it away from him, but then I thought I should just take it off and show him, no harm there. But no, he just took it from me, still attached to my neck. It’s tied pretty tight to my neck, so his hand was in my face. I could smell it, and it smelled bad. Really bad. I tried holding my breath and looking away and making the most obvious “I don’t want your freaking hand in my face!” faces. He just kept holding it for-goddamn-ever, saying stuff like, “If I had a gem like this I could do something really cool with it.” It was so, sooo awkward. I really hope nothing he does in the future tops it.