You'll find out just who was your friend

Only if you're looking will it find you
‘Cause true love is searching too
But how can it recognize you
Unless you step out into the light?
--- Daniel Johnston, "True Love Will Find You In the End"

An Indian family toured the school today. The toddler son, a very small child, wore a tiny little silver bracelet. When I mentioned to the mother that I saw they were Sikhs from the bracelet, she was very pleased and we talked about Sikhism and India for a while. I've mentioned before that I greatly admire Sikhs as a people, if I may make a racist (though positive) generalization.

Speaking of work, there seem to be a lot of new faces popping up on the employee lists, and I don't know who they are or what they do. That is a testament to my antisocial nature, as the place only have four rooms and ten teachers total. I keep to myself a lot. With Perpetually Negative Co-Teacher on vacation, again, I have been sharing the two preschool rooms with Ms. L, a woman of some indeterminate Near Asian background. (I did ask her "Where are you from?", but although she speaks accented English absolutely fluently, she must have misunderstood, because she started telling me about her last place of work rather than her country of origin.)

One of the newer baby room teachers has been flirting with me rather heavily, but as I find this woman about as attractive as a beach ball, I've been downplaying it a bit. This, combined with this occurence regarding a State School classmate, should convince anyone that I am a dirty hypocrite underserving of affection, as I hope women I find attractive will look past my ridiculous and loathsome exterior to the warm kind intelligent funny loyal (and humble) interior beneath, but I seem unwilling to do the same much to them. (Though I have in the past.)

Actually, though (to my genuine surprise) these pages seem to record several instances of various girls flirting with me, I really am quite a naif when it comes to these things. When Waitress W told me with great seriousness as we drank together that she "really liked" me, was I supposed to say "I really like you, too --- let's go out?" (What I ended up saying, I think, was something like "Thanks.") When MA and I slept precariously on her narrow couch together and she took off her shirt (and this happened more than a few times), was I supposed to take that as an invitation to, uh, "make a move?" Or what? I'm kind of a square. Too late now!

Co-worker H, a rather air-headed 20-year-old still in college and not in any way a person of culture or intellect, is quitting to work as an aide in public school while she finishes her teaching program. This is yet another reminder of the gulf between the work I'm doing and the more respectable public education field. I'm renumerated extremely well compared to most in my position, but the fact that I'm in that position at all is several strikes against me as a man worthy of respect.

Eh, respect's overrated.