Thursday, November 20, 2008

I'm Sorry, I'm Busy . . . Washing My Hair, Yeah. That's It.

"The first guy that pays any attention to me in years and he turns out to be the mad stalking elf." - Dawn, Waitress

I can definitely relate to this quote. My dating life in high school was rather lacking, and it didn't pick up too much in college, either. Except in college, suddenly there were also a few, very occasional, creepy guys making passes at me, which was new. Given that, is it any surprise when I get really excited when a cute and normal guy acts interested?

Anyway, due to the large difference in the number of women and men in Iraq, the Soldiers have this phenonmenon they like to refer to as "Queen of the Year." Basically, women that would normally be considered average suddenly become a lot more attractive to the men around them and have lots and lots of options.

As an officer, this doesn't really affect me too much. A large percentage of the military is enlisted, and most of them know that fraternization is bad, and officers are therefore off limits. However, even within the officer world, there's many more men than women. Despite the numbers being in my favor, there was still only one other lieutenant that expressed an interest in me, and he, too, was "a mad, stalking elf." Well, not really, but definitely marched to his own beat. On drums that he probably made himself from animals that he killed with the bullets that he cased himself (casing bullets - now there's a fun conversation).

As far as I was concerned, I had no interest in the guy, but I occasionally got bored and didn't have that many people to socialize with so whenever he asked if I wanted to meet for coffee, I'd say yes. I never turn down a chance to go to Green Bean and get a White Chocolate Mocha Frappe. The first time I actually talked to the guy, we had an okay conversation; somehow after that, I just ended up sitting there bored out of my mind while he just went on from one topic to another. Usually I would have little to say, I didn't understand his segues at all, and whenever I did have something to add to the conversation, by the time he paused five minutes later, he would have moved on to the next topic and my comment would be completely random and out there. When he was the one who was random and out there.

A few people teased me and kept saying I had dates. I kept arguing that it wasn't a date, we were just meeting. Pivo was incredibly amused by the whole situation and just laughed at me, but warned me to watch out because in that guy's mind I was probably his girlfriend already.

Our last day on our FOB, a lot of us threw out all our pillows and extra blankets/sheets into the dumpster to travel as lightly as possible - we later caught another unit going through the trash, taking stuff to use for themselves, including our old pillows. It's one thing to dig something plastic out of a container that can be bleached and scrubbed but a pillow? We were joking around about it and one of my squad leaders, who is generally a very quiet and appropriate guy, great NCO, said, "well, we all know who took LT K's pillow." This NCO and Pivo had actually had an opportunity to run into the "stalker" the previous week, and after spending some time with the guy, had the reaction of "oh my god, is this guy for real?"

As I said, he was nice. But incredibly odd. And just completely oblivious and unaware. In a way, it was still pretty amusing - at least, he wasn't creepy like some of the freaks that hit on me in college. Just weird (and he wasn't actually a stalker, he just came on a little strong).

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