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answers to the weird dating site questions and how much [three painful minutes elapse]
funnier fortune cookie fortunes are if you add “...while I Finally he hit “send” on the novel he had apparently been
watch” to the end of them. composing. The Question had finally come, in the form of
We talked until 6:30 in the morning. And all night again the a very long, obviously nervous, and semi-rambling para-
next day. And the next. graph. The only part that mattered to me was this:
We were both clearly enamored by each other, and I “Would you like to go on a date with me?”
didn’t want our calls or our conversations to end. But my We set our first date for January 23, 2010, when we would
happiness was short-lived, as it was after one of these both be back in school from winter break, and my knee
long calls that he sent the message I’d been dreading: would be all healed up. Otherwise our first date would have
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.” had to be in my kitchen, which didn’t seem a thousand
But—he said—he was too tired now; it would have to wait percent ideal for budding romance. The plan was that Josh
until tomorrow. would take the three-hour train ride from his college, Car-
negie Mellon, in Pittsburgh, to Juniata College in Hunting-
I knew what he wanted to ask me. I’d been waiting for it don, Pennsylvania, and we would… see what happened.
the entire time. Honestly, I was surprised it hadn’t come
sooner. Extra honestly, it had been really fun to not even He set a countdown on his computer and we started
have to address it. counting down the days.
He was finally going to ask me about my disease/disability/ The morning of our date I tried to distract myself with
illness/injury/situation/what have you. He was going to ask, articles and games on the computer—even homework—to
essentially, “So, how disabled are you?” avoid worrying about the impending visit. But it was im-
possible to forget, especially as Josh sent periodic updates
I went to bed that night dreading The Question. I went (“T minus 4 hours!” “At the train station!”) and our count-
through the imaginary conversation in my head twenty down changed from hours to minutes. I changed shirts
different times and twenty different ways. Had I just been three times, settling on one with the pi symbol (sure to woo
kidding myself that this was something a twenty-year-old a computer science/physics double major). I paced around
could look past? the room—mentally. I brushed my hair, which didn’t need
My plan to minimize rejection was not looking so great. brushing.
THE FOLLOWING EVENING Josh: ETA 5 minutes!
Josh has signed on. Josh: I’m wearing a green jacket.
Bethany: So what was it you Sure enough, a couple minutes later I saw a guy wear-
wanted to ask me? ing a green jacket walking up the hill toward my dorm. I
Josh: Oh, yeah… watched him, waiting for him to see me, shifting my weight
back and forth nervously. I saw him look in my direction—
Josh is typing… surely he had seen me—I was standing outside the front
door—but then he looked away and kept walking. Past me
and my building.
My heart dropped. Had he really taken one look at me and
suddenly changed his mind? Was I standing funny? Or just
that ugly?
These were the horrible thoughts running through my head
when I saw a second guy coming up the hill toward me.
He was wearing a green jacket.
It was him.
*You can buy “How Should a Body Be?” at amazon.com.
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