When I was in high school I had a friend I hung out with all the time. I don’t know that we were best friends, honestly, because I was closer with other friends I didn’t go to school with. But, during school hours at least, we ran tight. So, let’s say we were best school friends. BSFs. This is the generation of text speak. He was dating this really, ridiculously nice girl. Most people like to think they’re nice, but this girl was nice enough it drowned out other qualities that were otherwise remarkable, like the bump on her lip that looked like oral herpes. Or her Mormon faith. Or the fact that she was attractive, in a nice girl way. So, all of this made it a bit weird that they were dating. My BSF was a lot of things, including smart and hot, but nice really wasn’t one of them. Neither was straight, but that’s neither here nor there.
After dating for awhile he became an expert in Mormon dates. High on the romance, low on the sexing. I think he got a little full of himself. One day he told me he was going to write a book on successful dating. We were 16 or 17. He said he had lots of good date ideas and knew how to make dating work. I thought it was a little presumptuous of him. Shouldn’t the book be about successful dating in high school, subtitle, Mormon style? That’d be more accurate to experience. Let’s not extrapolate this stuff too far.
But, I was a nice friend, so I encouraged him. He didn’t write the book. I think most people who avow to write a book in high school don’t see it through. The point, for me, though, was that we shouldn’t get too far ahead of ourselves. We can’t speak too authoritatively. Joseph Campbell, during one of his interviews with Bill Moyers, remarked that anyone speaking on love with any sense of authority was a fool. I’m with Joe.
Transgenderingeds 