Destiny Lumbers By

It was a beautiful, warm day in March 2003, the birds were singing, the snow was melting, and I was incredibly, incredibly ticked off at my dad.

The reason for the argument has long been lost in the mists of time, but I'll always remember what I did next. I was so angry that I stormed out of the house (on a day I had class!), marched down the driveway (on a day I had class!), and proceeded to take a walk to cool off (on a day I had class!). Since I was just that upset, I didn't regain a semblance of happiness until I had walked for a long time. Four hours and fourteen miles, in fact. And I totally ditched class.

Back at home that night, angrily performing madd Zerg rushes in Starcraft, I reflected on my choices for the day. I didn't regret storming off and taking a (long) walk, even though I had counted fourteen, yes, fourteen unfortunate very dead and very squashed former squirrels along all those rural roads, but I was feeling very guilty about having missed class. What if I missed some crucial information? What if the TA had finally explained our most recent really vague assignment? Yikes. Seriously, yikes.

The snarls of the Swarm interrupted my crisis of consciousness.

We require more Overlords!

Yeah yeah, OK, fine, I grumbled to myself, clicking furiously. Here are your Overlords. But screw you for interrupting my thought process. Look, I'm going to save now and exit the game! Ha, how does that make you feel now?

Finally free from my obligations as the leader of the Swarm, I got on to the class website and typed out a desperate email.

Hi, everyone. I was not in class today and was wondering what I missed. Did anyone take any notes they could send my way? Thanks in advance. Grace.

I sent the email. Then I decided I had punished the Swarm long enough, and fired up Starcraft once again.

An hour later, I checked for a response. Well, that was quick. I had received an email already.

Sure, I type up my notes from every class. This is what I have. Enjoy! Dan Huang.

Being a supernerd, I could smell another supernerd from a mile away. Dude, he typed up his notes. Which meant he actually took notes. And nobody in the class brought a laptop, so he must have retyped his notes after class. Wow. Even I wasn't that bad.

Now I was curious. Who was this guy? Why hadn't I previously detected his presence in the classroom?

Well, begin the sleuthing process!

I thought back to the most recent class. Huang was an Asian name, I knew that. I remembered that there were three Asians in the class.

Well, one wore a frat shirt with random Greek letters emblazoned on the front every session. Nope, couldn't be him.

Another one of the Asian kids was incredibly hot. Yeah, that was definitely not the mysterious Huang.

That left but one Asian. That would be the fat guy who wore the fisherman's hat and T-shirts in terrifying neon colors to class. Yes, it had to be him. That was Dan Huang. No self-respecting normal person would ever walk around with corny math puns on his clothing.

Really, I thought. I must study this Dan Huang in greater detail next Monday.

So the days went by, all five of them. Monday dawned, and destiny would soon make an appearance right before my (rather confused) eyes.

I got to class early that day. I wasn't really that into the class, and I wasn't really that into stealing furtive glances at the other supernerd in the room (really, I swear!), but I was the commuter who hitched a ride with her employee father every day to school, and frankly, I had nothing else to do at 11:45 on a Monday morning. I'd usually get a seat about ten minutes before anyone else showed up and read the textbook to get anything I had previously missed.

But was I really alone in the room?

A fuzzy memory from the dark recesses of my cranium pushed forward into my thoughts. I started.

Oh no! For six weeks I'd been sitting there in the classroom, reading about the role of women in the French revolution with my mouth hanging open and catching flies, and there was somebody else in the room!

And if it wasn't that Dan Huang, I remembered. I was just so into feminist symbolism that I had just failed to notice the other supernerd in the room who apparently also came to class early every week.

Well, I decided, today I would only pretend to read my historical documents. But I would really be watching what a Huang did in the wild.

On cue, my possible nerdy soulmate lumbered into the classroom.

In this sense, lumbered does not perform a purely descriptive, verbtastic role in my kinda-grammatically-correct sentence. He actually did lumber. First of all, there was a lot of supernerd chunkiness clinging to one particular supernerd. Also, when he walked, his head kind of tipped to one side, and he hung his backpack on the same side, so he looked like he was just falling over on the one side all the time.

So lumber he did. He lumbered into the classroom, through the classroom, and out of the classroom door on the other side of the room.

Hmmmm. Was he coming in or not?

I guess he was.

Having left the classroom only moments before, Dan lumbered in once again through the opposite door. He lumbered through the classroom and lumbered out the other door.

Ummm. This was weird.

Soon enough, the lumbering cycle began again. He lumbered in. He lumbered through. He lumbered out. Wash and repeat.

But right in the middle of the sixth lumbering cycle, just when I was considering lumbering out myself towards a safe place until class began, he stopped. I glanced up, but I also moved my book up too, so it would look like I wasn't actually looking, because I was smart like that. But now I couldn't see because the book was blocking my view. Crap.

He spoke.

"Hi."

I spoke.

"Hi."

He lumbered about two feet towards the door. Was the cycle beginning again? Nope. Again, he stopped.

"I think I might have sent my class notes to you last week."

"Oh, was that you?" I lied, shamelessly. "I was wondering who that was."

"Did they help?"

"Yes, they did, thanks. They actually really helped me understand the rationale for the Revolution, actually." Crud, I actually said actually twice. Dang, I just thought actually twice. OK, Grace, focus.

"Well," he responded, "I'm glad they helped."

"They did, thanks." Man, was I awkward.

He lumbered three feet in the other direction. So he had a net lumbering quotient of negative one.

"And your name was Grace, right?"

"Yeah. You're Dan, right?"

"Yeah."

Awkward silence.

More awkward silence.

But then, Hott Asian was there to save the day. He sauntered in with a pencil (but no notebook?), sat down on the far side of the room, stared into space, and proceeded to ignore the growing awkwardness. It was a lot easier to be less awkward if somebody else was also being less awkward.

Dan lumbered forward, towards the seat in front of mine.

"I think I'm going to sit here today. I can see the professor better from over here."

"Yeah," I awkwardized, "It really is a good view. You can hear the professor pretty well too."

"Really? Good."

"Glad you think that."

"And also," he said, "Maybe we can share notes. I'll bet your notes are pretty good."

I blushed. He thought my notes were probably pretty good!

"Well, I know your notes are pretty good!"

He smiled. Despite his girth and his Top Ten Reasons To Be A Statistics Major neon green shirt, he had the nicest smile I had ever seen.

I smiled back.

We sat next to each other during class.

And then the next.

And then the next.

And then the rest of the semester.

And then the exam.

And then we emailed each other over the summer.

And then we ate lunch together on the first day back.

And then we sat next to each other in another class we were taking together.

And then he decided to be creepy and wait for me after another class that I took.

And then I decided to be creepy and totally stalk him in the library.

But that's a story for another time.