In the right tail the pretty boys pursued the pretty girls, unsurprisingly the most popular girls, and in the left tail the unattractive high schoolers, variously talented to be fair, were terminally unpopular. That left around 70% of the student body in the pulchritudinous middle. A bulge +/- one standard deviation wide. An unexceptional cohort by every measure except their number
As one in the middle sometimes did, Russ would occasionally venture into the right tail and inquire of one of the pretty girls if she thought he might join her in the tail, or words to that effect. Such an entreaty was known as punching above your weight class, and a middling boy would know to expect some punch back from the competitive pretty boys. Regardless of his place in the distribution, every high school boy would eventually come to intuit which girls were in his league and which weren’t. Russ, however, was a slow learner, statistically speaking
He sat directly behind her in Mr. Tangel’s geometry class. He’d lean way back and slide forward in his desk chair enough that he could spy the lower half of her olive bare legs, the two-toned tan and crimson leather shoes with navy stitching, the two-inch stacked heel. High-class, pageant level sexy. And that taught and shapely cheerleader’s calf muscle, it was an isosceles triangle, rigid, hypnotic. Mr. Tangel threw the chalk at Russ busting him out of his reverie then barked at him to pay attention and the class turned to see and sneered at him and to this day he can still see triangles. Where consumption of the flesh was a sin surely mere window shopping wasn’t, was how Russ kept his conscience quiet, this was after all a religious high school and Russ and Jill being same-age minors, had she welcomed him into her tail and together they came to closure, and got caught, they may both wind up in jail, though not in the same cell, so no happy ending for Russ and Jill. Interfering thoughts like this arose in Russ’ mind unbidden all the time. He was a bit surprised he came away with a B+
Sometimes, after our ablutions, but before leaving for the restaurant we will step outside to enjoy an aperitif together. The still and quiet of an early summer evening, you can hear the Kingfishers whistle down by the pond. It’s become my favorite thirty minutes of leisure in the day
Carpe diem. The future is unknown