4:40 p.m. 04 April 2002
Today, as I was walking up the stairs to the library, I passed a whole crowd of schoolkids here on a field trip. I think they must have been in eighth grade. They were half grown-up looking, but so very small. None of them had sprouted to that thickening-up getting to adult stage yet. And they had chaperones, and were walking in the buddy system. So it must have been middle school.
As you walk up, you can see into the windows of all the floors of Clemons library, because it's built on a hill, and the stairs go up the hill on the side of the building. Outside the third floor, one of the girls called out, in that girl-with-girls-in-school way, "Hey, do any of you cute boys in there want to go out with me?" And then giggled uncontrollably, saying to her friend "Oh, I think he heard me, Megan!" They must have seen a boy earlier, perhaps while touring the library or something and decided he was a "hottie." (So like my sister's friends at that age!)
It was so incredibly adolescent-girl. Almost archetypally so. They were all very good-looking, these kids. As I came up the top of the stairs, one was carrying another on her back -- both girls -- and they stopped to talk to a handsome student (one of ours, not one of theirs) who was just going into the library. He must have asked where they were from, because they replied "California! Southern!" One of the girls, not one of the piggybacking pair, giggled and said "I go to the University of California San Diego!" The other girls laughed loudly together and one cried "Katie!" And she pressed her arms in around her sides and said, grinning, "Well, not really, but my brother's going next year." They thought he was cute, obviously.
As I walked into the library, I thought about that. About how girl it is, this way of behaving. The way they look -- we look, I suppose, though we do it differently now that we're all grown up and no longer middle-schoolers -- at boys they find attractive. This wide-open smilling. The twisting of the body upwards even if he's not much taller than her, or isn't at all. The turn of the head just a little to the side as she glances up every now and then at his face, but never for too long. The way, sometimes, a girl will just seem to come alive when she looks at a boy she thinks is cute and starts flirting with him. Even if she isn't actively flirting. Even if she doesn't like him that much. The way she will have been sitting still, concentrating on something, not seeming like anything in particular, and then, approached by a boy she likes, she looks up and suddenly she's shining. She's light in motion, activity and charm and beauty. She's irrisistable. She's blooming. She's so vibrantly alive, so dartingly, charismatically her. She's opened up like a flower or a sunbeam. She's dazzling.
It's learned behavior, of course. I'm not saying it's some sort of natural reaction or that it isn't studied and conscious. Of course it is -- that's the point. And it can be damned annoying sometimes too. But still, it's so . . .amazing. So girl.
And sometimes, when I see it happen. When maybe I will have been talking to a girl or looking at her, and a boy she likes or is attracted to comes over and she just changes, no matter how charming or fun she's been before, I wonder. What is it like to evoke that? What is it like to be the recipient of such dazzlingness? To call out the sunlight in someone? Men aren't the same when they're talking to women they find attractive, though of course they're plenty capable of flirting and even being coquettish. But, of course, they do it like men. In their own way. And it's different. And I wonder, sometimes, what it feels like when girls look at them that way. Does it amaze them as much as it amazes me?
Today, as I was walking up the stairs to the library, I passed a whole crowd of schoolkids here on a field trip. I think they must have been in eighth grade. They were half grown-up looking, but so very small. None of them had sprouted to that thickening-up getting to adult stage yet. And they had chaperones, and were walking in the buddy system. So it must have been middle school.
As you walk up, you can see into the windows of all the floors of Clemons library, because it's built on a hill, and the stairs go up the hill on the side of the building. Outside the third floor, one of the girls called out, in that girl-with-girls-in-school way, "Hey, do any of you cute boys in there want to go out with me?" And then giggled uncontrollably, saying to her friend "Oh, I think he heard me, Megan!" They must have seen a boy earlier, perhaps while touring the library or something and decided he was a "hottie." (So like my sister's friends at that age!)
It was so incredibly adolescent-girl. Almost archetypally so. They were all very good-looking, these kids. As I came up the top of the stairs, one was carrying another on her back -- both girls -- and they stopped to talk to a handsome student (one of ours, not one of theirs) who was just going into the library. He must have asked where they were from, because they replied "California! Southern!" One of the girls, not one of the piggybacking pair, giggled and said "I go to the University of California San Diego!" The other girls laughed loudly together and one cried "Katie!" And she pressed her arms in around her sides and said, grinning, "Well, not really, but my brother's going next year." They thought he was cute, obviously.
As I walked into the library, I thought about that. About how girl it is, this way of behaving. The way they look -- we look, I suppose, though we do it differently now that we're all grown up and no longer middle-schoolers -- at boys they find attractive. This wide-open smilling. The twisting of the body upwards even if he's not much taller than her, or isn't at all. The turn of the head just a little to the side as she glances up every now and then at his face, but never for too long. The way, sometimes, a girl will just seem to come alive when she looks at a boy she thinks is cute and starts flirting with him. Even if she isn't actively flirting. Even if she doesn't like him that much. The way she will have been sitting still, concentrating on something, not seeming like anything in particular, and then, approached by a boy she likes, she looks up and suddenly she's shining. She's light in motion, activity and charm and beauty. She's irrisistable. She's blooming. She's so vibrantly alive, so dartingly, charismatically her. She's opened up like a flower or a sunbeam. She's dazzling.
It's learned behavior, of course. I'm not saying it's some sort of natural reaction or that it isn't studied and conscious. Of course it is -- that's the point. And it can be damned annoying sometimes too. But still, it's so . . .amazing. So girl.
And sometimes, when I see it happen. When maybe I will have been talking to a girl or looking at her, and a boy she likes or is attracted to comes over and she just changes, no matter how charming or fun she's been before, I wonder. What is it like to evoke that? What is it like to be the recipient of such dazzlingness? To call out the sunlight in someone? Men aren't the same when they're talking to women they find attractive, though of course they're plenty capable of flirting and even being coquettish. But, of course, they do it like men. In their own way. And it's different. And I wonder, sometimes, what it feels like when girls look at them that way. Does it amaze them as much as it amazes me?
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