I said wine, not whine!

Being the kind of person I am, i.e. someone who appears to take a genuine interest in the wellbeing of those around me (I sometimes wonder how much of this is true and how much is affectation), certain students tend to latch onto me.

There is a girl, a small Asian girl, who sings in the choir and is doing a double major in classics and something else (she’s told me, but for some reason nothing she says sticks), who has adopted me as an aunt of sorts. I don’t mind too much, she’s mostly harmless; but she’s incredibly annoying. My friend Ed calls her the E.A. (this is the clarinetist whom I taught singing to last year) of the classics department. Even one of her profs called her “special” (in Quebec, special means something different than what you would think).

So, because I am a nice person, I agreed to meet this girl for pho at the Captain today, and we spent an hour or so in each other’s company, she complaining about her family life and lack of insight into what she would do in the future, me offering sympathetic comments and sometimes helpful suggestions which she managed to douse with non-enthusiasm, and I kept looking at my watch, trying to think of a way to escape.

Why do I do this? As we parted, she said that we must get together again before she’s off for the summer, and I made some non-commital comment like, “We’ll have to check into that.” I’m not really a nice person, you know. At least, at times like this I don’t feel particularly nice.

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