Atmospheres and Flirting

Everyone should learn how to read situations and atmospheres. By no means am I a professional when it comes to this, but I still have a somewhat decent understanding of it. Enough, at least, to realize the obvious.

I spent the majority of yesterday and today in the initial phases of jury duty. I took a novel off my bookshelf that my sister left there in hopes that I could kill time with some reading. Eighteen pages into the novel and my eyes refused to read another word. A scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of a vanilla sundae. As boring as it gets. A boring novel waiting for my name to be called for jury duty. I spent the rest of the time people watching and napping.

Eventually we got separated into groups for interviews with the defense attorney and prosecutor. This took 3 hours of yesterday and all of today. Anyways, I ended up talking to two asian guys my age because...well, we're asian and about the same age. They talked to me first for the record. Onto reading atmospheres. One of said asian guys talked to me, a lot. (I'll name him Asian Guy #1 in this post) Probably because he's seen me before somewhere and uses that as a premise for knowing me. Besides being a ridiculously messy eater (the guy dropped every sesame seed off the bun and half the lettuce off of his burger during lunch break) and having a rather weird sense of humor, I supposed I didn't mind talking to him.

But I spotted a cute girl in our group and she was sitting alone during breaks. We exchanged several glances in and out of the courtroom. Harmless flirting. Outside of jury duty, I'll probably never see her again. So as Asian Guy #1 kept talking, I inched little by little away from him and towards her. As soon as he averted his attention somewhere else, I escaped him and proceeded to talk to said girl. I honestly wasn't hoping for any type of relationship with her, but I did want to talk to her. In comes Asian Guy #1 not even 10 seconds into our conversation.

Really, dude? Really?

Atmosphere ruined. Well, the atmosphere I was trying to build up anyways. Asian Guy #2 was much more understanding and struck up a conversation with an elderly woman nearby instead.

Props to you, Asian Guy #2.

Pretentious Girl and Lovable Man

I tend to be a very bad initial judge of character.

On the first day of my acting class, there was one girl who always raised her hand for every question and answered with a solemn face. She was an acting major in a class for non-majors. I automatically assumed she was a pretentious know-it-all who was in the class to be better than everyone else. I soon found out that this girl would smile at everything and encourage everyone to be better. She just has that solemn, cool and collective face when answering questions.

I saw a man sitting by himself at a bus stop once. Everyone else waiting for the bus waited outside of the little shelter. The man looked like a bum, but looked like a nice man. I sat next to him at the shelter and he immediately asked me for change. I politely told him I had none. He then asked me for a cigarette, to which I also said I didn't have. He then apologized and proceeded to mutter something every time someone walked by. It was usually a quiet holler at every female that walked by or a derogatory remark to every guy. In short, this man was an asshole.

When I first see someone, it's like I'm given a multiple choice of their personality and I always get it wrong. Good thing I always get second and third chances to reevaluate people I actually want to continue talking to.