Ron, mapped?
I've
mentioned Ron at least a couple times in the course of the
Time-Traveling series. He was clueless in so many ways. One
afternoon near the end of the spring semester, Ron, Janice, and I were
sitting around the dorm room Ron and I shared talking about what we
were looking forward to doing over the summer.
Janice was an English lit major. "I can't wait to have some time
to get caught up on all the classics I want to read," she said
enthusiastically.
I had just gotten my first "real" electric guitar a couple months
earlier. "I can't wait to get around to learning to play a bunch
of new songs," I added.
Ron was a social retard and probably an undiagnosed Aspergers
case. "I can't wait to read some maps," Ron said, almost deadpan.
Janice and I looked at one another. It was difficult to tell if
maybe he was joking. His delivery was as dry as a Stephen Wright
one-liner, but we both knew Ron was incapable of humor.
He realized we didn't think he was serious or were at least confused,
so he gestured to the large map of Louisiana on the wall behind him as
though this was an explanation. Yes, Ron had a giant topographic
map of our state where any other male college student's dorm room would
typically feature movie posters and pictures of rock stars torn
from Rolling Stone.
And yet this was a guy who didn't travel, who was uninterested and
unschooled in politics or geology. He didn't even seem especially
interested in cartography. In fact, he seemed uninterested in
pretty much everything social.
Copyright
2009
Alexplorer.
