Overqualified by Joey Comeau

Author:Joey Comeau
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: FIC019000, FIC016000
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2009-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

Dear Hallmark,

Mother’s Day is fine, I guess. Except some people have lost their mothers. And some people have lost their fathers. Not everyone has family. You want a holiday with wider appeal. Well, we all have strangers on the edges of our lives. We can all be secret admirers.

Look around the next time you’re at the mall. Or look online. Social networking sites. The Internet is full of people to secretly admire. I went online this morning and fell in love a dozen times.

There’s a girl who makes detailed maps of her neighbourhood and she knows a boy who hates Allen Ginsberg — except for one line that he thinks is perfect. He has crooked eyes and takes all these pictures of balls bouncing. That is his obsession, bouncing rubber balls. He knows a girl who, in every picture, is pulling her shirt up to show off her belly. Every picture. “What’s up? A camera? Yeah yeah. Let me get my belly out.” She looks so happy just to be here. She knows a trashy girl in a tank top, wearing a little too much makeup, who is out drinking with her sorority friends in every picture. This girl has bleached blonde hair and only one interest: Carnival of Souls (1962).

What ever happened to secret admirers? Are they just stalkers now? If you notice someone, if you pay too much attention, that’s weird. All of a sudden you’re that guy who sits on the bench in the mall, right in front of the store where she works, staring inside all day. Or, worse, you’re the guy who keeps going in. The guy with the Orange Julius who keeps saying, “I’m just browsing.”

But I’ve never been able to just walk up to a pretty girl and start talking. My brother used to do that. Charm was his specialty. The closest I can come is writing notes. I write notes to strangers while my girlfriend is at work.

“You have the best laugh I have ever heard. The only thing I know about you is that you work with maps and you always take the second straw from the dispenser — I do that too!”

You need a new holiday, Hallmark.

International Stalker Day.

Joey Comeau

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