Que Será Será

She Hates My All-Time Favorite Movies (2018)

When I started working at SMASH, I was overwhelmed by the new faces, and not just the kids. As mentioned before, there were different kinds of caregivers: high-schoolers, adults, and college kids. I spent my first day at work with the third-graders (at the time) and a co-worker named Erin. She was in charge. It was her room, and I was shadowing. Now, I'd help kids with homework, and answer the questions the kids would ask me, but for the most part, I let Erin take reins.

An hour or two in, and everything seems fine and calmed down, when she shows up.

Jill walks in the door, heads towards the room's microwave, and heats up her lunch. She takes a seat next to Erin, and starts telling her about her day.

If I would've looked the other way, I would've seen the other high-schoolers pass by our room, but instead, I was too focused on this attractive girl who really likes Mexican food. She went on about the gossip and drama that she was enduring, and gave me a sense of painful nostalgia thinking about what I had endured in the past couple years. I dismissed those thoughts, right before I thought of the words "Joke Machine".

I didn't say hi or introduce myself. Right off the bat, I knew that she was one to do things her way. If I came at her out of the blue, she'd dismiss me and turn away and never talk to me again. Well, that's what I believed. I let her come to me, when she was ready for the headache that is my personality.

I'd laugh at the goofy stuff she'd do like fall down a few steps, spill her Mexican leftovers in the sink, and do some iconic impressions, but when it came to one-on-one conversation, it ceased to exist between us.

I can't recall the exact instance where Jill and I first talked, but eventually, we started. She was really cool. It's really refreshing when attractive people have attractive personalities.

The thing about Jill that I eventually learned that differentiated her from the rest was that she was practically the opposite of me. She hated hugs and touching, disliked the films I loved (she even went so far to say that she hated The Iron Giant, my all-time favorite film, which was not fun to hear), and loved the films I hate(...Wayans Bros.' White Chicks...). She didn't always disagree with me on things, nor did we bicker as much as you'd think. We did butt heads, but both of us respected each other's beliefs and opinions, which made her even more attractive.

There was this one time we were sitting on the stage, watching the kids run around in the gym. Now, this was one of those days where she was full of energy and joy, which seems rare these days. Now, I'm not saying she's always depressed and sad and angry, but she's so closed off that you can never tell what she's feeling. It was incredibly hard to read her. Anyways, so there was this one day where she was visibly joyed for some reason, and I was in proximity range. We joked around alot, she told me about her boyfriend, and how she wasn't really happy with him (insert every rom-com 'I should be that guy to sweep her off her feet' line).She tried smacking my cap off with the back of her hand, but hit the tip of the bill, and hurt her hand instead. She exclaimed, "I just broke ALL THREE of my fingers!" I laughed more than I should, because this girl just told me she only had three fingers, even when she raised her hand to me and showed me five fingers. She had a language only she could understand (as do I; I can't say much), and I would often laugh at how poor the translation from her language to mine would be. On top of that, she put our names together, and started calling my JJud. I called her JJill.

After joking around with her, and after the subtle rant about her unhappiness in her relationship, she went on about the cosmic importance in life and existence. Man, she was existential. She was so back and forth that if was anyone, anyone else, I'd be exhausted. Jill was an exception.

She posed the question, "Does it all matter?" I asked "what do you mean?" and she went on.

"I mean, does the things we do day after day in life. Does it make any difference. Do we have any cosmic significance?"