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Opening social? I'm out of my depth, here. I have always avoided social
events as if they were the plague. Give me a dance, where I can just ride
the rhythm of the music -- or a football game, where the focus is out on the
field and I can go with the flow of the game.
Oh, well. None of the characters in this story am I, and all of the characters am I. Thank you for your forebearence.
"Suddenly I'm thinking the apartment off campus was not such a great idea," Dan grumbled as he and Karel left the Education Building.
"Why is that?"
"Re you Henny Tannah. No. What's that island saying?"
(Is it okay if I have Dan and Karel borrow a bit of Japanese for this, since you wouldn't know the language they are referencing, to understand Dan's confusion?)
"I'm not recognizing anything here."
"Yo-yo Bennie Hannah. No, that's not it, either."
"Sounds a little disparaging of an island language."
"You know I don't mean it that way. Closest I can remember. It's hard to remember a proverb in a language you don't know."
"You know more languages than I do."
"The languages I know are all related to each other. But, what happened back there -- the two best-looking girls in the whole lecture, and there they are sitting either side of you."
"Sheer coincidence."
"And when you found the holes in the other teams' defense on the football field, that was sheer coincidence, too."
"I still don't really understand how I could dig those holes in the defense."
"Drove the coaches up a wall. We'd be running our plays like clockwork. At first we'd be doing great. Then their defense would get to reading our plays, and we'd be stymied. And coach would send you in.
"After a couple of turnovers, you'd be out there, totally out of position, looking like you had forgotten the playbook, or just wandered onto the field from the stands, and suddenly there'd be nobody around you. And when I looked at the right time so I could get the ball to you, you'd take it and go for what we needed. A couple of times with that, and their defense would be focused on you, the coaches could send some new plays in for us, and we'd be off and running again."
"I still think it had something to do with me being in my own world a lot. I had different goals than most of the players. But that never explained much."
"That's exactly what the coaches said. And it was why the team waived you after our second year of pro together."
"They didn't know what to do with me."
"They were scared of what they couldn't control."
"Maybe. But what does this have to do with reasons for me to end up seemingly with a flower in either hand? That was what you were trying to say, wasn't it?"
"Yah. What's the phrase again?"
"Ryō-te ni hana."
(「両手に花。」 if it were Japanese. We don't have a font to show the language of the Children of Peace, but a rough Latinization might be "sheo-wan be pil".)
"Yeah. That one. Re-oh-teh nee Hannah. Uhm. So, ... what does it have to do with ...? Well, ... uhhmm ... you weren't doing what everyone else was doing?"
"I guess. Maybe."
"Okay, so I and all the other guys are looking to get a date. And get married. And you are not."
"I figure it's more interesting to find out a little about a woman before I take her out on a date. I think that's why some women feel comfortable around me."
"So all I have to do is quit trying to get a date?"
"I don't think it's quite that simple. The minute I ask a woman to go out, she usually runs away."
"And that's why you still aren't married."
"I guess."
"And we've had this conversation before."
"True. I've gotta get to my next class."
"Okay, C:40 in the university president's garden, right?"
(C:40 in hexadecimal time would be about 6:20 PM on the 12/24 hour clock we use.)
"Seems a bit early to me, but that's what they said, and we agreed."
"Right. 'Later."
"Yeah, later."
*****
Kristie stood in front of the full-length hall mirror, lifting her hair for a look, then letting it down for another.
"Do you think the guys find me attractive, Bobbie?" she asked.
"Hunh? What?" Bobbie was sitting on the floor in their bedroom, checking her textbooks against her syllabi.
"I always worry about whether the guys find me attractive."
Bobbie leaned sideways and looked through the doorway at Kristie's back. "So you did just ask me that."
"Yes, ..."
Bobbie got to her feet and walked into the living room, to stand behind Kristie at the mirror. She put
her hands on her shoulders. "Kristine Person, ..." Then she examined Kristie's
hair and her face in the mirror, shaping her hair and lifting it in various styles, letting
Kristie look at the effect.
"For the opening social, huh?"
"Yeah."
"... you know that's not the right question. What do you think of this?"
Kristie shook her head. "No that's not me. Too exotic. Well, the Sunday School teachers always said we shouldn't worry too much, but how are we supposed to find a husband if we don't make ourselves attractive?"
"Okay, picking a wrong question to answer first, yes, the guys find you attractive. But which guys? How's this?"
Kristie's face clouded. "That's not fair, asking which guy. No, I'd feel off balance with my hair up that high."
"I didn't say which guy, I said which guys. As in, I would bet Karel and Dan will both find you quite attractive enough, even without you doing your hair up, or even using makeup. How's a tight bun, like this?"
"That's nice of you to say. Maybe, but not today. It'd take too long to do it right."
"I don't think you should worry about guys who don't find you attractive. They don't really matter to you. Have you ever bobbed your hair?" Bobbie cupped her hands under Kristie's hair and lifted it close to her ears.
"Don't matter? Really? Don't you worry about it? I mean, sure, you're the kind of girl just about any guy would find attractive. Yes, I have, but that's so, what? like a tom-boy. I bobbed it in high school."
Bobbie smoothed Kristie's hair and took her by the shoulders and turned her around to face her. "So are you. Half the guys on campus would kill to get a date with you, and the other half would die for you. And these two guys, Dan and Karel, are a bit more grown up, I think. They will behave themselves courteously, instead of any of that."
Kristie looked perplexed.
Bobbie thought for a moment.
"I wonder, though, have you never wished certain guys wouldn't find you attractive?"
"You mean, guys who try to push themselves on you?"
"Uh, huh."
"Yes, I guess I have." Kristie's face clouded again, in mixed emotions.
"Once," she continued, "when I was a freshman, I was walking alone on a road off-campus, and a bunch of creeps came up behind me in a car and started whistling and howling and stuff. They tried to get me in the car with them."
"Oooh. That's horrible."
Then her frown cleared. "But then this really cool guy came along and told them, 'Get out of here!'. And they did. He walked me the rest of the way to campus to make sure I got to my class okay."
"Wow!"
"I didn't find out who he was until later."
"You didn't ask his name?"
"I was a freshman. He was an upper-classman. I was too awestruck, I guess."
"But you did find out who he was?"
"It was Karel Pratt."
"Oh." Bobbie's face, peculiarly, did not register any emotion.
"When I found out who he was, I started going to all the football games to see him. That's how I got interested in football."
"So, you've had a crush on Karel for a while?"
"I've been in love with him for six years! I was disappointed today that he had forgotten me, but here he is in the same class with me! You won't take him away from me, will you?"
Bobbie blinked. She thought for a moment, and said, "Six years to think you're in love with someone you don't really know is a long time -- long enough to develop a lot of wrong ideas about him. He might not be your white knight after all, ..."
"I went on a mission partly because I heard he thought it was okay for women to go if they wanted to teach people about Jesus."
Something inside Bobbie was invisibly crumbling. She'd known various kinds of disappointment before, and, somehow, she had been almost expecting disappointment this time, too. But she could see facing this kind of internal conflict was not going to be easy. The dreams she had been almost thinking she might be ready to permit herself might have to be postponed again.
The nurse inside took over. "Well, like I say. Don't worry about your looks. The guys that are important will like you anyway. At least, that's what my mom says."
Mary Whitmer had not always said such things. But she said such things now, and it was more important for Kristie to hear the conclusion than to hear the history of how Bobbie and her mother had come to it.
"In that case, I think I'll just be lazy and go with my hair down."
"Good idea. I think I'll do the same. It's getting about time to go, anyway. The point is, real love takes time to negotiate. There's lots to learn about each other."
"I think I can do that."
*****
Karel was a little early. He had a class until B:C0 (about 5:30 - 5:40 PM), so he skipped dinner and walked down to the president's residence, arriving before C:00 (six o'clock). Being among the first to arrive, he got drafted to help. He found himself at the front sidewalk, passing out mimeographed copies of the ice-breaker scavenger hunt instructions when Bobbie and Kristie arrived.
"Karel! Are you on the committee?" Kristie asked.
"Nah, I got here too early and got drafted."
"How long are you going to be doing that?"
"I guess until I run out of these or someone relieves me.
Bobbie had a suggestion: "Well, let us help you."
So Karel shared his stack of instructions with Kristie and Bobbie.
Kristie had another suggestion: "We can do one of these as a group, ask people questions as they come in. I'll write the answers down."
Dan joined them a few minutes later, and the four of them passed out the scavenger hunt instructions, demonstrating the game by asking faculty and other students the questions on the form as they arrived.
After about a half a chip, they had gone through several of the forms as a group, and a couple of committee members came to thank them for helping get the festivities going, and relieved them.
Since they had already finished the scavenger hunt, they just wandered around together, talking with each other and talking with the professors and other students, and eating some of the refreshments -- you know, doing the basic social activity stuff that we used to call networking.
At one point, Karel got involved in a mock debate the Young Democrats and the Young Republicans were having, joining on the side of the Democrats. Bobbie joined with the Republicans. Dan and Kristie stood by and listened, laughing when someone said something humorous, and trying not to look bored when the discussion heated up.
(Democrats, Republicans. You'll have to give me a break on this one, too. The party I'm translating as Democrat focused on consensus, liberality, and social responsibility, and the party I'm translating as Republican focused on public and individual choice and responsibility, and conservative use of public funds. Or, at least, their party platforms proclaimed such things, with a fair range of actual interpretation among party members.
Mimju-pa and Gyaudai-pa.
Since parties tend to swap ideologies a bit, maybe it would be better to call them liberals and conservatives. But, no that really wouldn't fit.)
After about a half a chip, when the debate was clearly heading for a third time around in a circle, Karel and Bobbie decided they'd had enough and took their leave. Before they left, all four had been invited to join in the campus political organizations.
About D:C0 (about 8:35 PM), Karel said, "Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'm hungry."
"Is it your treat, Karel?" Dan joked.
"Now, Dan, there's no call for that!" Bobbie chided with a laugh. "We'll go double Dutch."
Dan corrected, "Quadruple Dutch? Anyway, I know a burger shop below campus that makes a decent cheeseburger for a pair of dimes."
Kristie said, "My friends would just say 'Dutch'. But if we're going to eat someplace, buying our own is fine by me."
(Okay, Dutch, etc., is a rather loose, culturally insensitve translation. Sorry. It was the best I could come up with. Cultural sensitivity was still of a fledgling movement on Xhilr, too.)
Karel said, "I was thinking about the cafeteria in the student union. Since I'm living on campus, I can get a discount and Dan and I could split the bill. But hamburgers sounds good to me, too, if everyone's okay with that. I think it'd be a shorter walk all around."
And that's what they did, talking about classes and university life, and a little about future plans, while they walked to the hamburger shop.
(Hamburgers. Ground meat with vegetables and garnish between buns of bread.
Aren't you curious about what they ordered? No?
Yes, you are.)
"What c'n we do ya for?"
(The owner was running the grill and taking orders that evening. He was originally from a state much like Texas, and the theme of the shop would have reminded you of Texan, and the service would have reminded you of Texan. Rough dress. Drawl. Much deliberate playing with grammar. Gotta make life interesting.)
(Texas. I tell you, if you went down there, you'd call the place Texas. Big land, big egos, cowboys, twangy music, ....)
Dan said, "Women first."
Kristie asked Bobbie, "What are you going to get?"
"I'll have just a single hamburger, with onions, lettuce, and tomatoes."
(Onions must be universal in water/carbohydrate biosystems. Lettuce? Leafy vegetables, of course. Maybe it was closer to mustard green than lettuce in flavor. Not that their tongues worked quite the same as ours.
Tomatoes? Color doesn't matter so much, but the structure size, and consistency of the fruit would be similar. Taste? Well, closer to tomato than grape or strawberry, anyway.)
"What'll ya have to drink?"
"Just water, please."
"How about you, Miss?"
Kristie said, "Same for me, but with a lemon soda."
(Lemon? Citrus-y fruit more sour than sweet. Soda -- well, yes, fizzy water.)
"And the boys?"
Karel said, "I'll have a cheeseburger, with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise. And a cherry cola."
(Cheese -- milk cheese from mammalian cattle. Closer to cow than goat. Mayonnaise? Yes, vinegar and egg of domesticated, uhm, I'm not sure but that's closer to a reptile than a chicken, but then chickens are pretty close to reptiles anyway. Cherry? Closer to cherry than to plum or apple. Cola? Punted on that bean. But it was a bean.)
And Dan said, "I'll have a cheeseburger, too, with pickles and ketchup. And water."
(Pickled fruit similar to a cucumber. Ketchup -- of course.)
"All together?"
Karel said, "Yes."
And Bobbie said, "Separate checks, please."
But Dan insisted, "The guys are treating. Karel and I'll split the tab later."
And Kristie said, "It's okay, Bobbie, isn't it?"
And Bobbie laughingly gave in. "Sure. Just this once."
And the conversation continued while they ate and while they walked back to the girls' apartment.
After Dan and Karel said goodnight, Kristie and Bobbie went inside.
"So, did anybody get any lip?" their roommate Wendy asked from where she was studying at the table.
Kristie replied. "We just met them today."
And Bobbie said, "Give us a break."
"So it was boring." Wendy was insistent.
Bobbie said, slightly pedantically, "These socials are for meeting the professors and other grad students. It's not supposed to be especially exciting or romantic or whatever."
"You're just jealous, Wendy, leave it alone," said Jennifer from where she was sitting surrounded by her books on the living room floor. "You guys can give us a play-by-play when Wendy isn't around."
"No, really," Kristie responded, "we just socialized with everybody. We didn't plan on this being romantic. If it goes that way, it goes that way. If it doesn't, you know, it's nice to have friends."
Joy, who was curled up on the sofa reading a romance novel, complained, "You two are just too cool to believe."
Michelle, in the kitchen, asked, "So which of you is angling for which of them?"
And Bobbie said, "To be honest, I'm not sure right now which one I'd rather start taking an interest in, if I do. I'm just going to go with the flow."
After a few more tries, the roommates gave in and let it alone for the night.
After lights were out and personal prayers said, Kristie whispered from across their room. "Bobbie?"
"Mmm? Yeah?"
"Thanks."
"One step at a time, Kristie. I'm not yielding the field, just trying to make sure everyone has a fair chance. Karel and Dan are both pretty decent guys."
"They are. Anyway, thanks."
"Sure. And thank you, too. It was fun."
What each said in their own prayers is their own business, but I'll note that all four of them mentioned gratitude for new friends in their prayers.
Bobbie's last thought before she went to sleep was, "Maybe not so hard, after all."
*****
On Wednesday, Bobbie and Karel ended up in the same section of the undergraduate level course in island culture.
"Hello again, stranger!"
"Oh! Hi, Bobbie. Should we sit where we can compare notes?"
"That'd be okay. It's a shame Kristie and Dan won't be taking this class."
Karel laughed. "Maybe that'd be a bit too much together. Are we taking more of the same classes?"
"Let me see your schedule."
"Let's sit down so I can get it out."
"How about over there on the right, at the front?"
Having sat down, they laid their schedules out to compare them.
"So," Karel said, "we'll be in the same section of the experimental lab in traditional and primitive technologies."
"That'll be a fun class."
(More then just fun, that course would be a lifesaver for them.)
"That looks like all for this semester."
The professor came in about then and introduced himself.
"We'll be covering about ten differing island regions," he said. "Many of them have had fairly advanced cultures during their histories, and there is quite a lot of material to cover. We won't be able to cover it all in class, so you should plan on a lot of homework, and also plan on forming or joining study groups."
After the lecture, Bobbie and Karel talked about when they could meet in the library to study together, and several other students came over to ask if they could put together a study group.
Tuesday and Thursday evenings seemed to work best.
(Wednesday. Tuesday. Thursday. Sunday is named for their sun and Moonsday for their two moons. The rest are not directly translatable, so I'm just using the names of our weekdays.
They do have a seven-day week, historically derived from the lunar month of their closer moon rather than that of their farther moon.
No, two moons is not a stable configuration. But their orbits are stable enough at the time of this story to have allowed civilization to develop, and to not yet pose a near-term direct threat.)
*****
The four of them were together again for the interdepartmental education class
again on Thursday. After the class, they discussed studying.
Karel explained, "Bobbie and I are thinking we'll get together in the library with some of the other anthropology students."
And Bobbie added, "We thought we could do the same for this class.
"When are you getting together?" asked Kristie.Bobbie answered, "We're thinking of Tuesday and Thursday evenings, at least, for now."
"I could probably do that," Dan said.
"Me, too," said Kristie. "What time and where?"
Karel said, "Tonight, after I finish eating dinner at the dorm cafeteria, I'll run up to the library's first floor study area. We can meet there, and then we'll figure out where to stake out a study area."
"So, between C:40 and C:A0, tonight?" Dan asked.
(Between about 6:20 and 6:50 PM.)
"And see where it goes from there," replied Karel. "I need to get to my next class."
"Which way are you going?" asked Kristie.
"Science building."
"I'm going the same direction."
"Let's walk together."
"How about you?" Dan asked Bobbie.
"I'm going to study at the library for about an hour. Are you going that way?"
"Yeah. I don't have a class now, and I probably should park my books somewhere and figure out what I need to study."
Karel suggested, "You guys can scout us out some tables, maybe?"
That was agreeable, and they left together, separately.
*****
About E:60 (a little after 10:30) that evening, the four of them walked back to the womens' apartment together, discussing theories and philosophies of great philosophers of their world whose works were similar to those of Plato and Locke as they went, with Karel tossing in ideas from modern mathematicians whose works were similar to that of our Von Neumann and Turing, just to keep the discussion lively.
Bobbie was unimpressed. "Quit dragging engineering stuff in."
"But this is about machines that think and learn."
Dan sided with Bobbie. "That's science fiction."And Kristie defended Karel. "Maybe for now, but science fiction seems to predict the future a lot."
"It's not the technology. It's the math."
Even Kristie didn't know what to say to that.
At the apartment, as Dan and Karel were about to leave, Dan asked, "Does anyone besides me like to dance?"
And Bobbie replied, "Does a duck swim?"
"Dancing's fun," Kristie admitted.
"You know about me," Karel laughed.
"Heh. Can't drag you off the dance floor sometimes." Dan laughed, too, before explaining, "Our stake is having a back-to-school dance on Friday night. Should we all go together?"
(Borrowing a term from the similar organizational structure in Mormondom, a stake for them comprises several smaller congregations of the Church, roughly a thousand to two thousand members in all. Comparable, I understand, to a diocese. In this case, most of the members of the stake are students. Of course, not all of the students in their stake would attend the dance. Why stake? Look in Isaiah in our Bible. Something about the stakes of the tents. There's a similar scripture in their Holy Book.)
"Sounds like fun," Bobbie said, and everyone agreed.
But, as they waved goodbye to Dan and Karel, Kristie whispered, "Bobbie, who is going to dance with whom?"
Bobbie turned to her and smiled and said, "I think we'll just have fun with whoever is handy at the moment."
*****
And that's how it worked out.
As they were walking to the dance, Karel suggested that they should not be exclusive, and they danced with many of the others who had come, as well as with each other. At one point, when everyone was dancing a dance similar to the Charleston and they were a dancing as a foursome, Kristie and Bobbie both got a little winded and sat out at the side of the gym, leaving Dan and Karel to carry on as a twosome.
Bobbie seemed to be interested more in the faster songs where they could do formation dances as a group of four or join with some of the others in larger formations. She tended to sit out the slow dances, unless she could talk her partner into dancing ballroom.
Karel danced almost every song, and took turns with both Bobbie and Kristie, as well as with others. When he could sweet-talk his partner of the moment into dancing ballroom, he would.
Dan and Kristie just had fun, dancing with everybody and sometimes sitting out to talk. And sometimes when Karel and Kristie were busy dancing, Dan and Bobbie would sit out the dance together, talking.
About F:60 (a little after eleven), Bobbie announced, "I've got work tomorrow, so I'm going to turn
into a pumpkin early. (Well, she made reference to an old fairy tale in which a magically disguised princess had to return from a dance before midnight or face unmasking. Yeah, hollow, fleshy gourd for a coach. Where did the seeds go?)
And Kristie said, "I should probably turn in a little early, too, so I can work on my homework tomorrow."
So Karel and Dan walked them back to their apartment under the light of the hinter and nether moons.
While they were walking, Dan said, "You know, they have ballroom dance classes here."
Karel said, "Sounds like a suggestion. We could join a class together."
Kristie concurred. "I think that would be fun."
And Bobbie concurred as well. "I'd like that. Let's do it."
------
The next Moonsday, the four of them were in line together at the registration desk, to add one more class, ballroom dance.
Hmm. Japanese, Kanji? Texans, Democrats, Republicans? Dimes?
Close enough, I guess.
Plato, Locke, Von Neumann, Turing?
You would recognize them better by the philosophies they espoused than by their
names, of course. I do hope you'll forgive the references.
Hexadecimal time -- Let's look at those clocks again, labeled according to our modern convention for hexadecimal, 0 - 9, A - F:
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You can find the original first draft of this chapter and various approaches
I have tried with it here:
https://free-is-not-free.blogspot.com/2016/05/economics-101-novel-ch04-going-by-four.html.
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