Memorialized in Corn

Gerry's Corner: Hey, kids! Want to know what it's like inside my head?



The answer, I suppose, is that it's pretty easy to get lost in there.

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,
Gerry

The Tail Between My Legs

Gerry's Corner: Many of you might think of Gerry's Corner as the place where you get up-to-the-minute news about your favorite "late" president. Alas, I've done nothing in the last three and a half months to give you the confidence that that would be the case. I'd like to say that I was away from my computer, tracking Osama around Tora Bora, or that I was hang-gliding through the Andes in search of endangered species in need of rescue - but I was just being lazy. So Gerry's Corner should instead conjure images for you of me sitting in a corner, facing the wall, with a dunce cap. I hope that I can turn that around in due time. I appreciate your trust and patience.

In the meantime, I most certainly did not fake my own death to watch the Maize and Blue lose to the likes of Appalachian State and Oregon. If there's anyone who should wear the face of shame these days, it is the football team of my alma mater. Holy crikey! I mean, let's consider:

• Here is what the prototypical athlete from Oregon used to look like.



• Here is the family from which an Appalchian State player might be recruited.



And they beat us at home! An unconscionable fate. Not-Betty told me years ago that she thought it was only a matter of time before Michigan became a huge field hockey school. I laughed then; I regret laughing now.

But I'll tell you one thing: I should replace Lloyd Carr as head football coach at Michigan. Just think how inspiring it would be for the players and fans to see that a guy who used to be President of the United Fucking States came back from the dead just to coach the Wolverines back to glory? I would walk into the first press conference and say, "The state of Michigan football is an American tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must."

The first thing I would do to turn around the team is I would seek out the most vengeful, hate-filled people on earth to become the backbone of our line: former child actors. I mean, look at the transformation of Brian Bonsall, who played adorable Andy Keaton on Family Ties, from:



to:



The Buckeyes would never see it coming.

*

I know that back when I stopped posting, I had started a new section of this blog, called Gerry's Piggy Bank, in which I donated $10 to a different worthy cause each week. I have not kept that up, but I will get back to it once I find employment (and if Lloyd Carr's not fired this week, then I'll have to continue finding ways to make ends meet). I shouldn't have to wait too long, but I need a steady source of income before I can go out and give money I don't have away. That would be as hypocritical as doing credit repair for people when I'm in credit card debt up to my eyeballs myself.

The reason my job situation and life have been in flux is because, well, I broke up with Lassie, my unicorn. We were just moving in different directions. Okay, truth be told, he lanced me accidentally - and then I found out that it was no accident. Plus, a gypsy told me that living with unicorns is bad luck.

So I moved out and took up with the legislative director for a Congressman instead. He drinks milk from the bottle, has a raging case of gingivitis, and is virulently anti-American - all of which our deal-breakers for me - but I just know he's the one. In fact, he's so the one that I wrote a poem about him, since I love to write poetry.

In 1-3 years,
I'll probably be dead,
for real this time,
and not fake like last time,
and you'll still drink milk from the bottle,
and your gums will be rotting,
and you'll hate America,
but you'll still cry
at my funeral.

In 2-4 years,
I'll almost certainly be dead,
and you'll have to tell the grandkids
what a special person I was,
except history already did it for you,
so you can just throw books at them and
tell the grandkids to read them.
You're so melodramatic,
but we can't reproduce,
you and I,
so no grandkids
anyway.

In 3-5 years,
you'll be dead, too,
a victim of your lactose loving,
American angst-filled ways,
and also the gingivitis,
which can be lethal,
or so I've heard.

In 5-10 years,
someone will read this blog,
someone important,
and they'll know of our love,
our forbidden love,
but they'll report instead
that I was a brilliant writer,
and I'll be published,
finally,
and world-famous finally, too.
Take that, Nixon.

In 10-20 years,
no one will care about the sudden,
meteoric rise of a late President's blog,
and if either of us were alive,
we would shed tears like clothes on a hot day,
or maybe I would,
since I have a good beach body,
or had a good beach body,
back when I was alive,
so many years before.

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,
Gerry

Past...and Future?

Gerry's Corner: Hi, all. I find myself in the public library of Concord, Massachusetts. I think this is where the British and the colonists met for lunch each day in between battles during the Revolutionary War. I think. One of the problems with becoming President all of a sudden is that you don't get that transition time like an elected President, and so you have no time to read up on all the history you thought you'd get away with not knowing. Needless to say, I never really got around to it.

I'd also managed to never have to travel to New England before - I guess that's why Pat Buchanan beat me in the New Hampshire primary that one time - but man, is it chilly here. And no relief in sight - the temperatures in this part of the country aren't supposed to hit 70 - Farenheit! - for the next two weeks. It's rainy, cold days like this that make me miss sunny, temperate Michigan.

We're here because my unicorn friend is interviewing for a job teaching show-jumping to a bunch of horses at a nearby stable. I drove him up earlier today, and now that he's got a few people he's scheduled to talk with, I'm chilling here in downtown Concord. It's actually a good transition up north, because from here, I'm scheduled to become a day laborer at a summer camp in New Hampshire somewhere. This is the kind of work I wish I'd been able to do back when I was President.

I'll have more soon, including my second contribution from Gerry's Piggy Bank, but I promised myself - and you, gentle readers - that I'd blog more regularly, so here's a nice, chatty one for you to chew on.

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,
Gerry

New Feature

Gerry's Corner: I was sitting on my butt in my cozy Manhattan apartment the other night, watching - what else? - American Idol. I'd just fed my unicorn, and he was happily chowing down on a healthy mixture of oats and leprechauns, but I was a little more saddened. The coverage of my 'death' a few months ago left me feeling that way because it seemed that my actions had not matched my legacy. Lots of reporters remembered me as a real uniter, someone who sacrificed his own political career for the good of government, a healer of American wounds. So why didn't I do more to cultivate that image after my inevitable defeat at the hands of ol' Guinea Worm Carter? I chose to play golf with Bob Hope and champion Not-Betty's alcohol rehab center, but as I watched AI raise millions of charity dollars for Africa merely by having some no-name twits sing along with fifteen-minute stars, my heart grew heavy.

And then it got lighter as I got an idea.

Why can't I use this blog for good, to raise awareness of the noblest causes? From now on, each week, I'll feature a segment called Gerry's Piggy Bank, in which I give a symbolic donation - $10-15 - to a worthy organization, cause, group, or individual, and talk about why I think they deserve both my money and your money. Over time, I will hopefully have given a few hundred dollars to charity and spread the missions and ideas of dozens of people to all my readers. Or both my readers, as the case may be.

So, without further ado:

Gerry's Piggy Bank: The Hokie Spirit Scholarship Fund. There's lots of memorial funds you can give to in order to help families cope with and recover from their personal losses due to the Virginia Tech shootings. I selected the scholarship fund because it goes towards renewing the academic and intellectual loss on the campus of Virginia Tech by giving more bright, young scholars the opportunity to attend school there. Besides, if I'm only able to give $15 (this week's contribution), how could I possibly choose one family over another? There's a Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, too, but I don't know if it will reach and impact people with the same impact that I know scholarships will.



There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,
Gerry

It Surely Has Been a While

Gerry's Corner: Hello, superfans. I can't imagine any other, lesser fans are still reading this since I've been so negligent with your trust that I might post regularly. Oh, well. I have a variety of excuses, though most of them amount to this:

I am petrified of the month of April.

Even when I was "alive," I would pretty much hibernate through this month. (Well, that likely has something to do with the fact that I'm one-twelfth bear.) But to me, whether it goes in like a lion or out like a lamb, it seems like nothing good comes from April. Hitler's birthday, Columbine, and this year, we had the Virginia Tech shootings and Yeltsin dying and all that other stuff. Not cool.



The school of public policy that's named after me had their graduation ceremonies at the end of April. Of course, I didn't go, but I received a transcript of the student speaker's speech and found it quite disturbing. Here it is:

Thank you. You’re all beautiful.

As many of you may know, I was chosen as the student speaker largely for my interest in graduation speech policy. This address is divided into three parts: a literature review, in which I emulate the styles of many speeches that have come before mine at graduations across the country; a quasi-quantitative section; and a brief conclusion.

Part 1: Literature review.

Some think of graduation as an end – others see it as a beginning. I prefer to think of it as a ceremony. Today, we are made of dreams. Our dreams are lifted on the wings of knowledge – and we will use them to glide across the sky, where we will look down on the valleys of those in need, like boxcar hobos and the rainforest, and where we will look up to see the stars twinkling with promise and potential.

Each new age has had its pioneers. We, the class of 007, became the first explorers in the Joan and Sanford Weill Hall, much like Meriwether Lewis and Dick Clark, when they traveled into the unknown frontier of this great land we call America. (Also, like Lewis & Clark, we were accompanied throughout our journey by a native American woman named Sacagawea, to whom we gave liquor, smallpox, and, eventually, casinos.) We will take this strength with us into the future – our future, the future of dreams, where we’ll be flying around, looking at stuff.

But while we’re in the future, a piece of our hearts will likely remain here in Ann Arbor, here with Michigan – at the MMESS House, at the Big House, at Weill Hall, in the fourth floor of Lorch Hall, at Espresso Royale, at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus Bar – soon, we will not have enough heart left to go on, but that’s okay, because I speak, of course, of a symbolic heart.

Class of ‘007, we have bonded like really strong glue, and we have come together, like the clasped hands of friendship. We have laughed together and cried together. We studied together and we drank moderately together. We have been intense together and we have been more intense together.

But we can also do things separately. We will all go forth with our own visions of success in mind. I looked up ‘success’ in the dictionary – well, on dictionary.com – and the definition was as follows: “the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors; or the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like.” That’s how dictionary.com defines success, but don’t let dictionary.com define success for you! For some of you, ‘success’ may mean choosing a street that is not traversed as often as other streets. For others of you, it might mean winning a bowling trophy at Colonial Lanes with the sherpas with whom you conquered Everest. Some of you might even define ‘success’ as ‘a chair, with or without arms, for reclining, having a seat lengthened to form a complete leg rest and sometimes an adjustable back’, though that would be a mistake, since that’s already the definition of ‘chaise lounge’.

Part 2: Quantitative Analysis

As it turns out, tassle and hood color — go peacock blue! — are better indicators of graduates’ perceptions of the strength of their degree than anything the graduation speakers say to them. This may be because most graduation speakers choose similar themes: 41.7 percent talk about how the graduates will go on to do great things; another 23.8 percent talk about dreams, chasing them, and never settling. Commencement speeches – present company excluded, of course – are often like the cashier at the grocery store asking you how you are. Is it possible that the cashier is invested in your well-being? Along those same lines, do I expect Bob Schoeni to call me in a year to check in on how I’m doing? Will Dean Blank someday be my Facebook friend? Will Dan Glickman loan me movies from his extensive collection of pirated DVDs?

Let’s not be lulled into submission by the formal proceedings that give us structure. I mean, look at us: this is the day when we line up in assigned order, listen to several people with lots of experience tell us all about how amazing we are and how we have the chance to shine, and we all smile and nod while dressed in identical robes and hoods, like we’re in some sort of doomsday cult. Don’t drink the Kool Aid! (Especially not in Rackham Auditorium, where food and drink are prohibited.) I fear we might be getting our master’s degrees in complacency.

I guess my own definition of success might be in achieving a certain sense of disillusionment. In fact, I bet if I don’t talk for the next sixty seconds of this speech, it will be an improvement on what I actually might have said.

[The jazz band plays ‘Well You Needn’t’ for one minute while four people get up and blow bubbles on the graduates and four other people get up and toss them homemade cookies wrapped in cellophane.]

Part 3: Conclusions & Recommendations

During our first year orientation back in aught five, I remember Dean Blank telling us that grades don’t matter. While I took those words a bit literally, I find myself reaching the same conclusion in my own research on graduation speech policy: it’s not that grades are incapable of being important – it’s just not the reason you’re here. Graduation speeches, sorry to say, don’t matter, either. We all get up and encourage you into a life of public service and tell you that you can make a difference – a Michigan difference – but it’s like having someone else make up your own New Year’s resolutions for you. According to my research, people don’t often make career choices based on what we in the platform party implore you to do. You will choose your own path of discovery, or trail of curiosity, or avenue of opportunity, or cul-de-sac of success. So why do we have speakers at graduation at all? It’s probably for three reasons:
1. to entertain
2. to celebrate, and
3. to affirm.
And if the actual content of the ceremony is not that important, allow me to conclude by quoting a famous graduation speaker, who once said, “Blah, blah blah blah – blah blah blah blah.”

Essentially, this student was saying that graduation speeches are meaningless except for the fact that they are given. I heartily and angrily beg to differ. What about Leonard Euler, when he gave the commencement address at the Pine Valley Nursery School graduation exercises and managed to invent his number theory right there on the dais? I can't imagine a more useful school to arm the toddlers for kindergarten.



And how about when Bishop Desmond Tutu gave the address at Brandeis in 2000? His speech was entitled, "Fly, Eagle, Fly." Which of those graduates had ever before considered that they would be able to achieve greatness merely by flying - but not just flying - flying like an eagle? I'll admit it, whenever I thought of flight as a youth, I imagined taking wing as a blue-and-gold macaw. I hear they're gigantic.



The most distressing thing about this wretched student's speech is that he basically left my last several years without much purpose - I mean, what do ex-presidents do besides play golf, pursue whatever causes that interest them, and give commencement addresses? And since I didn't have any causes, well...it means I was just a golfer, which, while freeing, remains just a little depressing.



The other thing is that most guest speakers at commencements, anyway, get honorary degrees. For a long time, this was my plan to help more students graduate from college. I don't see why no one has moved on this.

More soon - promise.

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,
Gerry

Undone

Gerry's Corner: Lots of weird things happened today. First of all, I was so excited about how my first chapter came out that I decided to send the manuscript around to some friends I know who are editors in the world of publishing. I did it anonymously (i.e. "A friend of mine wrote this - what do you think?") so that they would judge it without the context of evaluating something that President Gerald Ford had written. After all, I thought I wanted their honest feedback.

Turns out I didn't. The responses came fast and furious, typefied by this one, from a guy at St. Martin's Press:

"Read two pages. Nope. No one gives a shit."

Read two pages. Nope. No one gives a shit. Read two pages. Nope. I thought about making myself another lethal Advil-Tylenol cocktail, but resisted. Just because dreams are dashed doesn't mean that life has to be, too.

But then I couldn't resist, and I revealed myself to that editor. "I just wanted to correct something," I wrote to him. "In fact, it was I, President Gerald Ford, who wrote that chapter that, as you said, 'no one gives a shit' about. I wonder how you like those apples."

The response came faster and furioser. "President Ford, you must know that I was JOKING when I wrote you that email. Of course I knew it was your delightful handiwork. Our company would be HAPPY to publish your book - please write more of it."

On principle, I was thinking of confronting that editor who, at first, wasn't willing to see my book for what it was - amazing - but I didn't want that weepy jerk to think that I had a "bad attitude" or anything.

So what did I tell you? I am a brilliant writer. Just like I was the perfect candidate for that job at CRAP. They loved me over there, too. Things are coming up roses, my friends.

Then again, how can you believe anything that I write here? Maybe I'm such a brilliant author that I'm fooling you with my fiction RIGHT NOW. Maybe you're that type of gullibe person who thinks that when I say, "I'm so hungry that I'm going to go eat a horse," it means I'm actually going to go eat a horse. Sheesh - you could not be more wrong! While I've got a megabucks book deal, a sweet part-time job, and a fabulous unicorn, all you've got are issues. I suggest you deal with them.

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,
Gerry

My Constant Apology

Gerry's Corner: Yes, I know - once again, it's been a long time since my last blog entry. I don't know how people do this every day for weeks and months (and years?) on end. And, for that matter, for what purpose - there can't possibly be something interesting that needs to be said every morning to everyone you know (and to many who you don't know). That said, I promised to update more regularly, and here I am not doing that. So please, just consider today's entry as one big sorry for all future lapses.

Anyway, I'm still in New York with my unicorn, Lassie. She and I are in a cute little apartment in Hell's Kitchen (Dan Quayle came by a few weekends ago and helped me re-decorate, thanks to the many wares of Bed, Bath, & Beyond), and I'm pursuing two leads in terms of what to do with myself. First, I'm trying to find an internship that'll help keep me occupied. I've applied to one so far - it's with the Center for Ridiculous, Asinine Policy (CRAP), and it sounds perfect for me. The office is tiny - only three or four people - and they were all born in the Carter administration or later, so I doubt any of them will recognize me. Plus, I'm definitely overqualified for the position. I mean, the director of CRAP went to Hampshire College, for crying out loud. My only fear is that I'll end up yelling at the poor hippie girl who I think is going to interview me over the phone - she sounded really incompetent when we spoke a few days ago. I'll probably avoid mentioning that I was once President of the United States; I don't want to sound overly-impressive, in case they think I'll be bored.

Trust me, a few boring hours of work won't bother me, since I'm using my whole brain for my other pursuit: writing my novel. I've always known I had one in me, but Not-Betty thought that too many authors were on drugs, and thus, I'd probably fall into drug addiction if I wrote and published a book. Still, I miss her, and so the novel is an homage to her. I think it's a winner so far, though I had to change our names so that she wouldn't be able to tell that I wrote it (and about her, no less). Let me know what you think - the first chapter is below.

Gerard and Not-Betty
Chapter 1: Why Not

“But why,” Gerard managed, turning beet red beneath his two-month-old beard and nervously eyeing the concentric cube doodles littering the page of his yellow legal pad. “You can’t be right. Why would she...you know?”

“Got me,” Duke shrugged. “Some girls have weird taste.”

“Yeah, but...” he trailed off, his blue eyes downcast. “I just don’t...well, you can’t be right, that’s all.”

“Look,” Duke said, flipping his thick, steel-wool-thick eyebrows over one shoulder, “all I’m saying is, I’ve seen the way she looks at you all through class, and she lights up like an eighty-watt light bulb when you walk in — late — every day. I don’t get it either, but it’s obvious to everyone in the whole world except you.”

“Well...what should I...” Gerard's struggle for words was cut short by the reappearance of the girl in question: one Not-Betty Bloomer, a petite redhead with a high IQ, low self-esteem, and a smile like an eighty-watt light bulb.

Plopping a pair of over-sized books on the desk, Not-Betty took her place with the group without making eye contact with either of her fellow members. “Whew, I didn’t think I’d make it back before the break was over,” she said, finally flashing her eighty-watt smile, first at Gerard, who was once again intent on his doodles, then at Duke.

“What’s with the books,” asked Duke, who was functionally illierate, nudging Gerard to break the monotony of his gaze.

“Oh, I’m reading up on various forms of addiction,” Not-Betty replied, rolling her big brown eyes to disguise enthusiasm. “You know, crystal meth, vodka, glue-sniffing, stuff like that.”

Gerard examined the spines. “Leonard Maltin’s Movie Encyclopedia and The History of the Movie Musical. What do those have to do with addiction?”

“Leonard Maltin, if you must know, has a terrible drinking problem, I've heard, and most movie musicals would drive anyone to substance dependence. Besides, I'm minoring in film studies - that’s why Dr. Teasdale asked me to do the presentation.” Damnit, she thought. That sounded so awful! When, o when, will I learn to keep my stupid mouth shut? I always sound like such a know-it-all and genius, simultaneously.

“Oh,” Gerard responded, deciding (with the help of another insistent nudge from Duke) to attempt conversation. “I, uh, I drank a handle of gin by myself once. For a while I really thought that’s what I wanted to do.” She must think I’m an idiot.

“Really?” Not-Betty asked, but he couldn’t tell whether she was interested or just being nice. He imagined she was always nice to goofballs like him. She was a nice person.

“Isn’t that my pen?” Duke interrupted, indicating the blue Sharpie that Gerard was now chewing absent-mindedly. He had a habit of picking up other people’s things, especially when he was nervous. This obviously meant that he was an incurable kleptomaniac. He was surprised, later in life, that none of his friends had ever called him on it.

“Uh, yeah, I guess so,” he nodded sheepishly, handing Duke the pen and fishing another out of his beaten old gray book bag. "I like the taste of Sharpies, I guess," he said, cringing internally. Professor Teasdale resumed the class.

*

Dr. Nicolette Teasdale’s upper-division course on “Cultural Representations in the Post-Colonial World” was notoriously one of the most difficult classes in the International Affairs program at American University, but Not-Betty wasn’t worried. A member of the honors college, soon to graduate summa cum laude, she was the kind of student who seldom slipped academically. She always spoke intelligently in class and volunteered for special projects, inevitably winning the good opinions of her teachers, who never suspected she might not be completing all the assigned readings. And if Not-Betty ever did receive a grade lower than she felt she deserved, just a few shots of that eighty-watt smile plus one or two strategic excuses usually brought it right up.

Gerard Chevrolet, on the other hand, was mostly quiet in class and only infrequently considered challenging a professor. He signed up for Dr. Teasdale’s course, despite reports from friends about her overwhelming work loads and curve-less grading scale, because the description mentioned an emphasis on film, and he thought it would be interesting, since he'd never seen a film before he'd gotten to college. But he had no expectation of receiving a high mark at the end of the term. This being his second-to-last semester, he felt his GPA could sustain one more minor blow before his final release from the confines of academic existence.

Although not a Prince Charming by any imaginative (or non-imaginative) stretch, Gerard was at least honest about what he did and didn’t know, and this was a characteristic that, lacking it herself, Not-Betty respected. When called upon to answer a question, she noted, Gerard would simply admit his uncertainty, rather than inventing a convincing answer on the spot, as she did. And when he did have the answer, his thoughts were usually so garbled on their way from his mind to his mouth as to necessitate translation from a peer or the professor. This would not be the case later in life, unfortunately, during a debate against Jimmy Carter on the state of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, but Not-Betty had no way of knowing that then.

Not-Betty was all too happy to play translator when she could. She felt — and quite astutely — that beneath his occasional stammering and his less-occasional stumbling, Gerard had a brilliant mind and quick wit. The few times he had been induced to give presentations to the class, his matter-of-fact references to the stupidity of world leaders kept his peers near tears with laughter. Once he got going, Gerard seemed to bounce off the walls with personality, and he had the uncanny ability to be funny without trying to be funny at all.

While confident in her academic abilities, Not-Betty imagined herself completely lacking in sense of humor, among other positive traits. She could count on her fingers the number of times she had made jokes at which people actually laughed (she was good at counting), but couldn’t begin to guess at the significantly greater number of instances when she had experienced the humiliation of jokes at her expense. She trained herself to be serious and smart in her classes in an attempt to mute such criticism and overcome her self-image of being everything her immature primary and secondary schoolmates had told her she was — short, fat, ugly, stupid, bald, cheap, lazy, ignorant, oblivious, Jewish, and frumpy.

She was, indeed, short. At 5’1,” Not-Betty spent a great deal of time determining compensatory measures for what she considered a serious personal deficiency, including ridiculously tall platform shoes and an unwaveringly forceful voice. Moreover, she had a tendency to choose romantic interests who were close to her height, though this dating pattern had yet to yield positive results.

But although correlation existed between Not-Betty's choices of the vertically challenged and her lack of romantic success, there was no causation. That Not-Betty was neither fat, ugly, stupid, bald, cheap, lazy, ignorant, oblivious, Jewish, nor frumpy was in fact the root of her troubles, like a thorny bush that refused to be pulled from the ground, since her insecurity bred an aloofness many guys her age found intimidating or mistook for arrogance. Older men not put off by her demeanor accumulated thickly on her dating resume, in the section between Hygiene and Bases Reached, but they inevitably broke her heart. Despite the evidence of these patterns, however, Not-Betty read in every rejection a non-existent subtext that she wasn’t tall enough, thin enough, smart enough, cool enough, awesome enough, radical enough, or uber-heady-gnar-gnar enough.

Gerard had no serious confidence issues; he was comfortable with who he was even with all his idiosyncrasies. He was a “nice guy,” and he knew it. He was on the tall side, and with perfect teeth and the gift of blue eyes, not unattractive as we've said before (though perhaps the beard, which he was growing out superstitiously as long as the Michigan Wolverines kept winning - Go Blue! - detracted somewhat from his looks). He wasn’t the nerd who got teased all the time, and he wasn’t the football player with all the girls, though he was the center for the American University squad. He was just Gerard, a smart, nice, creative, handsome, friendly, fantastic, affable guy who happened to have pretty eyes. He had trouble finding a girl who met his high standards and who was interested in him, as well, but he wasn’t looking very hard.

He had his share of girlfriends, for his still-young age of 22; three, to be exact. But one of those relationships lasted two years, and another for 16 months. The third had been in sixth grade, but he usually counted it anyway. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t had other opportunities; he just wasn’t interested in the bubble-headed, blonde sorority girls to be found in droves at local bars. Well, actually, he was interested in them, but in addition to being smart, nice, creative, handosome, friendly, fantastic, and affable, Gerard was also shy. Besides, he was looking for more than a hackneyed one-liner and a “catch ya later”; his type of girl was the kind who stayed home to read on a Friday night. Not because she didn’t have options, mind you. That was just what she wanted to do.

Somehow he could tell Not-Betty was that type. He remembered, while she did not, that they had been in a university-required chemistry class together the previous spring. He had noticed her then. How could he not notice her? The girl stood out like a red rose in a sea of dandelions, a walrus in a forest of seals, a troubadour in a chorus of lounge singers. She couldn’t walk into a room without all eyes transfixing upon her. Even on days when she seemed down (which were frequent), she had something – a presence, a way about her that made her interesting.

At that time, the thought of talking to her barely entered his mind. How do you go about striking up a conversation with a goddess? To do so awkwardly would be an insult. Instead, he glanced her way every now and then, noted her frequent and always intelligent comments, of which he kept a tally in the margins of his college-ruled, spiral-bound notebook, and wondered what was going on behind those sometimes angry, sometimes sad, sometimes half-closed, three-quarters-of-the-time stormy, occasionally misty, sometimes teary, once-in-a-while sparkling, always beautiful brown eyes.

Most days, though, she sat at a table in front with her back to the class, and he concentrated on taking notes and making doodles on his signature yellow legal pads (they were the cheapest kind of notebook, and his ex-girlfriend Bo Derek once informed him his chicken-scratch writing was an insult to anything of higher quality - of course, he still kept that tally of Not-Betty's comments in the other, slightly more handsome notebook, mostly to spite Bo Derek). After the semester ended, he almost forgot all about Not-Betty in the chaos of law school applications and his semester spent studying kangaroo poop in Canberra, Australia.

But when they met again in Professor Teasdale’s class the following fall, he remembered every thought he ever had about her. Arriving five minutes late, as he always did since no matter how he tried he could never seem to be organized enough to get to class on time, he chose one of the only empty seats. It just happened to be next to the remarkable Not-Betty Bloomer.

She seemed in an unusually pleasant mood that day, discussing a class from the previous semester with a girl seated on her opposite side. Coincidentally, it was Chemistry 201.

“What did you get?” he asked Not-Betty, forgetting both how obnoxious it is to ask that question at any point past the sixth grade, and his resolve not to talk to her in the wake of her radiant smile.

“I got a 3.5,” she replied, clearly annoyed at the grade. “You?”

“Same.”

“That’s just what I mean,” she pointed out, more to the girl on her left than to Gerard. “See, everyone I talk to says they got a 3.5, so I am wondering, did Lee even give any 4.0s? I can’t find a single person who got one!”

“I heard the college won’t let her give 4.0s since she tried to give them to every kid in a class once. They’re really cracking down on grade inflation around here.” Gerard mentally kicked himself for sounding lame.

“I heard that too,” Not-Betty pouted, like an intransigent baby. “And it makes me mad because some people in that class really did deserve 4.0s. I probably didn’t, since I know I bombed the final. But some people, like you, I mean, you really deserved it!” Actually, she barely remembered him at all. But he looked familiar, and she had a vague association — probably because she was confusing him with someone else — that he was intelligent.

He blushed. “I don’t know about that, my final paper wasn’t very good.”

“I’m sure it was,” she grinned, noticing for the first time the ocean-blue hue of his glasses-obscured eyes. Close to the pupil, they were like the deepest part of the ocean, near the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, but further away, near the whites of his eyes, they were the color of Caribbean waters. Oh, how Not-Betty longed for a white-sandy beach in Barbados!

As his flush deepened, he began to thank her for the compliment, but was cut off by Dr. Teasdale bringing the first class to order.

Immediately the professor had her twenty-three apprehensive students count off into small “collaborative learning” groups, and just as quickly Not-Betty moved her desk so she and Gerard would end up in the same group. Her mind manipulated that way; she was just as quick to decide she liked someone as she was to dismiss the next person, and she could usually arrange to be in contact with the people she liked and avoid those she did not. Years practicing the avoidance of her high school tormentors made her quite skilled, in fact. She was thus pleased, though not surprised, when her spur-of-the-moment planning resulted in her sitting across a table from the oblivious Mr. Chevrolet, just as she had intended.

This intuition proved to be a stroke of genius for Not-Betty, who found Gerard to more than live up to her ideal of a “collaborative learning” group member. He almost always did the assigned readings, while she often only had time to look them over briefly between part-time jobs. He was witty in his textual criticisms, lightening the atmosphere since she had a tendency of being too serious. She relished the challenge of deciphering his often complex and confusing thought processes, and he appreciated her ability to do so.

Mike Duke, a thick-eyebrowed grunt with a pleasant disposition and keen intuition, couldn’t always keep up with his partners intellectually, but rounded out the perfect group with pointed questions and “group recorder” duties. And, as a dual-degree student with the School of Journalism, he rather enjoyed manipulating their fascinating dialogues into notes submitted for a grade.

Meanwhile, Not-Betty increasingly found herself falling for Gerard. She listened carefully to everything he said without interruption (a respect she denied most others), and hardly worried about making enemies by voicing objections, since she rarely had any. He even saw things she didn’t, looked at events from a different point of view, and provided insights she had not considered. Adding into this equation that he was terribly charming when he felt comfortable enough to make jokes, and she was not only falling, but falling hard, like a president falling down a flight of steps leading from Air Force One.

Of course, he wasn’t the best-looking guy in the world, even though he was okay looking, at least, and deemed himself handsome enough. His light brown hair was usually hidden beneath a dirty baseball cap or ski hat, depending on the weather. Only his nearly constant and always noticeable blushes tinted his fair complexion, and his nose was just a little bit bigger than the standard size for his otherwise indistinctive oval-shaped face. And he desperately needed a shave. On top of everything, he was at least six feet tall, a height well above Not-Betty's somewhat arbitrary boyfriend limit of 5’8.”

And yet, behind his glasses, he had beautiful eyes, and she regarded them unequivocally as windows to his soul, doors to his inner being, and gaping construction holes to the windows to his soul to the doors to his inner being. At several points, she nearly decided the best way to communicate her attraction would be to pass him a little note saying “you have gorgeous eyes” or “you should leave your baseball hat at home, so I can see your eyes better,” but for all the chutzpah she regularly demonstrated in her classes, for that she never had the nerve.

But beginning with his eyes, Not-Betty grew to admire all those traits of which she had previously been critical: his nose, though somewhat large, gave him character; when he did take off his hat, his hair, though rapidly thinning, looked soft and golden and just long enough for her to run her fingers through; his blushes were absolutely endearing; and his height was not so noticeable, so long as he stayed in his chair.

But the more she felt attracted to him, the more she convinced herself he couldn’t possibly like her back. Why would someone so smart, cute, and funny ever want a short, fat, know-it-all girl like me, she scolded herself. But she always concluded it didn’t hurt to look, and since he seemed (and indeed, was) completely ignorant of her gaze, it was even safe.

So she sat there, right across from him, watching whenever she was certain he was intent on his doodles or note-taking. And she imagined ways she could talk to him, rejecting every option in self-defense. And he never noticed.

*

Not-Betty made her presentation as brief as possible and rejoined her group, desperate not to embarrass herself further in front of her crush. The few times she had glanced in his direction while she was speaking, he had been busy either doodling or taking notes on his legal pad. She couldn’t tell which from the front of the classroom. Oh well, she thought, it’s better he wasn’t looking so maybe he didn’t notice how short I am.

Actually, Gerard had been writing a lengthy response to a note Duke had passed him at the beginning of the presentation. It was something silly about “Not-Betty and Gerard, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.” His first, winsome response was, "Really, Duke? We're in college, are we not?" His much more serious response was a point-by-point listing of all the reasons Duke could not possibly be right about Not-Betty:

1. She’s gorgeous, and she could have her pick of any guys at this school, so why would she want someone like me.
2. She’s brilliant, and she obviously thinks I’m an idiot, look how she’s always correcting my spelling and stuff.
3. We had chem together last year and she never even looked at me.
4. If she looks at me at all, it’s because I’m funny looking, not because she’s attracted to me. I mean, come on.
5. She’s just a nice person, she’s not flirting with me. She’s like that with everyone.
6. I heard she’s a lesbian. I don’t necessarily believe it, but it’s possible she’s hitting on YOU, not me, even though you're also a dude and my best friend, Duke. Shake'n'Bake, right, Duke???
7. You’re just saying she likes me to be mean. I know how you work and I am not going to fall for it.
8. Even if you’re right, if she really knew me…

He was going to make it an even ten points, or even nine, but Not-Betty finished her presentation before he could think of any more. So, to Duke's extremely extreme disappointment, he hurriedly crumpled the note and shoved it into the recesses of his backpack. Maybe he would finish later.

Dr. Teasdale dimmed the lights and began the set of film clips meant to demonstrate unfair portrayals of cultures under colonial rule. As she did so, two gazes wandered from the silvery-lit projection screen, lingered a while on unlikely diversions — a random passer-by in the hall outside, a classmate upsetting a water bottle — then locked each on the other with an intensity suddenly melting away all questions of “why.”

Not-Betty was first to turn her eyes away, smothering hopes of mutual attraction with a list longer than Gerard's of ulterior reasons for his brief attention. But the "why not" continued to run through her mind, and when she looked back up from the neat, tiny notes she had taken, his gaze had not wavered, partially because he had thought it was a best-two-out-of-three staring contest.

Without a word, he folded a small scrap of paper into an imperfect triangle and flicked it, football-style, with his index finger to her side of the table. He was a natural at football, after all.

With significant apprehension, Not-Betty un-compacted the note and read its dire though barely legible message —

“good presentation”

— followed by a malformed though lovable smiley face.

It was dumb. But somehow at that moment it seemed to be the best compliment she had ever received, and her face melted into a giddy grin. Taking her lucky black pen in hand, she neatly printed her reply —

“Thanks. I don’t suppose you’d like to get coffee or something sometime?”

— to which he responded,

“Why not.”