I don’t have a lot of funny boy stories from back in high school to use as fodder for my YA manuscripts (I was either too shy or too mean to attract their notice–still not sure which) but I do have one gem of a story that I think might be funnier to share with you all.

I think I’ll call it “Why Seventeen-Year-Old Alexandra Thinks Boys Suck”

It was a school break (Thanksgiving, I believe) and the second to last night before school began again. I’d gone to the local coffee shop, equipped with headphones and ipod, to do my maths homework (yes, we had maths homework over the holiday–that was what I got for taking AP Calculus, which I then never used neither to get into college nor once I was in college.) As I was walking up to the coffee shop, there was a group of boys sitting outside at one of the tables.

One guy asked me, “Hey, were you the girl who did Pink Floyd at the Battle of the Bands?”

I said yes, I was, since I had (and had gotten a fair amount of teasing for it, too.) I asked the boy what school he went to, since he clearly didn’t go to mine. He replied that he went to a neighboring school, and then invited me to sit down. I said no, I wanted to get a drink and go inside. He tried to insist that I sit with him and his friends, but I declined and went inside, ordered my coffee, and proceeded to take a table at the back of the shop, put my headphones in, and start my homework.

But lo, not two minutes later, someone takes a seat at my table without asking. I look up and it’s the boy from outside.

He proceeds to ask me, “Why didn’t you come back outside?”

To which I gestured at my calc book. He didn’t seem to get it. Instead, he started asking me questions, which forced me to take my headphones out, lest I appear rude (the irony.) The first question he asked me was how old I thought he was.

I am relatively certain I replied with a face that vaguely resembled this:

I probably threw a number out there, and then he proceeded to tell me he was sixteen. (Gee, couldn’t tell.)

He then picked up my ipod, put one of my earbuds into his ear (ew!) and started scrolling through my songs, all the while keeping up a useless dialogue with me about the bands he found on my ipod. I have to make the point that he bypassed the numerous classic rock albums (including every Floyd album up to The Final Cut) and picked out the random crappy metal bands my ex-boyfriend had added on there, somehow thinking I might want that music (I didn’t.)

I was shy and awkward as a seventeen year old, so it took me a while to muster up the courage to interrupt him, get my ipod back, and say that I had to do my homework. But I got there, and I did it. (Though I think I burned that pair of earbuds.)

However he didn’t go away. He asked what I was doing the next day. I didn’t want to hang out with this dork on the last day of holiday, so I lied and said I was going to the mall (which was over an hour away, since I lived in the middle of nowhere.) He asked me if we could hang out after I got back from the mall. I said no. But he wouldn’t give up, he wanted my phone number and wanted me to take his so that just in case I got back early, we could go see a movie. I thought it would make him go away, so I let him have mine (and I’ve never made that mistake again, I am happy to say.)

The next day, he called me twice and texted me about going to a movie. I didn’t answer, and then later on had to hear from my ex-boyfriend (in a complaining, accusatory way) about this kid who I had apparently “flirted” with, led on, and then ignored at the coffee shop.

My impression of the whole thing?

There was definitely a reason that at seventeen, I was convinced that boys’ brains were actually a combination of cement and already chewed Brussels sprouts.

Sorry it’s not a funnier story. I wasn’t much of a boy-magnet when I was a teenager, so it’s the best story I got.

Also, this has nothing to do with my story but it’s freaking hilarious and cute:

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