clueless . . .

My darling daughter is a whiz kid. She just sort of thinks outside of the box . . . heck, she lives her life outside of the box. She is my quirky kidlet who rarely sees the forest because the trees are so darn fascinating. She walks to the beat of a different drummer. In high school, she was consumed with doing well . . . both academically and athletically . . . graduated with a 4.2 gpa, co-captain of the track team, second degree black belt . . . consumed to the point that her social life such as it was, really never got off the ground. No time for that particular forest.

But college is a different matter. Whereas before she wasn't quite in command of her quirkiness, she now embraces it. She is flying on her own and doing a damned good job. Still the over achiever, she is carrying 16 credit hours, works 15+ hours a week, chairs her college Relay for Life team and still finds time for her other passion: photography.

So whats missing from this equation? That forest known as boys; the male population. Yes she has male friends. Always has. She actually prefers them to mecurialness of women. I'm talking dates. Boyfriend/girlfriend. She is clueless. So clueless in fact that it continually gets her into trouble. Last week, she gets an email from the boy who does what she does at her school for his own school. Chairs Relay for Life and they both work in the same capacity on their respective campuses. She likes him. Packs up all her RFL stuff and heads over for their meeting. After a few moments of RFL, the conversation takes a totally different tact. Four hours later and he keeps wanting to know what she wants to do. She, confused, replies that she needs to go home and finish studying. He makes a few alternative suggests. She is more confused. She leaves.

She is still confused and rummages through her recall to try and understand what is what here. Finally, five days later, she rereads his email. "Hey you! Call me later. We should get together tonight." Hummm. No mention of RFL. The light bulb goes off. This was a date. A real date. And she had not known. So much for being in the whiz kid department of dating. Not.

And another story. Cute boy where she works. Says, "Let's go out." Clueless replies, "Oh, as friends?" Boy, "Well of course, cough, as friends, cough, absolutely, cough, of course I meant as friends." Finally, clueless' radar kicks in and she thinks possibly he was asking her out on a date, but not totally sure until her friends and her mother clue her in. Truthfully, she only likes him as a friend. All is good.

Now she was dating a nice guy last year. But again until he kissed her after the movies the first night, she hadn't realized it was truly a date. Sigh.

So how can a kid so bright, be missing a fairly essential gene? Usually, girls start to experiment in kindergarten, when Billy has something they want. Billy, doesn't know why he forks over the prize, but fork it over he does. Billy is sunk. Billy never had a chance. Katie, she just reasoned with him and Billy acquiesced. Not the same thing.

But she is starting to see the light. There is a glimmer on the horizon. She will catch on and live happily ever after. Like everything else in her world, she will, at some point in time, excel in this as well.

P.S. Lest you think I tell tales out of school, Katie had creative editing rights. She has this wonderful capacity to giggle at herself. Gotta love this kid.