innocuous

once in awhile my parents will ask me a random question about a girl. i'll be washing dishes when my dad asks something like, "how old is [la-la-la]?" or "what program is [la-la-la] in?" i think they are trying to hint, in a roundabout fashion, at something.

back in high school, i wrote an essay on prearranged marriages (funny how in television/movie/book prearranged marriages, the guy is usually really keen on this and it's the bride-to-be that runs for the hills with the man she truly loves/higher paid actor) and my conclusion was along the lines of "i would be in favour of a prearranged marriage if my parents picked the person that i would have picked." how clever was i back then, eh? i referenced Apu's and Simba and Nala's prearranged marriages and i was advised to stick to the text.

it is in moments like the i'm-pretending-to-not-be-interested questions that i long to become a parent myself. not because i will have opportunity to meddle in someone's life, but because i can then exercise the art of innocuous attention. this is a character trait that i am consciously trying to develop. it is attending and loving someone without him or her really being aware of it. most children do not realize how much their parents do for them, or have done for them, until much later in life when they become parents themselves. where worldly acts of kindness happen because of the possibility of gratitude, i consider a sign of gratitude as a failure for the innocuous attender in subtlety. sure, a word of thanks is nice, but it is so much better knowing that the affected is oblivious.

i went for a walk with a girl once, just around the school, because i wanted to tell her that i liked her but was stalling to formulate thoughts. a truck was heading towards us along the lane to our right while we were on the sidewalk and i saw that we would 'intersect' right at a puddle. as casually as i could, i slipped to her other side in between her and the truck so that i absorbed the ankle-high splash. in hindsight, i probably could have just slowed down and the splash would have fallen ahead of us, but that's not quite as cool.

my parents are very good being innocuously attentive (or i am woefully dense). even though i haven't said anything about it, they seem to be pointing me in a direction that i already intend to go. i don't think they are spying on me. they just know me. of course, they could just be very good at pointing out the glaringly obvious. my mom always tells me to get a drink when i've already pulled out a cup and started pouring.