On my way to study for my final final at the university's library because I needed a change of pace from my boring dorm room and I wanted to talk to a few people, I braved the humid Missouri afternoon. Just before reaching the library's entrance, I saw her: a woman sitting with her hands clasped over her ears, her facing staring down towards the concrete below. I wondered, was she studying outside for a final or maybe the hand on the other side of her hand was holding a cell phone. I walked around to see what she was doing. She was resting.
I approached her and said hi. Her eyes opened as she responded, a little surprised, I might add. I asked her if she was waiting for a friend, and she said that she had a migraine. I suggested going outside because heat and bright light always made me feel worse when I had a bad headache; she said she'd already taken some ibuprofyn and was expecting the migraine to dissipate soon.
A person was walking his dog, and she cried loudly for its attention. The dog continued along, though. I asked her if she liked dogs. She does, but not small ones. Her reasoning is that small dogs have eye gunk, something I've never noticed before.
I found out she was an advertising major in the school of journalism, and she was good with languages. She claimed her syntax and pronunciation in Spanish were near perfection, but her vocabulary needed some work still. When I related to her that I could write French much more fluently than I could speak it, noting that I had a tendency to pause frequently when speaking French, she noted that similarity with her for Spanish and English, saying she was not an "impulsive speaker." Earlier she had said the dog didn't stop when she tried to get its attention because of the environmental stimuli, and she mentioned something about liking quiet, so I put two and two together: She was a definite left brainer--like me.
She had an impressive vocabulary, an aptitude for languages, and a somewhat introverted and perfectionistic personality as well as less facial expression and voice intonation than more extraverted women. This is the stuff left brainers are made of. I'm not sure she even realized I was kind of flirting with her. I said I'd give her my cell phone number, but she said that "wouldn't help" her since she was staying in town for a month before going abroad to Spain for three weeks and I'd be going home in St. Louis over the summer. We talked a little more, and I mentioned some of my plans for the summer. I asked again, and this time we did exchange telephone numbers.
I'm not saying she and I will be dating or anything like that or even necessarily becoming friends. I'm glad, though, to have met a fellow extreme left brainer, as opposed to the only moderately left-brained one usually finds.
As an aside, later, when I went into the library itself to study, I met another girl who was a definite right brainer--to the point of manifesting some signs of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. It's kind of funny in a way: the left-brain extreme immediately followed by the right-brain extreme.
13 May 2005, 12:13 am
