As much as I have grown to respect certain greeting card holidays (i.e, very little), I’ve decided not to do a mushy mother’s day post.  For one, my mother doesn’t read my blog — and I’d like to keep it that way!  And, for two … well, I don’t have a two.  I had a blog post topic thought and it wasn’t about mother’s day, so here’s me saying: “Hi!  This post isn’t about mother’s day!”

If you’re my friend on Facebook, you caught the Twitter version of this earlier this week (yes, thanks to the wonder of Facebook applications, those things do go together), but here’s the longer version.

Students in certain social science fields are lacking in social skills.  The inability of people who teach or study history beyond a certain level to hold a “normal” conversation is legendary, for example.  (And we won’t get started on sociologists.)  My friend Christine and I have conversations that start on the topic of, say, chocolate chip cookies and inevitably devolve into something medieval and Arabic.  Christine is currently dating my assistant Kim who is, I dare say, remarkably tolerant of conversations that take left turns into unfamiliar (and, if you’re not reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally interested in them, phenomenally boring) territory.

I am, as usual, setting up the weirdness factor because I want it to be understood that when I refer to the young man who is at the center of this story as “weird” that I really mean it.  I know weird.  And this kid is weird.

He first showed up in the fall.  My office opens onto a reading room with a table where students occasionally turn up, books in hand, to study.  Many times, the students aren’t quite that interested in studying, and so conversations take place that aren’t entirely about academic topics (although, thank heaven, we’re not at the point of American Idol recaps).

He was really quiet for a while.  He’s tall, lanky, and of that complexion that could be anything from Latino to Pakistani. He’s also just … odd.  I’ve learned that it’s better to say hello nonverbally.  Actually saying Hello can result in this:

Me: “Hello.”
Him: “Do you think that God can make a rock so big that He can’t move it?”

One day, Christine was sitting in my office ranting about the amount of reading she has to do for her comps, and he appeared in the doorway with a question about Islamic theology.

For the record, Christine and I weren’t discussing Islamic theology.  I think we had been discussing the pros and cons of using tape flags (they’re stick and brightly colored, and they don’t move, but you can’t write on them and the librarians yell at you if you turn in a book with one still in it) versus little ripped up pieces of paper (you can write on them and they’re free, but they tend to fall out and get lost — also, they’re all the same color) to mark pages in books.

He’d overheard us talking and decided to come and ask whether we thought biographies of the Prophet Muhammad are reliable, all of which, it eventually transpired, came down to the fact that he’s uncomfortable with the fact that he (the Prophet, not Weird Guy) married Aisha bint Abu Bakr when she was 9.  (Even odder was that he seemed much more comfortable with the situation when we pointed out that, according to the sources, the marriage wasn’t consummated until she was 11.)

How we got to this from tape flags is beyond me.

We have another student–a graduate student–who, in the words of our now departed Front Desk Diva, “needs to learn how to use her inside voice.”  She’s also incredibly repetitive.  Because she repeats herself.  She’s totally repetitive.  Did I mention that she’s repetitive?  OK.

(And, for the record, that’s exactly the *kind* of repetition we’re talking about.)

One day weird undergrad boy met weird graduate student girl, and … it was like long lost soul mates finding each other.  It happened in the reading room, and Kim and I sent each other furtive, fast IMs.

Me: “Are they even having the same conversation?”
Kim: “I don’t think so, but they seem to be communicating perfectly.”

I realized after many, many weeks that I didn’t know Weird Guy’s name, so I started referring to him as the male version of Weird Girl: to whit, as Boy Aida.  (Aida isn’t her real name.  I’m not that dumb, people.)

It’s stuck.  Other people in the office now refer to him as Boy Aida.

A couple of weeks ago, someone came in after hours and used the kitchen to make … well, I don’t know what exactly, but there were a couple of frying pans with old, used oil in them, and the smell that whatever had been frying hadn’t been removed from the pan before it burnt.  La Lisa, who takes care of the kitchen ( it’s not actually her job — she just does it because she can’t stand messes) left the pans in there for two days before finally breaking down and washing them.

Over time, it transpired that Boy Aida had used them to make himself a snack before his evening class.  “Oh,” he said.  “I thought the janitors washed them,” he said when Lisa encountered him using the pans again and asked if he wouldn’t mind washing them once he was done.

But I digress.

The point of this story is to set up the following, perfect snapshot.  Earlier this week, there had been a function at which food was catered.  As is usual, there were leftovers, and they went in the fridge with a sign: “Help yourself.”

Around 2 in the afternoon, I walked into the kitchen and Boy Aida was in there.  According to my own set protocol, I chose to greet him nonverbally, grabbed the soda I had in the fridge and was turning to leave when I noticed that Boy Aida was holding the bottle of Sriracha hot sauce that has been in the fridge since the late Mesozoic Era.  Because I, myself, have been known to use it on the blander food items I bring from home, I looked to see what he was eating it with.

And, on the counter, I saw a lone chocolate chip cookie–a veteran of the catered function.

As I watched in horror and fascination, Boy Aida twisted the green cap on the bottle and squeezed out a remarkably ample amount of the bright orange/red purée of fresh red jalapeños, garlic powder, sugar, salt and vinegar on top of the cookie, with its deep brown chocolate chips and a smattering of powdered sugar.

Artistically, it was a beautiful sight.  I cannot say, however, that when he put the bottle down and picked up the cookie that I was able to watch him put it in his mouth and report on the reaction on his face because my stomach twisted at the mere thought and I hurried out of the kitchen.

I enjoy spicy/sweet tastes in combination but … yuck.

Why does this post go with mother’s day?  It doesn’t.  But, let me helpfully suggest that if your mother never put Sriracha hot sauce on a chocolate chip cookie, she was one helluva good cook.