THE RETURN

...of Guest Post Through Paraphrase!

Seriously though, my friends have all of these funny ideas and stories. But in the end it's always, "Hey, you should put this on your blog!" So here we go:

My friend (let me emphasize, my FRIEND, not me...you'll see why in a minute) has this friend that she's known since they were preschoolers in Sunday School. And because they are sort of trapped in a small town with few cool people to hang out with, they have been spending some time together at parties and such - I think she dog-sat for his parents while they were out of town too - little stuff like that.

So the other night following a margarita-themed birthday party, they were hanging out and visiting. He was telling some story about giving blood, and my friend is pretty grossed out by normal needles, much less big huge needles to funnel blood out of one's arm. So she was squirming and cringing and pleading for the story to be over, and he reached over and grabbed her hand. At this point, you could imagine it was a comforting, friendly hand grab, meant to reassure her that life would go on once the needle story was over. But then the topic changed to lighter things, and he kept holding her hand. And as my friend would tell you, she is quite the hand-talker - there is much waving and gesturing and such - so at points she would break free, but when she was done, he would grab her hand again. She was puzzled by all of this, and finally said to him, "Hey, it's kind of funny how you grabbed my hand to comfort me, but then you just kept right on holding it." In other words, "Look, dude, what exactly are you trying to do here?" And he sort of mumbled this, "yeah well, I just wanted to hold it...mmph...er...yeah" and continued to hold her hand.

Now this guy is a little on the goofy, artsy, emotionally-connected side of things, so the initial hand-hold could be overlooked...but the continuation? So strange. Finally she got up to leave, taking her hand with her. And that was the end of the hand-holding. But not the end of the puzzlement. What exactly was he going for there? Was he going to put on some moves? Was he just seeking the comfort of another hand? We may never know.