It was the first semester of my senior year in college, shortly after I'd returned to school following Thanksgiving, when the "English girls" showed up in my hometown. They'd actually probably been there for a bit already but they'd apparently discovered our favorite watering hole so everyone I knew who was still hanging out there was suddenly talking about them. They were all working locally as nannies and, the more I heard about them, the more eager I was getting to meet them. I was only about 50 miles away at school and some friends had encouraged me to take at least a weekend to come back and meet them but the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas were leading up to finals and I could not afford even a weekend back home. I would have about six weeks off for winter break so I figured there would be plenty of time to meet them then and there was no risk of a distraction from my finals.
When I finally ended up at the bar on the same night that they were all there, it became clear almost immediately that they had absolutely zero interest in me. I was introduced to each of them and the response was the same from all of them even before I had an opportunity to try to engage them in conversation. Describing it as utter indifference was probably overly kind; I was pretty much persona non grata. I was surprised, not because I expected any one of them to suddenly become smitten with me, but I had at least expected them to be polite and I didn't even get that. I wasn't the only one, of course; as I sat off to the side with a few friends, I watched plenty of guys getting shot down but there were also a few who, like me, got a reaction that suggested that they weren't worthy of even a response.
None of my friends ended up getting anywhere with any of the English girls, though they at least were acknowledged, so we went on with our lives, did our thing, and I enjoyed my winter break anyway. I'm sure it helped to some extent that there were plenty of foreign students back at school so it wasn't like someone from another country was as "exotic" to me as they were back in my hometown. Everybody had talked these girls up so much that I really thought that they were going to be super fun and the life of the party. As it turned out, they were just the center of attention and it was both giving them egos and continuing to feed them. It wasn't the first time, and wouldn't be the last time, that I was rejected but I'd learned to just move on. I was by no means a ladies' man back at school but I did just fine, thank you very much. I wouldn't say that I was eager to get back to school as the holidays passed, but I also wasn't dreading it. Like Harry Potter finding his real family at Hogwarts, I felt more accepted and surrounded by people who cared about me when I was off at school.
The next time I was back home was over spring break a couple of months later and, when I stopped in at the bar, I was stunned by my reception. The English girls who didn't even have the time of day for me over winter break not only all greeted me, but they actually knew my name. One-by-one they asked how I was or how my semester was going or something until one of them, Katrina, led me off to the side. I had no idea what was going on but it didn't take long to figure it out. There was a cute young lady sitting by herself at a table way off to the side, away from the action. Katrina led me to the table and introduced me to her cousin, Fran, who was visiting for a couple of weeks. Fran smiled and was much more pleasant than any of the rest of them had been upon meeting me for the first time so, when Katrina encouraged it, I joined her at the table. Katrina even went off to get me a beer, then left the two of us alone.
Naturally, I was a little cautious because I felt like I was being set up while Fran was polite but not exactly chatty. Once I realized the other shoe was not going to drop, I started making more of an effort to get her talking and she did end up responding. It didn't take long to figure out that she was apparently a big nerd just like I was, which explained why it seemed like Katrina wasn't sure what to do with her. As it all became clearer to both of us, the conversation really began to flow and we were starting to joke about which of us was a bigger nerd. I thought being on the verge of graduating with a degree in engineering from Columbia University might give me the edge but it actually got Fran really animated and excited to hear all about it. The more I told her, about both the school and campus and my classes, the more she seemed to want to hear. Finally, I just asked if she'd be interested in visiting campus with me. I thought she was going to pee herself.
When Katrina came over to tell us how she just knew we were going to hit it off, Fran asked if Katrina would mind if she visited me at Columbia before she had to go home. Katrina's look immediately went from arrogance to relief as she unequivocally gave her permission.
"That didn't take much convincing," I noted, once Katrina had walked away.
"She has no idea what to do with me," Fran explained, "My mum and her mum decided it would be good fun for me to visit her but we're just so different. She's not interested in doing what I want to while I'm here, even though it's just a short visit. Did you catch how relieved she looked that she'd be getting rid of me?"
"Well, what if we do this then," I started, having an idea, "we head into the city on Friday then we'll have the entire weekend to see the sights and on Monday you can join me in a couple of classes before you come back. Katrina would be free of you for more than two days and you'll get to see more than you would with her. Of course it'd mean staying over in my dorm but we can figure something out."
I thought she was going to burst with excitement just based on how her smile kept getting wider and her eyes brighter. She never even flinched at the suggestion of staying over in my dorm but I think it just may not have completely registered as she was thinking about everything else. I knew my family wasn't going to give a crap if I headed back on Friday rather than Sunday and we'd end up with the campus being a bit less busy to begin with then get back to full capacity before she had to leave. Rather than go back to Katrina with the new plan, we continued to work out the details and she planned to discuss it with her later but didn't expect any resistance. I suggested that Katrina could talk to just about anybody in that bar if she needed any character references for me. We talked about all of the places that she wanted to visit while we were in New York, so I was making a mental list of both those and the places that I wanted to show her.
Because this was back in the 90s, we didn't exchange cell numbers or social media information because those things didn't exist. What we did was exchange landline phone numbers and agreed that she'd call me once she had Katrina's blessing then we'd talk about anything else either of us needed to know before Friday. I wasn't smitten with Fran at that point though I did feel a definite connection, maybe in part because she definitely felt like my intellectual equal. I'm not saying that I was a super genius but even my friends would refer to me as the smart one, although being at Columbia I quite often felt like the dumb one. With Fran, it just felt like we were communicating on the same level and I have no doubt that was not the case for her with Katrina and her friends.
No surprise but Katrina seemed almost relieved to be rid of Fran (or "shot of" her, as Fran said) for not just an afternoon but for a few days. She even offered to drive us to the train station, maybe to make sure that Fran actually left. Fran really enjoyed the train ride into Manhattan, especially when the skyline came into view, though she was also pretty fascinated by the New Jersey suburbs. She was a bit less impressed by the subway from Penn Station up to Columbia, mostly the stations more so than the cars, which were actually pretty clean. When we finally returned to the surface, I made sure that we came up the stairs the put us right at the gates on College Walk. I thought she might faint just from being there so I gave her a minute to take it in then promised her a tour of the campus once we'd dropped off our bags in my dorm room.
