Tell Me Why: A Cold Case Nobody Asked Me To Solve

In typical overthinking fashion, I can’t help but contemplate the reasons why her son won’t look me in the face. And specifically why he stopped the weird cheek press greeting. I know it was hella awkward, and I wanted it to stop. But without me actually verbalizing that it shouldn’t be happening in the first place, it is mildly aggravating that I don’t have a reason for why it ended after it began. I am full of contradictions. Welcome to my complicated brain. 

I had a book at home when I was in elementary school titled: Tell Me Why. It was a book that contained answers to hundreds of questions asked by children on all sorts of topics. For an inquisitive mind like my own, the book scratched an itch. There should be a version for me as an adult because I am always full of questions. The latest question plaguing me whenever I happen to be with the council president is: Why and when did her son decide that he did not or should not continue to greet me with the awkward cheek press? 

I can only point to the last day it took place. The day of the incident, when I almost knocked his glasses off his face. First of all, I don’t think I have seen him wearing glasses aside from that one day. Does he wear contacts the rest of the time? Maybe I damaged them somehow? Unknown.

The whole event is just awkwardness central, embarrassing to recollect. Why did he decide that he should greet me with an awkward cheek press? Because when I started turning up at her house, there was nothing. Does it matter that I don’t remember what I was wearing on that fateful day? In typical traumatic brain fashion, I have already forgotten key points of that day, only recalling the seconds before he leaned down and the instant that I began to turn in my seat towards him. It is like scenes from a badly edited movie. A really short film.

There was no ceremony to the cheek press starting. There should have been one to its ending. Because the absence of the action is more obvious to me now than the act ever was. I wouldn’t care so much had it not been a thing revoked without explanation. And more importantly, why do I need an explanation? Truth is, I just don’t like not knowing. However, I’m also not going to directly ask because I don’t need to expose the bizarre depths my mind gets to for no reason at all. And on the inside, I know I am overthinking this, and no one else is obsessing over this point the way I seem to do every time I am over her house.

The only good thing is that other than this missing interaction, there is no lingering limerence. There is no mysterious fascination. I just need to know what, specifically, was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back for him to finally decide that greeting me in this way was either a) unnecessary, b) inappropriate, or c) all of the above.