TMI from Students: Part One

The first of two funny stories I've been meaning to post, collected from the first four weeks of this semester:

1) One of our English majors (someone I don't know all that well at all, although we've had a number of friendly conversations) stops by my office to get a registration form for the upcoming conference. "I'm going home this weekend and I'm going to ask my parents for the money. I am trying to keep busy since I'm going through a bad break-up."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that," I say. But I didn't want any more details. I try to stay way the heck away from students' relationship problems--especially if I hardly know the student.

"Yeah, well, lots of people know about it," she goes on. "I keep talking about it." And she's kind of laughing and loud and not at all private about any of this.

"Oh. I see." And I'm thinking, "please don't say any more."

"Well, it's just because of the way he broke up with me."

I have to say, this piqued my interest, if only a bit. Plus, I was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable and felt the need to make a joke. (Yeah, I am one of those people.) So I say, "What, did he send you a text or something? Break up with your voicemail?"

"No--he told me he was gay."

I don't even miss a beat here: "Well, then, sweetheart," (where the heck did the "sweetheart" come from? I dunno...), "you couldn't have done a thing about that."

"But you see," she says (as I am thinking, "Really, we're not done yet?"), "he's not. He just said that. He doesn't go to this school, but I asked a friend goes to his school, 'Okay--tell me the name of the guy he's seeing' and my friend says, 'He's not seeing a guy. He's seeing a girl.'"

My response? A loud burst of uncomfortable laughter followed by, "Well, I sure am sorry about that, but you don't need him." That's my girl-power/feminist refrain to any girl who gets dumped.

Some more awkward conversation followed, but really only awkward in my perception--which only made it more awkward for me. The girl was fine with all of this--telling someone she barely knows that essentially her boyfriend would rather have her think he was gay than just tell her he wanted to break up with her. If he worried she would be the type who just wouldn't go away, then I've got to hand it to the guy: that's a pretty smart strategy. Too bad she's got an informant at his school.