Jersey Wearing.

At my new school, the football players are a few steps short of gods. What's new?

And kind of like in the old days when a guy would ask a girl to wear his pin, or his ring, at my school, the boys ask the girls if they will wear their jerseys.

Does this happen anywhere else?

Not at my old school, so when I moved here and overheard a girl saying with a huge smile,

"He asked me to wear his jersey!"

I was baffled. I was like, what? Why would you wear that?

But I guess it is a custom or whatever here, and I admit I kinda got caught up in the excitement of maybe getting asked or asking to wear a certain football player's jersey.

I had a few friends who have the attitude, "If you won't ask him I will ask him for you."

Scary. It's almost a threat.

My response to this kind of attitude was, "Do it and I'll kill you." That's not a threat, that's a promise.

So, hopefully most of my friends have kept out of my guy business.

Yes, I'm going somewhere with this.

Today in my last class of the day, I was talking to my friend, who I will not name.

I'll call him Frank.

Anyway, I was talking to him about the football game that's happening tonight and he suggested I bring a huge sign with his number on it, for support. I laughed and said I possibly might, and changed the subject.

Whenever I talk about stuff like that with Frank, my brain goes to pot. You might as well say goodbye to intelligent Emily, cuz she ain't comin' back for a while.

With less than a minute to the bell, Frank looks down at his jersey and says, almost but not quite to himself, "I need to get rid of this..."

(FYI: Every Friday that the football players have a game, they wear their jerseys to school)

And he looks up at me...! And me, being me (shy), and for other reasons probably best kept to myself, I look down and away, as if I didn't give a flying pancake what he did with his jersey.

(Wrongo bongo)

He sort of stood there for a second, fingering the collar of the shirt, as if deciding whether to take it off right then or not, and kind of wandered off a little and next thing I hear is an ecstatic,

"I'd love to wear your jersey!"

Needless to explain... It wasn't me he asked.

But that's ok! I'm not so enraptured that this misfortune totally obliterated my heart and soul, I didn't go crying from the room, and the girl he asked I still think is the cutest thing ever.

Just mild disappointment is all.

What's the big deal anyway? It's a shirt. With a number on it.

Number 22.