One can imagine what the writer of that is like.
Or, one might prefer not to.
Unlike him, I seldom, if ever, imagine myself as a 13 year old school girl. Although yesterday evening, before heading over to North Beach like I do every Tuesday, I did imagine myself as a crow. The flying part was, probably, the hardest thing about that.
"My inner geek just turned into a 13 year old schoolgirl!"
I really do not know what to make of such a declaration. Logically, the 13 year old schoolgirl is a very distant third party, seeing as she is only his alter ego's alter ego. That he has an inner geek lurking within is already slightly disturbing, but a giggly teenager (he also specified that she was "giggling") hiding inside the geek is far, far worse.
He's a pipesmoker, but he has issues.
If he had merely said that he, but not his inner geek, had become like a thirteen year old schoolgirl (why a 'schoolgirl'?), it would have cocked an eyebrow plenty. Now, both of the eyebrows are tensely erect.
And poised for flight.
I'm not sure that other pipe smokers can be comfortable with any of this.
Most of us shy firmly away from thirteen year old schoolgirls.
We've read enough literature to know the dangers.
Even if we've never met any live.
Romeo And Juliette is as good an illustration of the danger of thirteen year old girls as anything. A three day hormonal crush resulting in several brutal murders, and priestly meddling ending in a double suicide.
Far better a thirty one year old than Juliette.
Please, get rid of the inner child.
She'll ruin your life.
At the age when I became a pipe smoker, there were many thirteen year old schoolgirls whom I thought quite charming indeed, and it is highly likely that at opportune times they giggled, though I cannot remember that. But in those years, pipes and fine tobacco were well within reach ("do-able") whereas my classmates seemed entirely off-limits.
Had it been otherwise, I probably still would have ended up smoking pipes, seeing as when I was a teenager I always treated young ladies as equal albeit disturbingly different, and never asked anyone out on a date.
Everything I had read up to that point did not prepare me for dealing with the other gender in anything even remotely approaching a realistic fashion. Not my favourite children's books, and certainly nothing by Shakespeare.
Absolutely zip diddly in Chaucer, Piers Plowman, Beowulf, or Hengist, nor The Pearl Manuscript, Elegast, and Parsifal. And let's just say that Vladimir Nabokov, even at his very sanest, provided totally useless road maps.
Saki, Kipling, and Georges Simenon were no help either.
Science Fiction? Hah! Forgeddaboutit!
Asterix and Obelix?
Nope.
If I had been relying on any of that stuff, or even been looking for clues, the results would have been frightening. Good thing I always read for mental stimulation rather than practical instruction.
It's probably a pity that my mother did not allow a television into the house, and consequently I had a lot of catching up to do when I came back to the United States.
I've been smoking a pipe since I was fourteen. And thinking about girls for nearly as long. But never, even in my wildest moments, have I considered the giggly teenager within.
I'm rather jealous. She sounds like fun.
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