im a baboon's ass

okay, so today i made a complete ass of myself in class, today.

i was in my fiction workshop and we were work-shopping a classmate's story. I really enjoyed the story. Briefly, it dealt with a man, somewhat of a recluse, who accidentally wandered into the wrong house. the resident was on vacation and the man was fascinated by her grand piano. he eventually started sleeping there until she returned. he spent a lot of time fixing up the piano and cleaning her house. while he was there he brought over his cat and let it play around with him. that is a very unjustly summary to a wonderful story.

so, at the beginning of the class, we went around the group and spoke about what we really enjoyed about the story. When it got to me, i went off on a tangent about how much i appreciated the consistency in representing the man's disturbed childhood and his reliance on his imaginary friend throuhgout the story. Well, apparently there was no imaginary friend. it was a cat. a real one. Turns out, for whatever frickin reason, i read the story, 3+ times, and it never occurred to me that the cat was real. though everyone else did. So i was going on in class about this imaginary friend that was only imaginary in my own head. Very humbling experience for a graduate level fiction workshop. the biggest problem was that all my comments on her paper, as well as my 1 page written response all dealt with her successful inclusion of an imaginary friend in the story. i get this sick feeling that she is back home now, reading my responses, in tears of laughter.

the problem was that last thursday i was out with some friends and i asked one of them (who was in my class) about the stories, as i hadn't read them yet. he remarked that one of them was dealt with magic realism. for whatever reason, i just assumed it was this particular story and after 3 reads, never thought, even for a second, that the cat was real. apparently, my classmate was talking about something else.

my the majority of my embarrassment is due to the fact that i am an english nerd, literary geek, etc., that prides himself on his close reading of texts, and well, i can't deny it. im officially a literature geek.

ahhhhhhh!