bob the builder and evolution
December 08, 2006, 9:03 pm

It started happening in early November. I noticed some awkward but adoring glances, and I was visited in my cubicle more than usual.

I cemented it in my head when at the Party At Pete's: Poker, Alcohol, Sausage, he asked in front of everyone if I would join him at the Ravens vs. Atlanta game the next day.

Any guy worth his salt knows the way to my heart is through football and the prospect of having Ray Lewis flick his sweat on me.

It was Thanksgiving-ish, and there were long talks and silly giggles, and phone calls.

It was last week, and there was a LONG night at the bar, and I didn't notice the Ravens had lost because we were going to the Diner and holding hands, and being cuddly.

Then there's the text-messaging, and I am a fourteen year old girl with her older sister's hand-me-down cell phone feverishly telling her crush goodnight in code I don't understand. I'm continually cleaning out my inbox, but I'm hanging on to more and more messages because in some part of my head I'm trying to catalogue the beginning of this...adorable flirtation.

There have been two movies this week and plans for a third, and while I've been an ethical girl when it comes to the Secret Snowflake Gods in the past, this year I gave myself a treat: him.

It's nothing serious with Bob the Builder, but damn it's nice to be timidly squee around the holidays, and with my defunct anniversary with Thumper on the horizon and my careful plodding through the remains of my smoke-lodged clothes from his house and the courage to finally purge my photo collage of some of our pictures, I have been far more healed and at peace with things than I think I should be for a while now, and it makes me sad.

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Sunday, I'm puttering around the kitchen while Dad is reading the paper and a thought strikes me: that Evolution book.

"Dad?"
"Yes?"
"Remember when I was in 2nd grade, and Uncle George gave me that book on Evolution? And I thought it was the coolest thing I ever read and had seen and read it obsessively every day?"
"Yes."
"Were you ever upset about that? I mean, that he gave it to me, or that I liked it so much?"
"Jessica, your intellectual curiosity has always meant more to me than any religion."
"Thanks, Dad."