Ro-more trouble than it’s worth-mance

Part Three

In the last two parts of Ro-more trouble than it’s worth-mance, I have talked about two romantic disasters. In this third and last part in this series however, I want to talk about when romance (in its conventional sense) goes O so totally, perfectly, Hollywoodily right and exactly what that leads to in Shirin’s world.

Picture this if you may: a lovely summer’s day in a beautiful meadow/forest (well like a meadow with a mini forest just behind it) birds tweeting, blue skies with a few little white fluffy clouds, sun; shining warm, a breeze blowing; just about strong enough to make the daisies and the buttercups of the meadow dance to the rhythm of the forest and the birds. O how glorious it was. And there we were; my friend and I walking through meadow on our way to the forest.
I was babbling on about this and that. My friend was not saying much and looked as though he had something on his mind. I kept thinking he was getting flustered because it was too hot and he had this big coat on but he kept saying he was ok.

This is many years ago by the way and this boy was a good friend of mine that I got on with really well. I can’t remember if I’d had a crush on him right from the start or if I had developed the crush after we had been friends for a while but what I’m certain of is that I was a bit angry with myself at the time because I had done it again; I had gone and got too pally with this guy and again I was finding myself in that really awkward situation where I fancied my “friend” and was at a constant struggle with myself about whether to tell him or not. ‘What if he doesn’t feel that way about me? The thing is I don’t want to lose this friendship and if I say anything to him about that then we can’t really stay friends like this anymore. Maybe I’ll say something and if he looks too shocked I’ll pretend I was joking. No that’s silly. But I have to do something…or maybe not. No but I think I have to say something. Ok, if that flying pigeon lands on the ground before I finish counting to ten, then I’ll tell him. 1, 2, 3, 4… o-ok, I guess I’ll have to tell him then. Right then, here we go. Hang on a minute; is that a pigeon or a woodpigeon?’
You get the picture I’m sure. It was just so difficult and I didn’t know what to do.

Back to that day now. As the meadow ended and we entered the forest, my friend suddenly pulled his hands out of his big coat’s pockets and produced a bottle of wine and two glasses.
You would think any normal person that fancied her friend and was constantly thinking to herself if he liked her as well or not, would take one look at her friend who had kept his big coat on under the sun and had walked for about an hour with his hands in his pockets to stop the glasses from clinking, only to be able to surprise her with a bottle of wine in such an amazingly romantic setting, would quickly put two and two together and work out exactly what was going on. Sadly however, Lady Dumb-dumb here was no normal person. So she took one look at the situation and thought, ‘Wine? But it’s not even noon yet! And it’s so hot as well; I bet I’ll get a migraine. Well at least that explains the big coat but why didn’t he just put it in a carrier bag? I just hope he hasn’t forgotten the bottle opener.’
Of course he hadn’t forgotten the bottle opener but even if he had I’m sure we would have found one in front of us right there on the path. I mean everything else about that day was so absolutely perfect and looked as though someone had arranged every single thing about it from the temperature right down to those tiny purple flowers that had popped up all over the place that I’m sure a bottle opener would somehow have found its way to us too.

Two hours, some wandering around the forest talking about this and that and one bottle of wine later, a bit tipsy and very happy, we made our way back through the gorgeous meadow with me half dancing, half skipping in the front thinking ‘should I tell him should I not’ and my friend walking behind.
Suddenly my arm was grabbed and I was pulled back; gently but firmly. I don’t know if we kissed first and then fell to the ground or if we fell first and then kissed but the next thing I remember is looking up at that perfect blue sky with one little fluffy cloud going across it which I swear momentarily turned into a heart-shape before escaping my viewpoint.
I wish I could tell you exactly what was going on in my head at those moments after the kiss as I stared up at the blue sky but unfortunately there’s nothing to tell as for reasons unbeknown to me, my brain had suddenly stopped working.
I really wanted to say something but due to a very inconvenient brain shutdown, could not think of a single thing to say. Talk about awkward, the poor guy had gone through all that trouble; done all the work so to speak and now I couldn’t even say one little word to him. God only knows what was going on in his head at the time.
It was terrible. It felt like I was doing a movie scene and had forgotten my lines but unfortunately there was no one to shout out ‘Cut’ and then ‘Ro-more trouble than it’s worth-mance, Part 3, Scene 4, Take 2’

I’ve been racking my brain about this for the past ten or eleven years but unfortunately still have not been able to find a logical explanation for what happened to me that day. Was it romance overdose? Some kind of rare brain virus? A mild stroke? Or maybe it was destiny, galloping onto the scene, shouting, ‘What’s going on? Stop everything at once. You can’t do that. She’s not supposed to fall in love with him.’
‘Why the hell not man? It’s all going so perfectly well. Look at this super romantic set we’ve created here; forest, meadow, flowers; yellow, purple and white, blue skies, sun shining warm, heart-shaped clouds, (do you know how long it took me to persuade Cupid to do that for us?) we’ve even brought in the award wining Amazon Birds Orchestra. They’ve been practicing all morning with that cow that does an impression of Barry White, for the grand finale…’
‘I know, I know; I can see you’ve done a lot of work here but I’m sorry; this is not supposed to happen. Look I’ve got her chart over here. She can’t go and fall in love now, it’ll ruin everything.’
‘Let’s have a look’
‘Here’
‘What’ this; August 1996, Makes wrong choice after smartly dressed date slips in…what’s this?’
‘Sorry my handwriting can be a bit hard to read sometimes. Its says ‘…after smartly dressed date slips in cow manure and falls head first into the river.’’
‘Nasty! July 1997, Date ends when she runs off after being attacked by a swan who had taken a liking to her purple trainers! This girl really needs to stay away from rivers.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘July 1998, on a camping holiday in France an Argentinean man named Eduardo DOES WHAT?’
‘Hey, give me that. These are personal. Ok let’s see, some boyfriends, break-ups, la la la…now here we go; September 1999, falls in love with the man with one eyebrow who goes by the name of Kamyar…’
‘Hey doesn’t he look like that guy that played the crazy roommate of Chandler’s in friends and was also in Saving Private Ryan and A Beautiful mind? What’s his face, you know…’
‘Adam Goldberg’
‘Yeah that’s it. Man he really looks like him.’
‘Have you quite finished?’
‘Yes sorry about that. Please do go on. Do they live happily ever after?’
‘Let’s try and sort out this mess you’ve created here first, shall we?’
‘But how?’
‘The only thing I can think of is to restart her brain and hope that she will just get up and walk off without saying a word.’
‘As much as I’d hate to see all this go to waste, I quite like the idea of her and the Adam Goldberg guy so I’m having my fingers crossed that’ll work. Hey maybe I could get the Barry White impressionist cow to sing at their wedding.’
‘You could try but they probably won’t even notice it since they’ll be far too drunk. Plus they will have their wedding at the ninth floor of an apartment building in Tehran; I think you might have a hard time trying to get your cow up there.’
‘Yeah you’re right…hey maybe I could persuade the cow to get into a cage and then sing for them suspended outside the ninth floor window. What do you think?’
‘Sounds like a cunning plan my friend. Good luck with that.’