Tuesday, January 11, 2005
During my sophomore year, I participated in the training program for an over-the-phone emotional counseling service run by students at my college. I don't think I ever really intended to volunteer for the counseling service proper, but I figured that the training would make me a more effective counselor at math camp. Every Monday night I would show up to an intense training session, where I would listen to the various emotional issues of my fellow trainees for several hours at time. Most of the issues were not very interesting: type A personalities obsessing about their grades, and sorority girls coping with the occasional bouts of guilt that cheating on their boyfriends entailed.
Patty was one the trainers during my last semester of training, a slim Taiwanese-American senior headed for medical school. Near the end of the semester, she picked up on my crush for her, and I guess she found it annoying, since she decided to do something about it. One Monday night, Patty took a group of about 5 trainees aside and gave us examples of "troublesome" issue givers. For each trainee, she pretended to be an uncooperative caller, such as one who simply asked for advice, or one who had called just to chit-chat. When my turn came up, Patty looked me in the eye and started to moan, and in her sexiest voice started to flirt with me. Afterwards, she explained that she was a "perverted caller with a fetish for talking to strangers while masturbating"... but meanwhile my immediate reaction was, of course, to turn beet-red and start stammering like an idiot. The situation was made all the more embarrassing for me because it happened in front of 4 other trainees, all of whom happened to be girls.
I suppose that if not for my crush for Patty, I would have handled the simulated caller calmly and professionally, as counselors were expected to do. But by nailing my ass to the wall and embarrassing me in public I think Patty shot me down in the most humorous and clever way I'd ever seen. Even at the time, I laughed at my own predicament, and it is even more amusing in retrospect. I have to hand it to her that it was both well executed and effective.
I remained on friendly terms with my trainer afterwards, and when she graduated Patty asked me to keep in touch through email. Of course I never did.
Patty was one the trainers during my last semester of training, a slim Taiwanese-American senior headed for medical school. Near the end of the semester, she picked up on my crush for her, and I guess she found it annoying, since she decided to do something about it. One Monday night, Patty took a group of about 5 trainees aside and gave us examples of "troublesome" issue givers. For each trainee, she pretended to be an uncooperative caller, such as one who simply asked for advice, or one who had called just to chit-chat. When my turn came up, Patty looked me in the eye and started to moan, and in her sexiest voice started to flirt with me. Afterwards, she explained that she was a "perverted caller with a fetish for talking to strangers while masturbating"... but meanwhile my immediate reaction was, of course, to turn beet-red and start stammering like an idiot. The situation was made all the more embarrassing for me because it happened in front of 4 other trainees, all of whom happened to be girls.
I suppose that if not for my crush for Patty, I would have handled the simulated caller calmly and professionally, as counselors were expected to do. But by nailing my ass to the wall and embarrassing me in public I think Patty shot me down in the most humorous and clever way I'd ever seen. Even at the time, I laughed at my own predicament, and it is even more amusing in retrospect. I have to hand it to her that it was both well executed and effective.
I remained on friendly terms with my trainer afterwards, and when she graduated Patty asked me to keep in touch through email. Of course I never did.
