My Mom Is Spoiled

This is why I don't have a boyfriend (at seventeen years and two months of age):

A boy asks me to dance. (I will never, ever, over my dead body ever, ask a boy to dance. Because I'm sexist that way.) I smile and say yes. We wander over to the portion of the floor where the music is too loud to hear properly and start shuffling around in a circle. (Either none of the boys can dance or they all think that girls can't dance because it's always the shuffle-in-a-circle routine.) We exchange names and vital statistics, which can burn at least two minutes since we have to repeat ourselves more than once. (Loud music, like I said.) Then we stare past each other's shoulders. Then he asks me what I do in my free time. (After making my schedule yesterday, my new plan is to say "Free time? What's that again?") I say that I like to read, or that I write, one of those. He says, oh, that's interesting, in the tone of voice you would use to say "Why on earth would you do that? Are you even human?" Then I ask him what he does in his free time. He explains that he plays soccer, or football, or hockey, or baseball, or basketball. I say, "Oh, that's cool," in the tone of voice that means "I have no clue what the rules are for that but I don't think I care so I'm not going to ask and anyway, thank heaven, the song is ending." And then he thanks me for the dance and I thank him and we hurry away from each other.

In three years of going to dances, I have only once met someone who thought that writing was interesting enough to have a conversation about it. And he was five, six years older than me. This is why I have no interest in dating. And the Teacher doesn't mind because she not so secretly hopes that I'll be out of her house before I start dating so that it won't be her problem.