It's Possible That I'm Overthinking This

Well, I went back and forth about what to do about ol' LoveGreg. Your comments were very helpful, and by "helpful," I mean "evilly amusing." I composed various replies in my head, ranging from very-polite-and-likely-to-send to downright-mean-and-unlikely-to-send. I thought about just blocking him and forfeiting any future potential blog fodder, as well as failing to Teach Him A Lesson (I'm assuming that Facebook doesn't notify the other party they've been blocked...anyone know if this is correct?). Seeking further inspiration, I opened my inbox and noted that his profile picture had been changed from Ed Burns back to LoveGreg. So I checked out his page--well, what the privacy settings would allow me to see, anyway, and was momentarily filled with doubt. You can see the pages of which he is a fan, and...they gave me pause. The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Straight Alliance. The local ACLU. Lots of theatre companies. Eddie Izzard.

He...he likes Glee, people.

Suddenly I was flummoxed, seeing him as a real person instead of just the twerp from my memory. LoveGreg wasn't popular in high school, either (have I mentioned that I was not? I wasn't. We'll get to that another day); in fact, he was roundly teased for being a male soprano, among other things. Maybe I'm overreacting about this whole photo-in-the-shower thing. I mean, he didn't act alone, and perhaps that was his desperate attempt to get in good with the older, cool guys. (And it should be noted here that this was a choir field trip, so "cool" is absolutely relative.) What if he was just trying to avoid being a Charles Wu?

I worked myself up into quite the guilty froth over this, but eventually came back to these points:

1) I haven't actually done anything to him. I've ignored his e-mails, but clearly that hasn't damaged his confidence at all. Ahem.

2) Even if all of the above is true, that doesn't mean I have to like him or even want to get to know him. I can forgive him for what he did and still want to clap my hands briskly to dismiss him. And that's OK, too.

So, for now, I've decided to continue to ignore his e-mails. My plan isn't to block him yet, though, because a) while he is being creepy, I'm not feeling threatened or even bothered by these e-mails. Incredulous, yes, but not truly annoyed, and b) as Naptime pointed out, I am a bit curious just to see how far he'll go. Does he, in fact, have some sort of spreadsheet of everyone he ever knew (or, hopefully not, everyone he ever snapped a picture of in the shower against their will, speaking of creepy)? I mean, there is a certain ambiguity to the language. There's nothing about me at all, only about him, so he could just be sending these out periodically to anyone and everyone. He does have something like 892 "friends" on Facebook, so it seems like he is in the habit of...collecting people.

I'm...not making him sound less creepy, am I?

(As a side note, Naptime mentioned timing how long a telemarketer would hold before finally hanging up. I have a friend who has elevated this pastime into a fine art. She actually looks forward to telemarketers calling so that she can say things like, "You know, I'd really like to hear this, but he's starting to come to and if those ropes come loose, there's gonna be trouble." She also pretends to be a little kid: "Hello?" "Hi, can I talk to--" "Hello?" "Yes, I'm looking for--" "Hello?" Or she holds the phone up for her dogs to sniff enthusiastically, or she launches into a monologue about her day. I've seen this myself, but I am also quite confident that she does it whether or not there are witnesses.)

Anyway, I've decided for now to maintain the status quo. He may well be a reformed, non-shower-invading upright citizen now, one who supports the arts and rescues injured kittens on his days off from working at the orphanage. Meh. I still have no interest in knowing him, not when there are people like you all, people who write brilliantly with wit and pathos and charm (as opposed to with creepy over-familiarity and poor comma usage) who I could be getting to know instead. But I will put to rest the fantasy of writing a nasty, guilt-inducing smackdown letter in reply.

I still, however, reserve the right to use my sister's. Just in case.