By Miss Misery
Correspondent
Disclaimer: This is a satirical piece and does not reflect real individuals or events.
Refreshed from a relaxing spring break, Harper James was eager to return to the business building. However, her excitement had little to do with the next lesson in her BUS200 class; she had instead been anticipating seeing her long-time class crush, Jerry Seinfeld, without the mask covering half of his gorgeous face.
Much to her dismay, though, when Harper re-entered the classroom she could not find her dear Jerry amongst the crowd of newly exposed faces. She recalled his usual seat and narrowed her focus there where her gaze was met by that of a man she did not recognize, yet one who greeted her as though they had long been acquainted.
“Once he opened his mouth, I recognized the voice,” she said. “Oh, how I had hoped the face would be different!”
The source of Harper’s grief?
The weak excuse for a mustache Jerry had kept hidden under his N95 mask all those weeks before.
Harper’s struggle is far from unique as many students have been doing double takes of the classmates they thought they knew. Some neutral, maybe a few positive, but enough negative that CAPS has started a new support group called “For Those Who Don’t Know Who They Thought They Did.”
We somehow obtained legal permission to sit in on these group therapy sessions and write about them.
A forlorn looking young man, who asked to use the pseudonym Bruce Wayne expressed how he had to come to terms with the fact that the girl he had been crushing on was less cute than he expected.
“Her bangs covered most of the top of her face while her mask covered the rest,” he said. “All you could really see were the warm brown eyes, but once the mask was gone and you could make out a whole person, the warmth was gone.”
A girl in the corner audibly gasped upon Bruce’s confession. With tears threatening to pour over and a voice struggling to let out words, she seemed to have her own story to share.
“That was me,” she said. “And I loved you, until I saw the rest of you.” She began to weep and the counselor murmured words of comfort to her while Bruce struggled to process the confession.
Upon leaving the meeting, I felt one question pressing in my mind: why do we only love those whom we will never know?
Disclaimer: This is a satirical piece and does not reflect real individuals or events.
