Part 1 of My Unlikely Teenage Diagnostician can be found here.
I knew right away that she was not like other girls.
The mischief started slowly. One day, a little tickle on my neck. I thoughtlessly ran my hand down my near shoulder-length hair and across my neck to rub the tingle away.
Oh, the tingle. It goes like this: If something swipes my skin gently, I have a seemingly uncontrollable urge to rub it. It’s as if my skin needs to be wiped clean and reloaded to factory settings. And if for some reason my hands happen to be otherwise occupied, as hands often are, I will continue to feel that stupid little tingle as if a bug landed there and refused to budge. It doesn’t matter…and yet I’ll keep thinking about it. It will distract me. It will feel as if it is calling to me, begging me to reset myself and stubbornly insisting, no matter what important task my hands are attending to, that it will not desist until its demands are met. I try to find a way but there’s nothing I can say to make it stop.
And Abby knew it.
With each passing day, she grew bolder, but was ever so patient and calculated. Another slight touch to my neck. An almost unnoticeable swish of my hair. A gentle puff of air maybe?
Of course, being the sleuth I am, I slowly put the pieces of this ever-so-complex puzzle together. My mind was working in shifts as if my mind had a mind of its own. Finally, with great fanfare (and to Abby’s immense amusement I’m sure), I caught on.
That time then and once again, that weird feeling! I whipped my head around…Aha! A bic pen in the foreground outstretched towards me and, in the background, a playful and completely disarming tight-lipped grin, as if to say, come waste your time with me.
And I remember thinking to myself, “Abby just invited me into her world.”
Part 3 to follow…
Papa Used to Say 