#can normal people start interacting with me

[the-froschamethyst4]

Chef! Ghost

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Chef! Ghost Headcanons

SFW & NSFW

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SFW

Chef!Ghost who works in a 3 star Michelin Star restaurant and co-owns it

Chef!Ghost was just like Carmen Berzatto from The Bear. Watching YouTube videos on cooking perfect meals and being so precise and accurate with his cooking

Chef!Ghost who gets a bit attached and attracted to one of the waitresses

Chef!Ghost who yells at everyone else including his cooks but is extremely nice to his favorite waitress

"I NEED HANDS! WHERE ARE MY WAITERS!!?" He yells from the kitchen. Some of the customers all looked at the kitchen hearing him yell, waiters and waitresses excuse their selves to head to the back.

"Sorry, had a table that wouldn't let me leave, I was on my way, I promise," she says, coming into the back where he just apologized to her for being loud and rude.

"Yeah, same here," a waiter comes in.

"I EXPECT MORE FROM YOU, YOU'VE BEEN HERE FOR A YEAR AND STILL CAN'T GET A SIMPLE TICKET ORDER RIGHT!!" He yells.

"SHE'S BEEN HERE LONGER THAN ME!" Pointing to Y/n. She just shrugs and heads out.

Chef!Ghost who starts on desserts a bit early, but really he was making it for his favorite waitress.

"I'm looking for my order for table 5?" She comes in asking. "It's been close to 30 minutes," she says. "I thought the ticket times were good?"

"Ask him," Soap points to Simon over his shoulder, who was leaned over the dessert, he noticed Y/n and brought it over to her.

"Sorry for the slow time," he says. He grabs a to-go box and placed it inside and hands it to her. "For your lunch break." He says.

"Thank you...I still need that chicken alfredo for my table."

"It's coming," he says waiting for her to leave. "HEY I NEED THAT FUCKING CHICKEN ALFREDO, WHERE THE HELL IS IT!!?" He yells like his normal self.

Chef!Ghost who liked closing nights, cause sometimes Y/n has to close, Y/n always picked up night shifts cause she liked them, it was surprisingly slow at nights versus the morning or afternoon.

She wipes the tables down and moves the chairs to be on top of the tables, refilling the salt and pepper shakes as she cleans around. She rolls some silverware for the morning people.

"Your here late." Ghost says coming into the main dinning hall.

"I'm just cleaning up."

"Where's Henry?"

"He left early, so it's just me," she says.

"Did you...eat the dessert?"

"I didn't have time to, I didn't even get a break because I was running around doing things, and couldn't get a break," she says.

"Well, it looks like you're done now...want to...eat it?" He asks.

"Now?" She giggles at him.

"Why not? We can clean where we ate."

NSFW

Chef!Ghost who clears off a space in the kitchen, to place Y/n on top of. Spreading her legs, kissing her lips and moving down to her inner thighs. The plus about working here is that waitress were in skirts, honestly easy accuses

Chef!Ghost who now wants to close almost everyday just to be able to have you when no one is around

Chef!Ghost who has pulled Y/n into the walk-in for a quicky, locking it behind them and yelling at anyone who knocks to bother them

Chef!Ghost who likes to wait at the back door for you when you're done with your shift just to take you to the car and have his way with you in his car

Chef!Ghost who makes your favorite lunch and you two eat in the office with the door closed and Simon likes to have his dessert on his desk, her legs spread and seeing his favorite cream on the desk

Chef!Ghost who's birthday was coming up soon, the kitchen was already prepare for the Chef's birthday, but Y/n had came to his home for his early birthday gift

"Hi, my love," he says.

"Happy Birthday." After that small interaction, Y/n was in control with what happened next, her being on top of him with whipped cream on her chest with it slightly falling with the slight bounce. Simon was just a happy chef.

Chef!Ghost who loves your boobs and he makes subtle hints about it. Making desserts and putting cherries on them. When you two are alone he likes to tease you by moving the neck of your shirt to look down.

"Really?"

"I want to see them," he teases.

Chef!Ghost who makes it clear now that you're his, going up behind you during morning meetings and mess with your small apron around your waist, untying it and retying it how he likes it.

Touching your waist to move you out of the way, and gently speaking to you

Never raising his voice at you for any reason

Chef!Ghost when it's Halloween he gets a sneak peak of your custom before going into work

"I like it...the top though?"

"What's wrong with it?"

"It's a little low. Only I...can see these beauty's," he says making his way to your chest cupping your boobs and kissing between them

[torahtot]

you can always tell when someone doesn't have maga men in their life and god it makes me angry.. "if you're nice and compassionate you can be the one woman that makes them realize women aren't mean!" my mom bent over backwards for my dad for 25 fucking years he has plenty of other women kissing his ass and it never changed anything. do you really think that before being radicalized they never knew a single kind woman? they were never friends with a nice girl? alt-right men's problem with women isn't just that they've experienced too many mean women and they need to be shown that women can be nice, it's that they think women are inferior and don't deserve rights and don't understand anything so you can do what you want with them. and it takes a lot more than being nice to show someone that you aren't inferior. this isn't a case of being nice even when it's hard for the sake of deradicalization, it's about spending every fucking interaction with someone trying to get them to see you as a human being with value and a functioning intellect while they just laugh and show you that's never going to happen.

i cannot stress this enough: random women are not just going out and Being Mean to men. ur average guy interacts with plenty of women throughout his life- close women amongst their friends and family, casual interactions etc. most people don't start out being shunned by women, they start out being treated as NORMAL. & when they show their disrespect in normal society, it isn't tolerated, but when they go to alt-right spaces (which they're pushed towards online) they're told they're allowed to be as horrible as they want with no consequences because they're entitled to everything. it isn't "women aren't welcoming and the alt-right is so friendly so i'll become alt-right," it's "women don't let me disrespect them and the alt-right tells me fuck them, do whatever you want, you're entitled to it all" and why would you choose the group where you have to be a normal accountable person when there's a group that will reward you for being a shithead who gives no fucks?

the alt-right can afford to be more friendly and welcoming because they can allow bigotry. this can't work the same way for progressive spaces because we can be as kind & welcoming as possible but at the end of the day we have lines where we have to say "this behavior/speech isn't allowed in this space," and for certain people, that just can't win against a space where you can be as nasty as you want. these posts always end with a disclaimer saying "of course being kind doesnt mean you need to tolerate their bigotries" but what they don't realize and what drives me crazy is that women not tolerating bigotry IS the "women are mean" that radicalized them in the first place. they perceive you pushing back on any bigotry or bullshit as you being a meanie and treating them like they're ontologically evil. the 'kindness' they need to be deradicalized is you letting them walk all over you.

idk what the answer is to deradicalizing them and im sure relationships are part of it but you can be as kind as you want and all it will do is destroy you ime. i cant stand to see people (who have never even successfully deradicalized any man by being nice btw they always speak in hypotheticals and not from experience) double down on telling women to do things that will see no results and only hurt them, especially when any woman who has tried can tell you exactly how it went

[faretheeoscar]

Poe Dameron and Mae Tal

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Mind you if I infofump a little on my OC's backstory and maybe tell you about her dynamics with Poe?

My Star Wars OC character, Mae, is part of Clan Tal, a clan that was thought to be extinguished after the events of "The night of a Thousand Tears "

[ The Night of a Thousand Tears was the night on which the Galactic Empire massacred the Mandalorian people on the planet Mandalore during the Great Purge of Mandalore ]

Mae’s grandfather, Ebbel, survived the massacre on Mandalore. He was off-planet on Concordia at the time, attempting to infiltrate the ranks of the Death Watch. After the tragedy on Mandalore, he chose to remain on Concordia, helping raise the Children of the Watch. Believing they were the last Mandalorian survivors, Ebbel dedicated himself to the safety of the group.

Later in life, Ebbel had several children, including Mae’s father, Drex Tal. Raised within the strict orthodoxy of the Children of the Watch, Drex eventually left the group when he met Lyra, a Rebel pilot with whom he fell in love. The two settled on Lyra’s home planet, Ferrix, serving as backup for the Alliance, but living mostly a normal life. they had four children together, including their only daughter, Mae.

Mae grew up on Ferrix, far from the main traditions of the Children of the Watch. However, her father Drex still trained her in their Mandalorian ways, while Lyra passed down her knowledge of piloting. When Lyra fell ill and passed away, Drex withdrew from active duty in the Alliance, as it had never been his primary fight.

As a result, Mae had little involvement with the Resistance when it rose against the First Order—until much later. Trying to earn money for a new ship, she initially served as a double agent for the First Order but was eventually recruited by a faction of the Resistance on the Outer Rim. Mae’s unique skills as a Mandalorian pilot quickly attracted attention, and she was soon stationed at the Yavin IV base, reporting directly to Leia during the events of The Force Awakens. There, she met Poe.

Mae and Poe clash constantly, their personalities polar opposites in nearly every way. Poe is exasperated by her contradictory actions and unconventional methods, while Mae despises his hotheaded impulsiveness. They bicker and argue frequently; Mae often disobeys his direct orders, yet somehow manages to get the job done efficiently each time. This only irritates Poe further, and he finds ways to tease her in return, like joking that he can always tell when she’s approaching the hangar because her armor sounds like a “parade of clanking cans.”

There's a lot of story between Poe and Mae, that happens along the fight of the Resistance against the First Order and afterwards.

Its's sort of a Co-pilots to Friends to Situationship to Semi Enemies to Lovers thing (it's very freaking complicated,ngl.)

Anyways… I’ve never actually written down a summary of Mae’s backstory or a quick outline of how she interacts with Poe, so this was really fun.

I was just planning to post it without much context, but once I started writing, I couldn’t stop hehe

I did this sketch a few months ago, but I wanted to share it, while I keep working on other Poevember things and requests!

Thanks for reading my ramblings if you got until here!

HAPPY POEVEMBER!

Reblogs and comments are kindly appreciated!

@silvernight-m @ierofrnkk @howellatme @winniethewife

[fxckn-sxck-fr]

omg hi if ur inbox is open can u give us a short blurb/your thoughts on or some kind of headcanon list for yan tim drake (romantic) bc ur interpretation of him is so yum🤤 i like how you rlly focus on more darker aspects of his character which i dont see a lot of ppl doing unfortunately bc the way he’s a complete FREAK LMFAO🫣🫣

𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄 𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐈𝐌 𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒…

!!! GN reader, mentally ill Tim, psychotic Tim, just Tim, he’s a problem, manic/depressive episodes, violent tendencies, suicidal tendencies, stalking, kidnapping, obsessive behaviors, gross ways to show affection, slight insinuation of pervy Tim, blood, mutilation, harm to reader mentioned, self-harm, severed body parts, drugging, gaslighting.

YAAAAYYYYYYYYY, TIM DRAKE TIME!!!! This is so long overdue. I’ve been meaning to write for him, but… it just hasn’t happened yet. I hope the ideas will start flowing after I get some of this off my chest. I’ve been harboring so many miscellaneous Tim thoughts for a while.

(Y’all. The CW on this just kept getting longer and longer. My bad.)

First thing’s first, Tim is a fucking mess. There’s no way to know for sure which version of him you’re gonna get each day. Maybe he’s going through a manic episode, coming up with batshit crazy schemes and going on about things that don’t make sense. Maybe he’ll then swing into a depressive fit, where he can’t even bring himself to get up from the floor. Maybe he wakes up completely fine after an hour long nap, regretting whatever initial brash decisions he made. Maybe he quickly turns violent at the sound of knocking at his door. Maybe he wants to claw his own arteries out after trying to maintain a normal social interaction.

The possibilities are endless! Which makes him extremely dangerous.

If you’ve caught the eye of Tim Drake… yikes. Good luck. There’s a chance you don’t even know who he is before he inevitably kidnaps you (completely on a whim, no less). Maybe you’re a total stranger he saw on the street once, captivating him and causing him to spiral into a twisted obsession. While I’ll defend Tim against the fandom allegations until my lungs give out, I’ll admit: they’re on to something when it comes to stalker Tim. Bro definitely has pictures of you covering every square inch of his walls. And, yes, it’s to the point where they overlap each other.

Kidnapping can take anywhere between 3 days and 3 years. During that time, he may try to weasel his way into your life in an attempt to win you over... though we all know how well that would go. As I’ve mentioned before, he may be attractive, but he’s such an off-putting person. Just being around him is enough to give you the creeps. And it doesn’t help he’s completely unaware of how weird some behaviors are. Tim... honey… you can’t shamelessly stare at people with a startling grin like that. I know you’re thinking about how much you want to lick your darling-to-be’s neck, but it’s weird.

Whether he attempts to interact with you or not, one thing’s for sure: he’s stealing your shit. Clothes, toothbrushes, half-eaten food, straws, whatever he can get his hands on. Don’t ask what he does with it. You don’t wanna know. Tim is a neeeaaaasty freak, to the point where even he thinks to himself, “what the fuck is wrong with me” after he calms down from a fit.

Oh, speaking of guilt, Tim is filled with that shit. He may swing from various stages of instability, but there are moments where he’s perfectly fine. And those are the moments where he has to grapple with the consequences of his own actions. Those can range from slightly scaring someone to causing irreversible damage. There have been many times where he snapped out of some episode with blood dribbling down hands and chunks of skin under his fingernails. Who did he hurt? Could be someone else, could be himself, could be you. Who knows!!

Let’s actually get into his suicidal tendencies a bit. His arms and legs are covered in scratches and cuts. Now, this could be explained by his vigilante life, but it gets harder to justify when you get to the bite marks at angles that only make sense if they were self-inflicted. Oh, and also the carvings of your name. He does that a lot. It’s like you’re with him everywhere he goes!! And kind of on the same note, he wants you to have him with you as well!! This could come in the form of strips of skin, vials of blood, toes, an eye, an ear, a spleen… just whatever he’s willing to cut off or out of himself in the moment.

His suicidal tendencies are also connected to those moments of guilt I mentioned before. After calming down and realizing what he’s done, he may harm himself as some sort of penance; especially if he’s done something to you. Depending on how far he spirals from his guilt, he may actually enact “an eye for an eye” (perhaps in the most literal sense) to help make up for what he’s done. Who knows, maybe he’ll replace missing pieces of you with his own. Will it work? No idea. Maybe a skin graph or two, but let’s hope you don’t have to find things out in the more extreme cases.

I think it’s important to keep in mind that Tim Drake is just generally fucked-up. “Normal” Tim doesn’t mean “completely well-adjusted” Tim, it just means he’s not acting on some manic or brash decision. Normal Tim would be fine with chaining or drugging you if he’s justified it to himself. As long as he’s not causing active physical harm to you, he probably won’t see anything wrong with whatever he’s doing in the long run. It’s for your own good, okay? Don’t worry, he’s gone through the possibilities and failsafes. Nothing bad will happen to you!

Unfortunately, manic Tim does not go through the possibilities and failsafes. Well, he kind of does, but the logic is far from realistic and runs in total circles. Whereas drugging you has a rational (fucked up, but still rational) reason behind it — to keep you immobile — filling your ear canal with cement takes some mental gymnastics. Manic Tim doesn’t want you to listen to anyone else. Solution? You can’t hear through concrete, right? At that point, you’re at the mercy of his mood swing RNG. Let’s hope he calms down enough to take a step back and really think about this. Hmm… filling someone’s ears with cement… probably not healthy. Wow. Silly Tim! He let himself get carried away, didn’t he? Whoops! There are more logical ways to keep you from listening to anyone else.

That’s where manipulation comes in. I mean, come on. Y’all know who his mentor is, right? Stable Tim is wicked good at manipulation. Huh? He’s acting weird? Well, he didn’t want to say anything, but he was actually thinking the same thing about you. Yeah, you’ve been kind of off lately… is there something wrong? You sure? You know he’s there for you, right? Okay, just making sure. A gaslighting king when he’s in the right headspace for it. Too bad his psychotic aura gives him away; he’d probably be really good at keeping up appearances if he just got medicated or something.

So… yeah. Just some Tim thoughts. What a charmer, amiright? I don’t think this one’s salvageable. No amount of therapy could ever fix whatever Tim’s got going on. Just throw the whole damn guy away. Start over. Your only hope of escaping him is the chance of someone on the outside realizing what’s up. Here’s to hoping Tim gets institutionalized before he does something really bad!!

[trivalentlinks]

The Mayer-Vietoris sequence?!?

The thing that says that you can understand the whole by understanding the parts and understanding how they interact with each other?? Who passes on that??

Though to be fair, the image above seems to depict some sort of chain complex version or something (I'm honestly not sure upon first glance how it is Mayer-Vietoris),

Instead of the usual (co)homology of topological spaces version that looks more like this:

(^ homology version ^)

or like

(^ cohomology version ^)

(I screen shot those from wikipedia because I don't know how to make latex on tumblr)

Anyway, I noticed some people in the tags saying this looks too complicated, and yeah, there's a lot of notation, but H (short for "homology") here is just a way to quantify shape--all it's saying is that to understand the shape of something (called X in the wikipedia version), you can break X into two overlapping pieces A, B and understand the shapes of A, B, the overlap of A and B, and how that overlap fits into each piece.

This is really cool because it means that for a lot of things that you care about, to understand their homology (aka shape), you only need to understand the shape of blobs.

For example, if you have a solid bagel:

You can break it into two half bagels:

and then each piece is a blob.

(Yes, I know that's not how you normally cut bagels. But if you cut horizontally, each piece ends up exactly as complicated as the original, and we'd like to cut things into simpler pieces.)

If you look at how the pieces overlap, the overlap is just two bagel segments, which are each also basically a blob. So each piece is now just a blob, and the overlap is made up of two blobs.

But what about a more complicated object, like say, instead of a solid bagel, what if we take a floaty tube:

(So, like a bagel, but it's hollow on the inside, so we're only considering the outside of the tube.)

So we can do a similar cut vertically into two halves, but now each piece is a blob that's hollow inside, shaped kind of like a macaroni:

And the overlap is shaped like a pair of ditalini:

But notice how if you plump up and flatten those elbow macaroni/ditalini can all be pushed down to basically solid bagel shaped. So by understanding the homology of blobs, we can understand the homology of bagels, which then leads to us being able to understand the homology of hollow floaty tubes.

Very similarly, you can break down, even more complicated shapes like, say Klein bottles:

and understand their homology (aka shape) in the same way.

And I think that's very cool!!

Also, just from a philosophical perspective, it feels so important to me that we should be able to understand things by understanding their constituent parts and understanding how these parts interact with each other. Like, if something like that weren't true, how would you even start to try to understand anything?

The Mayer-Vietoris Sequence :))

[kingofattolia]

"Do you miss it? The Order?" "I miss... the idea of it. But not the truth, the weakness. There was no future there." OKAY, THIS MAN MISSES THE ORDER SOOOOOOOOOOO BAD IT MAKES HIM LOOK STUPID

I'm serious. He's carrying the husk of his long-ossified grief so obviously. It is evident in everything he does and says that he was a young knight absolutely ripped to shreds by Order 66 and its lonely, dark aftermath. He allowed despair to be his comfort, convincing himself there's nothing to mourn because it's easier than dealing with the loss.

[grumpyoldsnake]

One of these days. One of these days, I will figure out what the hell makes the tipping point beyond which either a) there’s socialization that I feel insulated from and kind of numb about and too tired to pursue, or b) socialization where the very notion of so much as expressing one (1) internal thought or emotion suffuses my whole body with adrenaline and blaring Nope instincts.

[nashvillethotchicken]

Ldpdl need some friends he ain't fuckin or kin with and bad. Like real bad

[mad-hunts]

this is a very specific scenario, i know, but barton trauma-bonding with a hero and vice versa because they got stuck in the middle of the desert together due to the fact that they were both simultaneously betrayed / LEFT TO DIE there, but they managed to survive after they spent some time vehemently refusing to help each other in the beginning. though, they soon began to help each other (albeit reluctantly) because they realized that would be the ONLY way that they would survive this. and barton tries to kickstart their bastardization arc™ by telling the hero to kill the people who dumped them there. and this is because, in his mind, they don't deserve to live. then barton goes on to tell them that he's planning on killing the person who betrayed him so it's fineee if the hero does it,, because he ain't a snitch + won't tell anyone they killed anyone (,: now whether or not the hero actually starts their bastardization arc is up to them, of course, but if anyone is interested in a plot like this... HMU because i think this would be such an interesting dynamic to roleplay 👀

[bigothteddies]

I have got to get off the internet dude real people don’t act the way they do on here social media algorithms push abrasive comments to the forefront wanna be scam spam follower bait accounts and trolls feed into the pattern to make money influencers feed the cycle by regurgitating as much low effort content as they can possibly churn out as often as possible to make as much money as possible political takes that blow my mind happen every day critical thinking is dead and it makes me want to blow my brains out

[alexkablob]

Other favorite bits from the Dorley reread: Lorna's Paranormal Investigator Arc™

[horsemage]

I think we should bring back basic etiquette lessons such as shutting the fuck up when you’re watching a movie in a group that is not exclusively your friend group 🙂

[skitskatdacat63]

I wish I didn't feel horrific levels of insecurity/inferiority/jealousy/fomo/ego/etc etc about literally everything 24/7. I don't think I let it affect how I interact with people, but it's just this sickeningly insufferable feeling in my chest

[stellacadente]

i realized how much it scares me that my mind will convince itself of even the ugliest things if i start thinking them often enough and it's... yeah. like i had a good session with my psychiatric rehabilitation therapist i think it was very useful but then at the end i got hit by this feeling of fear... like i'm so scared of myself and how low i can get

[theflannelwizard]

Oops, I lied about sending all my questions in one, I thought of an actually specific question and not just a super general one five seconds after sending the ask:

Do you have any neurodivergent hcs for Buster and Gob(or other characters if you hc anyone else as neurodivergent)?

This is such a good question!! Okay!! It got long so I'm putting it under the cut, but TLDR: undiagnosed comorbid autistm and ADHD for both of them plus ADHD Tony Wonder :) I forced myself not to get into it with the rest of the Bluths cause this post would be a mile long but i did put cursory thoughts about them in the tags. All of this is spitballing and I'm definitely open to hearing other opinions!

Whatever is going on with Buster’s brain is the same thing that’s going on with my brain, so most likely ADHD and/or autism but DEFINITELY undiagnosed. None of the Bluths have the diagnoses they need and if someone (Tobias) tries to so much as allude to them being neurodivergent in front of George Sr. and/or Lucille it gets shut down immediately.

Anyway Buster reads more autistic than ADHD to me but it could be either or both. He has trouble reading other people’s emotions and regulating his own, he’s “strange” and “childish” in ways that are direct responses to how he was raised but also just read as neurodivergent, he’s got safe foods and takes things literally and has no clue how to read social cues and stims and gestures vaguely at all of him is just so very ND. Also the thing with ADHD-havers being randomly struck with bouts of guilt or self loathing? I think that’s him. ADHD was recently reclassified as an anxiety disorder, too, which we know full well is Buster, and it would not surprise me if his panic and anxiety attacks were brought on by sensory overload and RSD and other ADHD things at least some of the time.

As for GOB, I think he’s got the same deal but he reads more ADHD than autistic. I think they both have both but it presents differently in each of them. I’m fully on board with both magic and bees being special interests for that man, and he also just moves and talks and interacts with people in a very neurodivergent way. The stuttering when he’s overwhelmed is, to me, adjacent to (if not straight up being) him going nonverbal. He definitely has RSD too, look at how devastated he is when anyone rejects him ever. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he was bipolar, getting manic when he’s really into a project and then falling into depression for weeks or months at a time.

And, just as a bonus, I think Tony Wonder has ADHD. He recognizes it in GOB and helps him with learn to function in a healthier happier way and his siblings are so confused cause GOB just magically started getting more normal?? Except it’s not magic (and it’s not an illusion lmao) it’s just coping mechanisms. Tony’s been collecting them from various therapists for like 30 years. He has no clue how anyone in this family thinks they’re neurotypical.

[britneyshakespeare]

i have been working with kids for four years and i had to write my first ever note just now about a seventh grade boy being inappropriate towards me. i don't know what the hell this could possibly lead to or what. he was trying to feel my legs repeatedly to the point where i had to stop sitting next to him (and i was subbing for his one-to-one para!!!). he's got high support needs. in that kind of job, you're supposed to sit next to them all day and look over their work.

the teacher whose classroom this was happening in could also tell something was wrong. the whole class was acting kinda crazy because it was the day before school vacation week and there was another class coming in to share projects. so like, he was swamped with keeping order already. but we were sitting two feet away from his podium at the front of the room. the kid was giving him and me a hard time when he wouldn't take out his chromebook as he was instructed. and then when he did take out his chromebook, he immediately, for some reason, places it on my lap. he had been ogling my legs the whole time. he puts his computer ON MY LAP. and i'm just like, stunned, because what the hell? can you not keep it on your own lap, for some reason? i don't even know what to say, i just hold it a little above my lap while i'm thinking why on earth would this be happening? he would NOT do this to his regular para if she were here, would he? this can't be normal.

and the teacher sees this and within a minute places a stool in front of the kid for him to put his laptop on. and i'm like. oh ok. yeah. he notices exactly what's happening and that that's not appropriate. and then when the other class comes in to share projects he tells me "miss b——, you don't actually have to sit next to c—— this whole period if you don't want to." and he grabs me a chair for me to go sit with the other paras in the back opposite corner of the room. like he KNEW. and thank you mr. d—— for recognizing that because i was just kind of shocked and didn't know if i was overreacting in my head to all of this.

when there's a point in the class where the kids are discussing stuff, i privately mention what's happened to the para who's sitting closest to me. and she says that the thing about him calling me pretty is something he's been known to do, but the fact that he kept trying to touch my legs is new behavior. and that's a completely different class of behavior. i was telling him NO, don't do that, and he kept doing it. and the fact that he was calling me pretty repeatedly, even when i was giving him instructions that he wasn't taking. and this is the second to last class before the end of the day, so she says she'll take a walk with him before learning center and talk to him about it, and i'm grateful for that. she does. the kid apologizes to me as soon as i come into learning center. but like. WHAT the hell.

i'm STILL like what the hell. this is unfathomable to me. the other adults who i told about this or who witnessed it were supportive of me. but. what to do??? i wrote a long note to his regular para about this, because i knew she was going to hear about it at least from the first para i told. the second para i told about it after school had a kind of... i'm not gonna say enabling reaction, but i suppose since it had already been "taken care of" (or at least, he had been spoken to and apologized) she didn't really have much to add in the way of discipline. i told her what happened after school and she was just like... a little bit, laughing? like oh, yup, that dog. she at the very least confirmed he KNEW what he was doing, that that was not an accident. she said to me "i had a feeling he was going to develop a crush on you" (me and these other paras were together for most of the beginning of the day too). but it's like. it's not about that.

i have worked with children for FOUR years. children have had crushes on me before; i'm quite unfazed by it. boys from the ages of 5-to-15 have told me i'm so pretty before and asked me to marry them. i've never had them feeling up my legs before. i've never had them making me physically uncomfortable. it's NOT about this seventh grader having a crush on the pretty substitute. he is NOT unusual for that, at all. but i've never had a boy of any age or education level repeatedly touching my knees and thighs. THAT is problem behavior!!!

because what if i wasn't assertive enough with him to tell him to stop? what if i was a girl his age? worse, what if i was an adult who encouraged this behavior? i don't come to the middle school to be a seductress. i had no intention in putting on a pair of tights and a skirt this morning of being viewed as an attractive object, especially not by a pubescent boy. what if i did though? what if his interpretation of me wasn't so incorrect and offensive? what if i let him keep touching me inappropriately and saying flirtatious things to me? me, an adult in my mid-twenties, towards a middle school boy?

in no world would that be ok. if i had been feeling up and overly-complimenting a CHILD at my place of work, holy shit would there be reports about me. so a child acting that way could never be ok either. if it'd be firable for me to be reciprocating that action, then that action should not be happening to me. ever. and that child should never repeat that action again to any other adult again.

like i am simply not there to be treated as an attractive young woman. i put on a skirt that shows too much knee and get paired with a boy, though, and that's apparently just a natural consequence. hooo-ly shit. like i don't know what to do. first of all, the more time passes since this has happened, the more i am just unable to stop thinking about it. i wasn't "hurt" or too emotional in the moment but i'm just still processing it and it gets worse. i'm just more and more disgusted.

i don't know what i expect to come out of this, or the email i sent to his regular para. like, am i gonna have to attend a fucking meeting? what is the precedent that this sets for him? WHY do i feel BAD for him about this? well, because he's a child, of course. a child who has done wrong he may not be able to understand. but he knows WHAT he did. he just doesn't know WHY it was wrong.

and i couldn't even say something to him that was like, "well, how would you like it if i was touching you like this?" because young boys do not understand how inappropriate it'd be. i'm sure this kid thought he was gonna get away with what he was doing at the very least. but probably not unlikely he (being a child with no concept of how wrong it'd be) thought he could get some sort of "positive" attention for treating me like this. either way he was simply doing what he wanted to do, with no perspective of how it would make me feel or that it could be classified as harassment. teenage boys think it'd be awesome if the older attractive woman would reciprocate their affections. they're wrong. i, as the older attractive woman of his affection, cannot be the one to convince him of that, though.

i don't know. i don't know. like it's just so not ok. but if i didn't tell another adult about this, he would've gotten away with it. he would probably do it again. and him being in trouble for it is not the same as him understanding that it was wrong. unless someone has a REAL talk with him about inappropriate attention and consent, it's not unlikely that he'll just repeat the behavior in a setting where he thinks he won't be caught or told on. THAT'S the problem. me, i could just never have to be this boy's para again. in my email, i didn't say that i would never be ok working with or around him ever again. he already knows i didn't like it and i'm not afraid to tell on him; as far as that lesson applies to me, individually, i think he's become too ashamed to repeat that.

i don't know. i don't know. i very much expressed that i, i guess, "forgave" him in the email that i wrote. i clarified that i was writing it for the sake of having it on the record. i think that could potentially be very important for the purposes of preventing further similar or escalating behavior from him in the future. i don't want him to be in trouble. i don't think i will be blamed for this, especially not with how promptly i acted, although i don't know to what extent this will be framed as me thinking i'm a "victim." i'm not... i don't feel victimized. i feel disgusted. i feel afraid for the sake of what could happen to or with him in the future, if he thinks behavior like his towards me today is ok.

i feel like if i end up having to further respond to this, this will be made about me. in a way it kind of was. is? in the moment it was happening, it was certainly about me. because i was the one this boy was giving all this unwanted attention to. but to make the consequences of this about me and to involve me any further, i also don't want. because i said what i said already, i don't care if a student has a crush on me. this isn't about me being the pretty substitute. i'm the pretty substitute all the time, to tons of people. that's not really something i've been concerned about up until now.

but do i have to reexplain my personal embarrassment? that i was wearing a skirt? that he was ogling my legs? really? what more do i have to gain from sharing that, other than having the adults at my place of work confirm or deny me in their heads as the pretty substitute? i don't know. perhaps that's REALLY overthinking it. but i don't want to be the substitute that caused a problem for this special ed kid. i don't wanna be the reason that he can't be around me anymore, the person people think of when they're monitoring how he's acting around girls and young women. i DON'T want to be the one people think of when they think of his past misbehavior. i'm NOT here for that.

that's just fucking humiliating. and in this being a thing that could follow him, i have to be ogled and touched over and over again in people's minds for this to be taken seriously. but for this to be swept under the rug would be even worse, no? i don't know. i hate this. the principal is a nice guy; i wouldn't be surprised if he and/or people from the special ed department reached out to me sympathetically about this. but i don't wanna be reached out to. i don't wanna have ppl i work with tell me "sorry that kid was just so attracted to you he couldn't help himself" like come on. if the kid himself doesn't change then i don't really care to remember this incident. and no one reaching out to me and saying they've talked to this kid will actually prove to me he understands. this is the kind of inappropriate behavior it takes years for people to understand why it was wrong, especially a child who has no idea. i mean come on.