Last night was the 3rd annual Telos Awards…and certainly the best yet. It’s a competition my high school puts on - awards for good movies, although this year they offered a few awards in visual art as well as audio composition and unmade screenplays. I was invited as a finalist, though they refused to tell me exactly which entry was a finalist. As 
such, I could only assume that it was the one I’d put effort into (the rest were simply entered on a whim) — Blood Bath. That’s the project myself and two friends have been working hard on for a total of 475 hours (that’s 81 hours of work per minute of animation) and had absolutely no question we would win Telos for.
That project, however, was not the winner; indeed, it wasn’t even nominated. It’s tough to say why not, because I personally think the final product was very nice (not to say we couldn’t have done better) and infinitely superior to a couple of the other entries which were picked as finalists. Alas, that is not my place — the judges did what they did, and we’ll have another shot next year.
At that point none of my projects had been announced in any categories, and the two categories that remained were the ones that Telos is all about - films - the big shuh-bam, the main prize. Best Film and Best Comedic Film. As all of my entries were either 2D animations or 2D artwork, I began to suspect that I had received the invitation erroneously. There was a time of suspense, one might say, while “Cheno” (Mike Chenoweth, Professor of Film) explained the prizes and some other things.
Then something rather unexpected happened - the Best Comedic Film category, like the others, had three nominations. Each and every one of the nominations was some short cartoon I’d produced and entered with low expectations. I won the second most important of the categories, by default. No one else entered! I really can’t believe this. The prize for that award was some $500 software called Vegas+DVD (Windows software, but I can easily sell it and buy Final Cut Studio 2, which will be coming out in a few months). Not to mention the cool trophy (pictured twice). I would feel much more deserving of this trophy had my cartoon won, but the prize for that category was software valued at $150, and that would have had to be split between three of us. This winning entry (Wally the Water Droplet) was all my own, so monetarily speaking it’s the best outcome of Telos this year.
Truth be told though, my mind was elsewhere during the entire assembly. Sure, I was excited for it, it was after all supposed to be the fruition of 475 hours of work…and I was trying hard to be as excited about it as I might have been had it taken place a week ago. Be it good or bad, that just wasn’t going to happen, as my mind was determined to think about a certain girl.
Her name’s Rhebecca and she’s way out of my league; in fact, she’s about as far out of my league as you can get. My league is that of overweight nerds who aren’t funny and don’t have much to offer (the lowest league). Her league is that of professional model/actresses who are amazingly beautiful and always “taken” (perhaps the highest league). Personally I don’t care much for the league system, but of course that’s easy for me to say 
When I asked her out earlier this week, I did so more to find out how she would say no than anything else. But then there’s always (at least for me) that glimmer of chance that maybe she’d say yes. So my first question was, “hey Rhebecca, are you going out with anyone right now?” and the answer didn’t surprise me at first. With a smile, of course, “I am”. A few seconds later, or minutes as it seemed to me, came “not.” She wasn’t taken! Well, that still didn’t mean much without the follow up. “I was wondering if you’d consider going out with me some time…”
We all know what should have happened, assuming the rules of the league system. Either she would smile and laugh a little, and say “no thanks”, or 
perhaps outright grimace at the thought and maybe even slap me. Our school’s a fairly nice community, so I sure didn’t expect the latter. We’re not that far away from Earth, though, so I was prepared for ridicule. “Sure, I’d love to, where do you want to go?”
WHAT?! No. No way. I wasn’t prepared for this one. “Uhh..well, I didn’t really have a specific place in mind, but…” YOU DORK! You just screwed it all up! She said yes, you moron, and you don’t know where you’re going? Now she’ll grimace, now she’ll say “no thanks”. But it didn’t come…instead, one of the cutest laughs I can remember hearing, and “Okay, well just let me know where and we’ll go!” And then she hugged me! She hugged a fat nerd! It was awesome! And then she walked off.
I called her that evening to tell her what the date was, and make sure it was something she wanted to do. Then the next day, we saw each other, but she said nothing. I guess that’s my initiative, but every time I say anything to her it takes courage. I thought it was just my own fault until just before Telos. She’s active in the student body, and was there giving out raffle tickets to everyone as they came in. I was with my friends (the ones who I worked on Blood Bath with) Skaven and Bigtree. As we entered, she said hi to Bigtree, and took no notice of me. That stung.
I have no idea what it meant — most likely, she just didn’t see me — but it made my mind even more active than it had been for the last two days. What does that mean? Does she still want to go on the date? Is this normal before a first date? Is this just how it works, and I don’t know because the only thing I know about traditional dating is what I see on TV? It was all I could think about for the whole of the Telos Awards (and continuing through now). After Telos I decided to be proactive. I didn’t want to have a date with an amazing girl that I didn’t even feel comfortable talking with.
I approached her, and it took as much (or more) of me as it had when I first asked her out…this time I had more of the classic stutter than before. “Rhebecca, I was wondering if maybe I could call you some time over the weekend, you know, to, you know, just talk. Unless, I mean, not if you don’t want to, but…”
“Yeah, that’d be great!”
“Oh okay, cool, well, are you sure it’s cool, because I don’t want to bore you or…”
“No, that sounds fine!”
“Okay, great, cool, well, I’ll talk to you later then…”
“Okay, bye Jt!”
I have to put the exclamation point on everything she says, because she’s so happy, and so nice, and everything she says sounds exciting.
Still I wonder what “that sounds fine” means. Still I am curious whether it’s a pity date or something like that. Still I wish to know if she just said yes to all of this because she’s a really nice person and doesn’t want to say no. But still I possess that crazy bit of hope that she actually does like something about me, and that what I think of her now is true and she’s a very good person, and maybe…maybe…this could be something.
I’m not sure if my readers have been in such a situation before, or know what this is like. Either way you probably didn’t want to read all that, but I’ve been wanting to write it out. I’m sorry you had to sit through it. Wouldn’t it be ironic if she reads my blog? 
I found what I believe to be the greatest animation ever made with Flash (although I’m still not completely sure it was made with Flash, it seems it must have been made in some 3d program and imported or something…it’s unbelievable). It was put on Newgrounds on December 17 and already it’s in FIRST PLACE OF ALL TIME! It’s impossibly amazingly astoundingly good. And the music is quite catchy too! You’ll have to view this one.