My unValentine story

It's strange how dormant memories turn up with the right stimulus.

I was 17, in Form 6 and a committee member of a science society, in all probability a lowly class representative. A few of us perhaps 6 or 7 had a
meeting in one of the lab / classrooms and the Hon Secretary proceeded to
read at an incredibly rapid but understandable speed, minutes of the previous meeting.

So the Prez with the thickest pair of glasses ever seen asked, as any good Prez should, "Does anyone have anything to add?"

"I wish the Secretary would read a little slower," I ventured innocently.
Everybody - except studious Ms Hon Sec whom I'd never ever seen smiling - laughed out loud. But the minutes were passed without further comment.

Now you might think this was just another school club meeting. Of course it
was, but the next day, when school was over and I went to the motor-bike
park, who should be there but the oh so serious Ms.

She had her books crooked in her arms, and standing wordlessly in front of and a little to the side of my bike - I now wonder how she knew  - and without a word I started it up and scooted off home.

This went on for a few days in succession and I never acknowledged her presence: I suppose she got tired and stopped turning up.

I can see her now in my mind's eye, in the ACS school uniform of the day,
light blue blouse with a dark blue skirt. She's of small build, slim of hips and pretty with short hair and boyish features: if she dressed in shirt and pants,
you might even mistake her for one. 

I suppose she had a school-girl crush on me but I do not know why. To this
day, I do not pretend to understand women and the emotional spaces in which they live, move and have their being. In any case I have become rather
more interested in 'Things of the Mind' as the tone of my posts would have shown.
 
PS: She's the daughter of a school teacher who lived in Greentown and ran a very popular Maths tuition center: there were invariably scores of bicycles parked in the porch. I eventually learned she's now a doctor.

PPS: A retired teacher of English recalled such a young woman who was very good at sprinting. So was it in her psyche to do things at high speed? But as I remember her, she was so cool, calm and self-contained.