...In the end, I guess it doesn't really matter.

Seeing exes ranges from good (they know you better than most) to awkwardly uncomfortable (...I'm sure you can imagine the reasons.) But regardless of circumstance, as everyone who is remotely competitive knows, a breakup is a competition. It is very important that you don't 'lose' the breakup. On the one hand, you realize that breakups are bad and it's not a competition and it's nice to keep the friendship. On the other hand, you want to win.

This is what led me to a more frazzled ritual than usual this morning- not because I've gained weight since the breakup, just to make sure I look particularly excellent, I told myself. I would be seeing not one, but two exes, for the first time in a while.

Tall Boy, who takes pride in being the tallest person I have ever dated- I'm not sure why, I don't particularly enjoy standing on tip-toes to kiss someone who is practically bent double- is a nice person who I was on-again off-again with once. And by that, I mean we were on for a month, off for a year, and then on again for a few months. I don't really understand him, which is, I guess, what made him mysterious and attractive at the time. He seemed rather sensitive after the breakup, so it is my personal opinion that I won it, but by now, he has a nice girl at his college that he's started seeing, and we enjoy each other's company, so there are no hard feelings, although I don't think he likes hearing about the Boyfriend.

Boy-Next-Door moved into the apartment below mine back in the day, and we were very close friends. At some point, the line between dating and friendship got hazy. Then I realized that when you pass that line, BND suddenly becomes very, very insecure and you are way too close. We dated for much longer than we should have, and, while that entire relationship was just very bad for everyone involved and we both started seeing other people very soon afterwards, I am privately of the opinion that I won the breakup.

I feel bad, because on the one hand, I don't want to be winning anything. BND isn't particularly happy with his relationships, romantic or otherwise, right now, and the relationship he got into right after ours seemed quite unhealthy. On the other hand, I find it important to look good before seeing these guys, although when it gets down to it, I am just happy to see them and I really do like to talk to both of them. BND is one of my closest friends, but that uncomfortable period where we were more than friends occasionally hangs over our heads. And I've lost a breakup before, though it was a year or so after the fact when it happened. Believe me, it was not fun.

I'm not sure what the point of all this is, but I'm glad I'm not dating any of these boys anymore, so that, I suppose, is worth all the awkwardness and hassle.

Apparently, I Was Destined to Be A Scientist

I ran into a friend from high school today. He was one of those people with whom you had mutual friends and who took a girl you'd known for a couple of years to prom for the first time but then he graduated and that was the end of it. The point is, I don't know him that well but he's a pretty cool guy. The one thing I really know about him is that he wears glasses but prefers not to.

Once, No Glasses started talking to me on Gchat, which was strange because he'd never done it before or since. He was very stressed by a secret he couldn't tell any of his friends. As I insinuated earlier, NG and I don't know each other very well, so I made him an offer: he could tell me and I would promise not to listen. Strangely enough, he told me something that must have been a big problem in his life since he was a boy.

Anyway, we went out for pizza. NG was paying, and I wasn't that hungry, so I told him to pick the type. He chose one that was veggie-topped, and I began to pull the olives off of my slice, as I customarily do.

"NG, have I ever told you why I hate olives?"

Ever polite,he did not attempt to speak with his mouth full and just shook his head.

"Now, when I was little, I loved grapes. In addition, my parents weren't the type to leave me at home with a babysitter while they did adult things. So once I was taken to some sort of adult party and my parents set me down to amuse myself. (I was a very easily amused child.) They came back a couple of minutes later and found me by a bowl of olives, carefully putting them one by one in my mouth: nope, this one's not a grape; hmm, nor this one; not this one either. By then, I'd gotten through about half the bowl."

"That sounds extraordinarily traumatizing."

"It was! It's interesting that I didn't stop after one, or a handful, or when I realized olives were disgusting."

"Well, there was no way to make sure that none were grapes until you had tried them all. You were just looking for the outliers."