I am Monk, The Patron Saint of the Socially Retarded

Have you ever wondered the benefits of praying to a Patron Saint? It is a very catholic thing, but along these lines are my thoughts driven today.

I am Monk, the Patron Saint of all the socially retarded beings. I know I do not have a name in particular, for I am not named. Now don't feel sorry for me. It's only my preference to remain unnamed that had made me being called 'Monk' among the masses. If you are thinking of the show on the USA network, you got it all wrong. On this particular day, I am inclined to tell another story, not anything about me, but of particular individuals who are under my guardianship.

This happened not so long ago in solar years or rather human years, as I like to call it. This individual is one of my favorites. She had once shown great promise to be an uber nerd.

"Well, you must download back orifice, I insist."

Her friend stares at the CDC site and after reading the first few sentences, "Why ever would I want to download a thing from that site?"

"You see, that's about the freedom of speech, right."

"Nope, I'm not downloading anything from a site that writes such profanities."

"But, but," she stutters, "that program shows the weakness of 9x, of how a single user OS can be brought down because of the lack of consideration of its designers."

"Bah, why would I want to run it on my system? Just so that you can log into it and overwrite my system folder with a README file with the line '1 pwn j00' ?"

"I swear, I won't do that."

"You see, it's very hard to believe you after your last April fool's prank."

My protégé looked scandalized on that, with her eyes dilated as wide as saucers. Now let's fast forward a bit more into her school years.

She walks to her class through the hall way, where some of her class mates are lingering just outside the said room. As she ventures into the room, a few of them tries to stop her, by calling her in hushed voices. But she just shows them the odd equipment in her hand and mouths, "I'll be back after I drop this at my desk." Once she dropped the 'stuff' at her desk, she takes a look around. That's when she notices the only other two people in the room, enjoying quiet conversations among themselves. Oblivious to the fact that they were a couple and that rest of the class had emptied the room just for their sake, she asks the couple, "Why is everyone else outside?"

Her lab-mate answers, "We don't know."

She nods an alright to that and leaves the room to join her mates. "Why would you interrupt them?" one of them teases her.

"What did I interrupt?"

Without much further delay after another round of discussion, the couple in the room ends their tete-a-tete and one of them comes to confront the group, and unknowingly rescues the current victim.

She says, "It's not what you think. We are only friends."

"Yeah, yeah... we are only 'just' friends," repeats some of the group as the teasing continues. I must tell you at this point that it was only my poor protégé that bought her lab mate's mate's words at face value. Aye, that couple were indeed married with a special marriage license at a later point in time, which may be considered quite recent at this time, as I tell you this story.

You see, despite being nineteen and brilliant, my protégé was absolutely naive when coming to social standings and rituals. One of those days when she was walking back home with her friend LB, she had a poker face.

"Something bothering you, dear?", asks a very concerned LB.

"Yeah, you see I tried to say hello to my friend, and he ignored me."

"He must not have seen you."

"No, he did. He gave me a look as if I am some kind of murderer."

LB finding her friend still in deep contemplation, ventures further,"There's something else bothering you?"

"Well," she pauses, "There were a bunch of guys at the lab pointedly laughing at me today."

"You are being self conscious," LB says very much surprised.

"They made me feel self conscious, because it looked like they were laughing at me," she sighs.

"Come on now, it only looked like that. You don't go assuming things without proof. They are very respectable."

"So you saw it as well."

"Yes, I did."

"There were many others around. But they were only," she leaves her thought incomplete and walks in dejected silence.

After a little while, she says dejectedly,"I haven't done any pranks in past few months. So they can't be laughing about that."

LB laughs at that, "Weren't you the one who said a few weeks back that someone stared at your face in a very disturbing manner?"

"Yeah, what about that?" SC ponders out loudly,"Oh," she says as something dawns on her.

LB laughs, "It took you a while to figure out."

"But that was rude."

"Laughing or staring?" LB's laugh seems to be contagious.

"Laughing," and a small smile dawns on SC' face.

"But you don't like him or anything?"

"How am I to know? I don't know him at all."

"Good. Leave it at that. He doesn't suit you anyway."

"Alright."

"So what lesson did you learn today?" LB made the final question as they were getting close to the bus station.

"Never make eye contact," SC says.

You see, my protégé learnt the lesson, what many females in engineering school learns the hard way. There are many theories as to how this practice of "avoiding eye contact" evolved in the engineering schools. Some deep thinkers have made profound remarks about that. Anyways, I digress. The point I were trying to make is there are such members as SC in the current day society requiring my guardianship and there will always be no matter how much the "society" evolves.