Naive

I'm not naive.

It really bugs me when people assume I am. I guess they get that impression because I'm young-looking and short of stature. I get good grades and I don't cuss. I'm supposed to be some sweet, innocent little girl whose ears bleed at the mere mention of anything remotely sexual or illegal or otherwise in poor taste.

I rode in the back of the bus in middle school. I watch television and movies; I get on the internet. I am aware of the world around me, and the varying degrees of perversion it contains. It doesn't do me a bit of harm to hear it.

What does bother me is when people apologize to me for it. Maybe it's a base annoyance of being patronized or the underlying assumption that I'm automatically offended. The truth is, I'm truly not offended very easily at all. You would probably have to specifically try to offend me, and if you're doing that, you have more issues than I care to address.

It's a bit of a paradox, really, that I associate people apologizing for acting immature towards me with people not taking me seriously. Maybe people think I'm too serious for sexual humor. Maybe this is sort of a backward compliment. It's hard to be flattered by something that alienates me from the rest of my peers.

This sort of thing always reminds me of a middle school lunch table I hated very much. I didn't have any friends in the class that I was forced to eat lunch with, so I spent the time very nerdily reading. So of course, because I didn't happen to like anyone in that particular group of people (which included a gang of giggly, annoying girls, a section of rapid Spanish-speaking people with no interest in including a white kid, several boys who spent the whole time mixing random crap together and daring one another to eat it, and the group I'm about to describe my experience with).

This one group thought they were so mature because they liked to toss around some sexual slang and pretend they had sexual experience. They'd make off-color jokes and laugh heartily, then glance around like "I hope nobody heard that" but really meaning "I hope everybody heard that."

I was particularly irked by one story this wannabe-whore of a girl would frequently tell about how she donned nude-colored lingerie and turned a gay guy straight. First of all, they don't make lingerie in the size "awkward, under-developed thirteen year old girl." Second of all, you're 13! You didn't do anything. Quit making up dumb, improbable stories. It simply didn't happen.

Of course I could hear it, being right next to them. One day, one of them turned to me and says "I bet you don't understand any of this, eh?" I probably grimaced slightly, and then went back to my book. But I couldn't let it go, and after a few minutes, I politely interrupted their conversation and began pouring out all sorts of sexual crap I don't even remember. They left me alone the rest of the year, but I don't know if I really got my point across.

It's just so irritating. Or maybe I'm being unreasonable. I don't know, but please people, feel free to make "that's what she said" jokes in my vicinity. I might even laugh.