The Potential

Last week, over a GnT, my fellow clinic officers were giving me the low down on the psych clinic I'll be co-managing for the next two years. As is expected in a bitty place like Cowtown, one officer ran into an old fling at the bar. With mild discontent, she turned to me and asked if I were dating anyone, and, as is expected with a love-drunk, heartbreak veteran like myself, my romance skeptic answered first, "maybe," trained never to assume the best but always the worst (in this case, it's in my head or a ploy of ill intent). Being a third year she instinctively offered my lowly M1-ness some advice, or really, no advice at all, to just "go for it," saying this is the year of exploration. She told me about her first med school interests: the first was "false" and the second was "too good." With the last she explained, "not 'good' in the sense that I'm not worthy, but that I'm too..." and here she quoted an old movie I thought no one watched: Anne of Avonlea. Anne's best friend Diana has just accepted a marriage proposal to a good man, much to Anne's dismay:

Anne Shirley: Fred is... extremely good.
Marilla Cuthbert: That is exactly what he should be! Would you want to marry a wicked man?
Anne Shirley: Well, I wouldn't marry anyone who was really wicked, but I think I'd like it if he could be wicked and wouldn't.

There's a precise moment when you meet someone new when you know beyond doubt whether or not they are going to understand you. This was it. "Exactly," I replied with flourish. It's not that she and I are wicked but we've mischeviously flirted with that edge, well intended of course, and to find a kindred spirit in another would be to match heart to heart, the same potential for... cleverly playful behavior. What is intriguing about this new development of mine, is that, new for me, his cards are played close to chest and I, for once, can't read him with the definitive reassurance I usually have. I suppose this is what everything is supposed to be like, not to know, but to play to find out.