Adeel Jameel

I met Adeel Jameel in my Macro Econ class. Short, thin, dark. Greasy hair. Big glasses. His belt almost hit where his shirt collar ended. At 24 he sounded pubescent and weirdly squeaky. But you had to see how he carried himself. Once in a while he’d make this face jerk and put both his hands through all of his hair in a very sexy Baywatch style.

He came and sat next to me. Smooth as a lion cat. And I could see from the side of my eye, he was waiting. Waiting to say something. His hand flinching uncontrollably. I kept my eyes straight pretending that I didn’t know this mutant existed. And just when the teacher took a breather, he turned around and greeted me.

Aur batao…kia horaha hay?

This coming from a person who I’ve never spoken to in my life.
Adeel Jameel
In his flesh.
The pariah.
The one man plague.
I had heard stories about him.
I was almost scared.

Umm…theeek thaak! How are you?

I looked around if anyone had noticed me talking to him.

He on the other hand looked completely at ease.
Like he was Richard Gere and I was some extra on the set.
Like he was a 10 and I was a mere 4.

I made small talk. Forced at first. People looked. And then they looked some more. And then they looked away. And I started relaxing. I spoke a little about school and studies. I actually asked adeel jameel about adeel jameel. I was nice. I pretended not to be superficial for 10 mins and it was almost okay.

After class Adeel Jameel made one swift movement. He grabbed my cell phone. And put his number in my phone under big letters ADEEL JAMEEL and then gave himself a missed call. This was almost weird. This guy had guts. A lot of guts for a geek. Maybe this person was misunderstood.

This is how it started.

The story of Adeel Jameel and I.

Adeel Jameel soon started believing in his twisted geeky head that we had become best friends. He’d wait outside my classes and jump into the next chair before anyone else could. He’d follow me for the break.

Now I was becoming the social pariah.

The person who hung out with ADEEL JAMEEL.
But I tried to be a bigger person.

I acquainted Adeel Jameel with all of my cool friends.

He’d embarrass me every time but I did it.

As the semester progressed, rumors started flying that we were god forbid DATING.

I ignored them as rumors.

Rumors are rumors

But when I heard ADEEL JAMEEL actually saying that to his computer hacker-dorky-four eyed cliché, I was fuming.

Adeel Jameel just laughed it off.

Like I wanted to hide our little romance.

As if there was a romance.

His friends were patting his back.

This was horrible.

First priority: I put him on my ignore list.

But he was fast.

He could squirm his annoying little body out of a swarming crowd and grab a chair next to me and sit.

When he kept bugging me in class and the teacher called on him to shut up, he actually turned around and said:

“If you hadn’t come and sat with me, I wouldn’t have gotten into trouble”

I SAT WITH HIM.

OHMYGOD.

This person was out of some psycho-stalker-axe-murderer movie.

He was creating a relationship in his head.

He was imagining that I was actually running after him.

This had to stop some way.

I thought I was doing charity work.

Being nice to the retarded.

But now it made sense why he was the social pariah.

He was actually worse than they had made him sound.

He was a conceited bastard.

I expected dorks to be the nice guys.

But nooOOoooo

I had to endure ADEEL JAMEEL for two more months till the semester ended. It was my last year and I graduated.

But my four years of book-hopping taught me these lessons in life.

“Never judge a dork by his glasses.”

“Sometimes beauty isn’t skin deep and it’s not even on the outside either”

And my personal favorite

“Psycho’s come in all shapes and sizes”