Cogs can think.

Weirdest coincidence EVAR. During the party last Saturday, I was telling Anne about my apparent obsession with girls with one or more ‘a’s in their name. I listed my love interests, and all of them carry the letter ‘a’ in their name. As I was walking down the list, I reached Anne - not the Anne I was talking to (whose full name is Annemarie, actually), but an Anne I knew in high school. It’s not you, I joked, Another Anne, an Anne you don’t know.

Seven hours later, as everyone else was preparing to get into bed, Anne, Nadia, and I were sitting on the couch, with the girls sifting through my shoe box full of old photographs and memorial books that I carry from my early childhood all the way up until my first few years studying psychology. We reached my high school class photos. Annemarie looked at one of them, and got all excited.

That’s Anne! she said. I know Anne!

You have to realise that Annemarie and I have only known each other for a little over three years now. Wonderful years, but the odds of Annemarie knowing the Anne from my past are really, really slim. Annemarie is from Weesp and Amsterdam, high-school-Anne is from Alkmaar.

That was not only weird, but also a tad bit cool. Anne was probably my first major crush, and also the one who dashed my hopes in a way that I will forever remember as the coolest rejection method I’ve ever experienced.

Majors props for writing “No Thom, no.” in large, black letters on my school etui. Beat that, future love interests.