Underminer: a friend who, during ordinary conversations, casually backhands you with condescension.
I.
Cherry and I were walking together, talking about Fake Patty’s Day, in which the bars open early and have specials to accomodate students who won’t be in town on St. Patty’s day, because that falls during spring break.
“I don’t know if I can make it at 9 in the morning.”
“Oh come on.“
What I meant by “come on” is “ start early and make the most of the day.” But she thought I was asking her to come with me.
“Are you begging?”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
Well, what I said was, “Actually, I assumed you had your own crowd to run with, so no, I was not asking for your company.”
What I meant was yeah, because what I’d really like to do for a pubcrawl is kill my buzz babysitting a snotty emobot.
II.
At night, after the Spring Swing Dance, before Jimbo’s party. Cate, Arianna, and I are hanging out at Cherry’s house; I was making mindless banter, like I always do, which inspired her to wistfully reminisce over my best qualities.
“I LOVE the way you say something stupid and then laugh at your own dumb joke.”
“Actually Cherry, I was laughing because I knew you were going to point out how dumb it was, because hello, all my jokes are dumb.”
Okay, I get it: you’re just not that into me. I laughed harder.
III.
Jimbo’s party: She introduced me to the girl with the fantastically WASPy voice from Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. I did not recognize her at first.
“You’ve seen her before. This is Mackenzie, you jerk!”
But later, behind her back, doing her best impression: “Oh hi, I’m Mackenzie! Look how amazing I am! Ha ha ha!” As it happens, after talking with Mackenzie, I found out she really did skew towards amazing, and this uncharacteristic cattiness confirmed it.
IV.
And of course, there was this Underminerey stroke of genius.
