One step at a time.
“You’re right,” I agreed, watching as she visibly relaxed. “We should get a-choosing. Does that pink head of yours have any ideas? Everything I like has been done a thousand times over.” Also, I Googled it yesterday.
The easiest experiment we could run, the easiest way to gather data was to create a questionnaire and get a good subject pool in responses. We could organize the responses based on age, sex, socioeconomic status…or anything else.
Only problem was we had to figure out something to base our questions on, and make a hypothesis as to what we thought the results would be.
I hated experiments. I really did. They were so not my thing.
“I don’t care,” Bree muttered, turning to gaze out of the window. Outside, the sun was shining, a bright, warm fall day.
“What do you like?”
Bree openly glared.
“I’m not trying to dig into anything personal,” I spoke with a chuckle, though in reality that’s exactly what I was doing. Trying to get to know my partner and my future girlfriend. That wasn’t so weird, was it? “I just think if we center the project around something one of us likes, it’ll be easier to do.”
That seemed to placate her somewhat. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what you like?”
“I mean, I haven’t thought about it in a while. I wake up, I go to school, I go home. Rinse and repeat.”
“Okay, and what else?”
She gave me a crazy look.
Well, it might not be an I love you smile, but at least it was some emotion. Getting any emotion out of her was better than none, right?
“I meant,” I added, holding back another laugh—if I laughed too much right now, she might think I was laughing at her, which was not the case. “What do you do when you’re not here or sleeping? There are more hours in the day to fill.”
Bree took her time in answering, “I don’t do anything else.”
I couldn’t say how long I stared at her after that. That…made me feel some kind of conflicted. She didn’t do anything else? So then what did she do, just sit in her room and wait for time to pass? For whatever reason, something inside me ached when I thought of that possibility. “Okay, then, when you were a kid, what did you do then?”
God, this girl…what was I going to do with her?
Her teeth found her bottom lip again, something that must be a habit with her. “Uh…is it bad I don’t really know? I mean, I used to draw and stuff, but…” Her shoulders rose and fell once.
“Good, what else?” If I had to pry things out of this girl, I would.
It was a few moments before she said, “I used to watch a lot of Disney movies. They were my favorite. When I was a kid, my mom said I used to watch The Lion King every day when I came home from school.” This time, the smile that grew on her lips was genuine, and it was a smile I wanted to see more often. True, sincere, wistful.
“The Lion King, huh? Have you seen the live version?”
She scoffed, “How can it be considered a live version when it’s all CGI?”
I acted confused. “You mean they didn’t get real lions to sing?”
The laugh that came from her right then made all of this worth it. It was a sound that instantly caused my heart to skip a beat and my mind to wander. Such a melodious, entrancing sound. I could listen to it all day.
Eventually, her laughter died down, and she said, “No, and no. I haven’t seen many new movies. I just…I can’t get into them now.”
That was sad, but I had the feeling that sad was Bree’s middle name. It was strange, because before, when I’d only seen her in passing, I never knew how seriously dejected this girl was. She seemed normal, pink hair aside. But talking to her, seeing her up close…it was impossible not to see the deep-seated sorrow in her eyes.
“Well, I think we should do something involving Disney, then,” I told her, pushing past the way she instantly seemed so depressed. “Does being obsessed with Disney when you were younger relate to how you are when you’re older? Or something like that.”
Bree nodded, and for the next hour we talked about what we could possibly do it on. The professor had been lenient about the subject of the project, so that really left it all up to us. Did watching Disney movies when you were younger affect your outlook on life when you were older? We specified movies, because I knew Disney had its own channel, not to mention it owned a bunch of other networks and had its own streaming service now.
Our hypothesis was yes. Yes, being obsessed with Disney when you were younger was related to how you viewed life when you were older.
Bree was into it, which was good. I wanted her to enjoy this project as much as anyone could enjoy a college psychology experiment.
What Bree failed to realize, however, was how close to home this experiment truly was to her. We weren’t saying watching the movies when you were younger affected you outright when you were older, but there was probably something to be said about how many times girls watched the princess movies and how they viewed dating when they were older. Guys? I didn’t think guys
