A little anecdote I remembered about her from junior high:
There was this small, weird, nerdy kid named Bobby Ray. He was in my P.E. class. It was either late in the year in 7th grade, or else we were in 8th grade already. I don't remember. Think Anthony Michael Hall in "Sixteen Candles", but not as smart or likeable. But that same sort of energy...always kind of weirdly hyper, like one of those kids they put on Ritalin.
Bobby Ray (I think that was his full name, like "Ray" was his last name. Or "Rae".) came to PE class one day and was telling everybody that he'd asked this girl "Tawny" to "go with" him, and she's said "yes". (That was the phrase we used back then for having a steady girlfriend/boyfriend. You were "going with" so-and-so.) I had no idea who this girl "Tawny" was, because her real name was Julie, and was still in the process of getting everybody to call her Tawny.
So anyway, the thought that ANY girl would give Bobby the time of day was hard to imagine. I asked one of the other guys in the class, "so what's up with Bobby supposedly getting a girlfriend?" And the guy kind of shook his head and said "no way. He's lying. No way would Tawny go with HIM".
Sure enough, the next day, Bobby shows up again, and is kind of crestfallen. He was like "yesterday she said she'd go with me. Now, she won't even talk to me, she's just been ignoring me!" And that was the end of the Bobby Ray/Tawny Kitaen "romance".
A while later, I figured out that "Tawny" was Julie Kitaen, and I realized why everybody was so skeptical. But even though it was obviously a total mismatch, and Bobby Ray was the most annoying kid ever, I felt bad for him, and thought it was a shitty thing for her to do.
Later on, after I got to know her a little bit, I asked her about it. "What was that thing with Bobby Ray?". And she was like, he sat next to me in one of my classes, and we kind of became "class friends" (she meant like how you sit next to somebody in class, and it's somebody you wouldn't necessarily be friends with or hang out with outside of that class, but you talk and joke with them because they're there.) He was nice, he made me laugh, but I didn't like him THAT way. When he asked me to go with him, I was shocked, but I didn't know what to say, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings, so I just said "OK". Then afterward, I didn't know what to do, so I just kind of ignored him, so he'd get the hint".
I told her about how he'd showed up for P.E. that day and was all excited and told everybody who would listen that she'd agreed to go with him, and then the next day he was all confused and heartbroken. I was kind of laughing about it, but she looked like she genuinely felt bad about it.
Poor girl was having to deal with unwanted attention from horny dudes from a very young age.
