Sophia Grekin (SG): Can you talk about your first love?
Sophia Nuñez (SN): Oh, um, God, my first love was probably to, like, a stuffed animal, honestly. But, um, I am dating my boyfriend from high school still. We've been dating for, like, over two years now. And I don't know if that's necessarily, like, my first love, but it’s, like, the first relationship I’ve ever been in where it’s like I’ve felt this strongly about a person.
Um, yeah. It’s, like, incredibly fulfilling to be in a relationship that, like, has felt so caring for so long. And we’re currently long distance, which kind of is, like, awful. But we always feel like it’s better than the alternative of breaking up, which I think is just like a testament to, like, how we feel about each other.
SG: How did you guys meet?
SN: Um, so we actually met when I was in ninth grade. Um, and he was — he’s … a year below, a freshman um, in college, not in high school, to clarify. We met when he was an eighth grader and we both met in the, um, art room of our high school. And I taught him how to clean his paint brushes. Um, and he’s an amazing painter.
And so he wasn’t really dedicated when we first met and I was like, ‘You are coming to the art room; we are painting together because you’re way too talented to not do that.’ Um, and so we were like peripheral friends up until my senior year when we had classes together and we both figured out we have a love for rodent-based films. So … we just ended up hanging a ton and then, um, we got together New Year’s of 2020.
SG: That’s so cute.
SN: We created a fake club at our high school called, uh, rodent movie club, um, which just only watch movies where main characters are rodents.
So of course you’ve got like the classics: “Ratatouille,” “Flushed Away,” like “Stuart Little,” but then you have like, “G-Force,” the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” series and “American Tail.” … There’s actually quite a few.
Um, for our very first Valentine’s Day, we went to see “Sonic the Hedgehog” opening day, because Sonic is in fact … a rodent, and so we said it was a club activity.
SG: Did you get funding for it?
SN: We never became an official club. And also imagine, like, having school funding your Valentine’s Day, that’d be insane.
SG: What do you think is something about them that drew you to them?
SN: Um, I think it’s just, like, it’s like a weird underdog story. … I think. It’s such a funny underdog to be rooting for, like this scrawny rat, um, that you’d, like, never care about.
SG: Is he, [your boyfriend], the scrawny rat?
SN: No. The— oh wait, are you talking about rodent movies or my boyfriend?
SG: Your boyfriend!
SN: Oh, um, all good. My boyfriend is maybe one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. There’s nothing he can say that, like, everything he says makes me laugh. And so as someone who, like, has a lot of stuff going on in my personal life, like, it’s really nice to talk with him.
