Going The Wong Way

On Asking A Girl Out

Dating is a frightening proposition. I thought I’d put together some pointers for those guys who might be thinking about venturing out into the big blue sea.

1. Scared - That’s right, girls are scary. They’re mean. They’re intimidating. So shy away from them. Ask them out using as little direct interaction as possible (e.g. while chatting online, on their Facebook, over e-mail). They’ll just want to coddle and love you because they can see that you’re a sensitive soul.
2. Ask Everyone For Advice - Communal knowledge, right? Ask her friends, her enemies, your friends, your enemies, strangers, and anyone else what you should do before you actually do it. But no matter what, don’t ask her yet.
3. Nervous - It’s not easy. So go ahead and stutter, stumble over your words, and forget what you wanted to say. She’ll understand. It’s a tough, cold world.
4. Over Dramatize - Asking out a girl is a big deal. So go all out. Flowers? Of course. Dress up? Sure. Jewelry? Perhaps. Because really, once she says yes to a date, she’s probably going to say yes to anything else that you ask.
5. Trick Her - Don’t even call it a date. Call it “hanging out” or “catching up” or something similarly ambiguous. That way you can get in under the radar without having to put yourself out there. Because if you put yourself out there, you might get hurt. And that doesn’t feel good!
6. Figure Out Everying Before - She’s gonna say yes anyways. So you have to know what kind of centerpieces you’re going to have at your banquet. Man she’s going to look beautiful walking down that aisle towards you, huh?
7. Don’t Take No For An Answer - She really wants you. She’s just playing hard to get. Go get ‘em, Tiger. Even if she gets a restraining order. Even if she never responds to you. Even if she says to get out of her life and never call her again. It’s all a ploy. Only suckers fall for ploys.

Now you’re ready, young man. Or old man. Whatever stage of life you are man. You have all of the tools necessary to win the woman of your dreams. Don’t worry, she’s gonna love you. Trust me, I can tell about these kinds of things.

Neighborhood Dogs

Say you’re taking a nice afternoon run. You’re on the home stretch, and you’re trying to kick out the last of the run. Then all of a sudden you look back and there’s a dog weighing perhaps 75 pounds running at you and barking. You had just seen the owner go into their house to put something away and nobody was around.

What would you do?

1. Try to outrun it
2. Squat down and receive it with arms open wide, all the while oohing and ahhing at the cuteness of it all
3. Yell like a madman for help
4. Cover your crotch with one hand and hope for the best
5. Cry like a baby
6. Play with it
7. Fight it

Yeah I can’t even think of any other possibilities. Tell me what you’d do, guess what I did, and then check out the next page for a fun picture.

Pleasantly Surprised > Horribly Disappointed

Expectations. We have them about all kinds of things. Sometimes we base them on our experiences, but more often we seem to base them on our hopes and dreams. We can have them about things like birthdays, get-togethers, and other events. In our mind’s eye we see people being caring and loving, friendly and jolly. It’s not always so, is it?

But besides that, we can even have expectations about much more concrete matters. When we sit in the chair, we have that dreamy expectation that the chair will hold up our weight. If that expectation isn’t met, we sure aren’t too happy! And so it goes moment by moment with all sorts of things that we encounter.

More recently I’ve noticed how much people do this with things that they don’t understand. Or rather, I’ve noticed how this comes into play when people are dealing with those things that most of us do not fully understand. Things like televisions, computer programs, and automobiles will all sorely disappoint us when we expect them to work and they do not. But when we don’t know what to expect, and things work how happy are we?

When we try out a shortcut key and find that some programmer has made sure that shortcut key works aren’t we pleasantly surprised? Or when we go to a website, make a guess at what to do, aren’t we glad for whoever made it work just so?

I emphasize the computer software, but it’s obviously more.

Group Friendship

When I think of friendship, I initially think of a relationship between one person and another. They can be all sorts of combination of guys and girls (okay so really there are only 4 combinations if there are 2 people involved). But have you noticed how different everything is when a group is involved?

Imagine, if you will, going into a situation where you’re trying to get in with a whole group of people. Individually you are able to interact pretty well with them. Conversation is pretty easy, common ground is found, life is good.

But as a whole when you’re with them things are not well. You are left standing there thinking, “What am I doing here?” You don’t follow their inside jokes. And you definitely haven’t known them for as long as they have known each other.

Why the difference? It seems strange to me to be able to be friends with them individually but have trouble with them when they are all a group. But it happens. Related to mob mentality? Who knows, you got me.

The Real Better Half

Have you heard people talk about their spouse as “their better half”? It’s an interesting (and kind) thing to say. Often it’s the guy talking about his wife, but not always so. It’s slightly demeaning towards the “lesser half” (often self-deprecating since that person will say it about themselves) but that’s supposed to be hidden by the elevation of the spouse.

So my question is, how can both of them be the better half? I really don’t think that can be the case. I had a talk quite sometime back about this. We talked about different couples that we know, and sad as it was we realized that we could usually think of one person in the relationship who was a better catch. We weren’t trying to be mean (at least I don’t remember that being the intention, I think it was just a commentary on things that we saw). Still, it’s an interesting thought huh?

Think of a couple, and I’d hazard a guess that you could think that one of them is a bit of a better catch than the other. Now why this might be will obviously change from case to case.

Why did I write this? I don’t know, I just thought about it all of a sudden. And I thought it was an interesting thought. Don’t read into it too much or your head will hurt. And nobody likes headaches. Nobody. But do appreciate your other half for what who they are!