You Took My Stapler, Didn't You?

The older I get the more I realize that my social skills, they are lacking. And I don’t mean that in a way that would indicate that I burp loudly and without shame after a heavy meal or that I dig for gold in the upper recesses of my sinus cavity while waiting in line for The Fast and Furious 3: Tokyo Drift. It’s just that somewhere along the way I never got the memo that internal monologue was supposed to stay, you know, internal. It never occurred to me that perhaps people would not be amused by my willingness to unload the f-word, especially when it was in the same breath as a word that may or may not be in reference to your favorite deity, a word that sounds a lot like the structure that holds back a great body of water and the son of a female dog.

When you combine my inability to hold back the babbling brook of nonsense with the lack of skills in the Game category, you get one very spaztastic individual. I will attempt to flirt, then backpeddle on the flirting, then apologize for the flirting and then attempt to flirt again. It’s a vicious, vicious cycle and one that gets me nowhere, unless nowhere is now a bright red face and twitchy hands.

So last night, after my ridiculous attempts at behaving like a Girl With Game, I ended up talking with my friend Brittany about the Nature Of Crushes and what I’ve concluded is that the entire human race is in dire need of some Lithium. Why do we do this to ourselves? It’s like repeatedly putting your hand on a hot iron even though you’re quite aware that a) the iron is hot b) exceptionally hot objects leave burns c) burns are vastly uncomfortable and often leave nasty oozing bubbly sores and d) nasty oozing sores get infected, which leads to fever and chills and then DEATH. But then we resurrect ourselves from The Death and walk right back up to the iron and, displaying not one ounce of reservation, reach out, palm up, directly towards that scalding heat. And then we act all surprised when that pesky ol’ iron burns us. For like the seventeenth time.

I’m not going the usual female route with this and saying that everyone gets burned and why should we continue when we’ve got a whole plethora of sperm banks out there and why don’t we just form a giant female army and fly flags with giant furry vaginas on them. The analogy I was attempting to make stems more from the uncomfortableness one gets from having A Crush, how the pit of your stomach gets all roily and toily and the food sticks in the back of your throat when you see The Crush’s number on your caller id. Why isn’t it socially acceptable for me to say, albeit reluctantly and with much fumbling, that I’m totally into recycling and if you were an empty Coke can I’d crush you in a heartbeat? And then The Crush can just respond with a yes, no, maybe. Yes, I’m into recycling as well! No, I’m not that into recycling. Or, Maybe I’m into recycling, maybe I’m not; I’d have to learn more about the recycling to give you a true affirmative or negative.

And then, AND THEN, you know what? The Crush-y feeling could be over! Problem solved! No more wasted half-eaten sandwiches!

But the more I try to behave appropriately, the bigger an Ass I make of myself. I assume that things always have a black and white answer and if two people agree on the same answer then they should just skip all the randomness and stomach churning part and get to the finale already. But then people have to go and point out that the time spent in the stomach churning zone allows details to be hammered out but thing is, I’m so not a detail person. I keep organized piles of crap in my hopes of one day becoming a detail person and then my friend Lillleeeee will get in my car and say “Baby, you know your water bill is down here on the floor board.” and I respond with “Holy catpoop, really?” and then she pulls it out and stuffs it in my purse with a “I know how you are about these things so I put it right next to your debit card.” and I nod my head in agreement and then still manage to overlook it for another five days. My whole point being that I’m fine with getting the water bill and I’m fine with paying the water bill but the part in the middle where I write out the check and put the stamp on the envelope is an awful lot of effort for me and, as mentioned above, I just want to skip to the finale where the water bill is paid already because I happen to quite like taking showers and having sparkling clean dishes. *sigh

I’m also hoping that craptacularly embarrassing myself on this most public of forums will force The Crush to realize I’m not to be encouraged because THIS is what you have to put up with and it’s best to just, you know, um, not encourage. I said that already but whatever. Bite me.