Three Certainties in Life

[Edit- Please take this as humorous- not cynical :)]

Ok, this is going to be a post without pictures for a change, and will hopefully contain some semi-meaningful thought. As we all know, there are some well accepted certainties in the world such as death and taxes, and I have another one I'd like to add one to that. This revelation comes from years of dealing with and trying to understand girls. I don't know that any guy can truly ever really grasp this, but there are still some things to be learned from the attempt :).

So, here's the third certainty in life:

If a girl says or does something and you're not quite sure what she meant, and you try to figure out all the possibilities for what you think it might be- and try to run through in your mind how you'd respond if it was each one, you can be pretty certain that what she really meant was nothing that ever entered your head. And of course since you didn't anticipate it, you're going to be totally caught off guard and unprepared to respond intelligently.

Of course this is not a hard and fast rule and doesn't happen all the time, but with any sort of interpersonal interaction, a guy can pretty much expect to be baffled by a girl at some time, and this can be a comforting theory to fall back on, assured that it may not necessarily be deliberate or malicious- it's just the nature of the universe. You can't argue with a force of nature.

Let's take a quick example. Suppose a guy goes to ask out a girl he likes- full of hope- with visions of sugar plums in his eyes. He gets up the courage to ask her out for a coffee and she says. "Oh, I'm really busy right now. I have a lot of things going on, I don’t have time- Sorry". It may not seem like it to many girls, but most guys would interpret that as a fairly vague answer. So, having been through this before, the confounded young man gives lots of room for a multitude of possibilities as he tries to figure out what exactly that means and what he is supposed to do next.

The first thing he might do is take this statement at face-value and hope that she is actually "busy" and there is hope for a future coffee-date after the busy-ness subsides. If the guy is really astute and well composed, he might even consider trying to clarify this right away. However, he will already be a little stressed trying to get his heart rate down below 200 and will be pleased with the minor personal triumph he has just achieved, glad to get away without having fainted or blurted out anything embarrassing. However, after the poor guy walks away to think about things and delight in the fact that he wasn’t outright rejected, he realizes that he has a bit of a dilemma about whether or not to ask again at a later time. This is generally a positive outlook, somewhere in the middle of good and bad possible outcomes- and what a guy would most likely want to believe is the case. It is not a rejection of his person or his character, but a cruel twist of destiny that the timing just didn’t work out. Knowing this is just the tip of the iceberg of possible interpretations of those few words, he ponders what else she could have meant…

Being a realist, our guy contemplates the most negative option possible. It is quite conceivable that when the girl said "I don't have time- I'm really busy" she actually meant "Get away from me you freak of nature- I despise the ground you walk on!" This may be a stretch, but with guys being the masters of not getting (or mis-reading) hints, it's good to cover all the bases.

At the extreme optimistic and unlikely positive end of the spectrum, our guy may interpret the girl as actually meaning something like: "Thanks so much for the offer. That's really flattering and sweet of you to ask me out, but I really am quite busy at the moment. I'd love to go out with you sometime in the future though. Please keep me in mind and I'd love a chance to get to know you better once I have fulfilled my rigorous scholarly obligations and have more time to spend in earnest friendship development with possible marital implications." (guys generally think in run-on sentences)

This covers the extremes of the possible meanings and if a guy can accept and prepare to respond appropriately to any of these that’s a pretty good start. Within the range of extremes the guy will also try to cover many of the grey areas. Here is some of the middle ground he might cover.

When a girl says “I’m busy right now, I don’t have time…” she may mean:

“I have never thought about you in that way, and I’m not really interested, but I don’t want to directly reject you so I’ll just claim that I’m too busy, and thus save your feelings from being hurt”

“I really don’t know you all that well and I’m kind of shy about going out with guys, so even though I might consider going out, I’d be too uncomfortable to go out with you alone”

“Who are you ?!?”

“Ewww- That’s just weird- you creep me out”

“I’m too busy for you- I do have priorities which I’d make time for, but you’re not it”

“I’d love to go out but my parents or other third party guardian-type would kill me, and that would make me very busy”

“You and me? HAH, I’m too good for you”

“I’d like to go out but I’m going to say no this time to see if you ask me again to make sure you’re serious”.

“I’m just not interested and I’m hoping that if I keep putting you off, you‘ll get the hint and go bother someone else without me having to be too specific”

So, after considering all these possibilities the key for any guy is to not freak out between the time he thinks of all these options and the time he finds out the real meaning. In the end, everything will be ok, as we’ll soon find out. As of this point however, the guy will think he’s covered about all he can think of and will prepare to accept whatever happens when he finally does get up the courage to find out what the truth is. This can be quite tricky itself as he will probably have to ask the girl specifically for more detail, or he might be able to get some information from a sympathetic third party. So, now comes the moment of truth! With all the contingencies considered and the appropriate responses prepared- he is ready to face the music- whether it be harps and angels or out-of-tune bagpipes.

The moment of truth- the true meaning will be nothing he ever dreamed of in all his thoughts (and I struggle to come up with good examples since by definition I will have thought of it- and that cannot be the truth, but I’ll take a shot for the sake of completeness)

The true meaning of "Oh, I'm really busy right now. I have a lot of things going on, I don’t have time- Sorry" will be something like:

“I’m actually working under-cover at this school on an FBI investigation and I’m not allowed to socialize with the subjects of my investigation.”

"I'm busy trying to avoid you. I noticed that you're wearing Air-Jordan running shoes- endorsed by Michael Jordan- who played for the Chicago Bulls. I was once trampled by a bull in a tragic incident which prematurely ended my career as a Matador. Now I'm deathly afraid of anything associated with bulls- so it definitely wouldn't work out between us. "

“My father is doing business with The King of Siam and I’ve just been given to him to be his bride as part of a business arrangement and I’m busy making preparations to go become his official financial advisor and Queen.”

“I really don’t have much time. I must complete my work on earth before the mothership comes to take me back to Omicron Theta 9.”

So, those are just a few samples that the average guy just won’t see coming (but are probably completely obvious to any girls reading this). So, what to do? The best thing for a guy to do is to look very thoughtful, not give any hint of surprise, and very slowly say something like- “Ahhh….. I see……. I thought it must be something like that…. Well you take care now…..”

After the truth is out, there is not much left for a guy to do but move on and learn from the experience. And really the only things to learn are how to keep a straight face in spite of being completely stupefied after thinking you thought of everything, (and to realize that you will never think of everything) and to keep being optimistic, because one day you will find a girl who will actually mean one of the things you anticipated.

P.S. Just contemplating my next post and wondering if the subject would be remotely interesting for anyone to read, or whether I should just post more pictures of kittens :). I am considering writing the story of "My First Love". I've told many people this story, but never written it down as far as I can recall. The catch is, it spans a period of about ten years (two or three months of specific story, then sporadic contact over several years), and will probably take days to write out and fill more space than this blog page will allow. So, if anyone knows if I can simply add attachments to this site, let me know and I might post a Word document for people to download instead of writing 20 pages worth of text on the front page.