This has come up in several discussions and I find it difficult to communicate what I mean without explaining the whole scale, so I’ve decided to put it in a separate posts.

I believe that discussions about relationships are incomplete with defined terms of “attractive” and “unattractive”. Most people talk in binary terms, some have scales from 1-10 and some have three labels (top, middle, bottom). After much contemplation of the issue, I have determined that there are four worthy castes.

The way that people end up in one category or the other depends not so much on how attractive they are to me (if they are female) or would be to me (if I were female and they are male) but rather on how many options they have romantically. For instance, a guy that’s really smart may be extraordinarily attractive to a small quadrant of women, but they still won’t have as many options as the guy that is as physically attractive as they are smart (even if the options they have may be better). This was initially a way of discerning someone’s looks, but as I’ve gotten older it’s taken on more in the way of non-physical properties such as income, intelligence, charm, and so on.

The things that matter are too many to mention and some, such as ethnicity and religion, are deeply unfair. But what matters to large numbers of people matters according to the system. The good news is that even if you are in the lower categories there is no reason you can’t find happiness. It only takes one, after all. It does make it harder to secure a long-lasting relationship with someone in the upper categories, however, because they have more options and are more likely to chose someone of similar social standing.

So my system is divided into four categories. I’d call them quartiles, but they’re unevenly distributed. So here we go:

Station One: These are the creme of the crop, so to speak. Some would call the male variation alpha, but very, very few young women hold out for this group. They know better. These are the people that would stand out as attractive in almost any social setting. They’re physically attractive to make it in Hollywood (albeit not usually on their looks alone), have good jobs, are smart and accomplished. They most likely do not adamantly hold any unpopular political beliefs and are not devout towards a non-Christian religion. They comprise of about 5-10% of the population.

Station Two: Rather than being defined as what they are, they are defined as what they are not. They have nothing physically wrong with them (they may have extra weight, but it’s not poorly distributed), they’re not unintelligent, they are not unemployed or in dead-end jobs, they’re not uncomfortable in social situations, and not socially ungraceful. If they fall short in any one of these categories, they make up for it in two of the others (or in categories I haven’t mentioned). They typically excel in one of the catagories above, however. They may hold unpopular beliefs, be a disfavored minority and attractive and yet be hollywood handsome or particularly successful (or maybe both). They comprise of about 25-30% of the population.

Station Three: These are your average joes and joans. They are a mixture of positive and negative and how attractive they are will vary greatly from individual to individual depending on what they are looking for. They may be overweight, but not significantly so. Few would look at these people and say either “wow” or “ewww” (though some probably will). They’re socially awkward but accomplished or unemployed but charming or some combination of traits good and bad. These are the types of people that Hollywood uses Station Ones and Twos to try to portray. As this is the biggest group there is the largest disparity from one end to the other (I sometimes refer to there being “High Threes” and “Low Threes”), but couplings within this group rarely lead to head-scratching among one partner’s social coterie and celebration by the others, as is the case between Twos and Threes, Ones and Twos, and Threes and Fours. They’re about 40-50% of the population.

Station Four: These are people that have overwhelming physical problems or their lives are a reck to the point that they are drug addicts or homeless. At best they live with their parents, have no prospects, and are middling in terms of appearance. Fours are often contemptuous of other Fours even if they don’t hold delusions about their position. The most common characteristic is that they are not just overweight or fat, they are morbidly obese. Often they are not physically ugly but have some piece of their personality that is entirely unconducive to starting and maintaining a relationship. They are about 10-20% of the population.

In a conversation at Bobvis, I referred to something called “dog-bone” behavior as something that some young ladies engage in:

The male-related self-esteem deprived female equivalent will engage in dog-bone behavior. She will cultivate the devotion of a guy (or guys plural, if she can manage it) that she isn’t really interested in (while making sure that she doesn’t give any more than she has to in return)

I forgot to explain what exactly I meant by dog-bone behavior.

The metaphor was explained to me by a formerly motherly figure (long story), Sherri. Sherri was warning me about Tracey, the girl I was interested in. She was saying that Tracey was acting like a dog with a bone with a lot of guys. A dog will sometimes manage to procure possession of more than one bone that the dog doesn’t want to play with (often because they have or have their eye on a bigger and better bone). Even though they’re not using it, they will be fiercely protective of the bone should any other dog or human want to redeploy the bone to better use elsewhere. The dog does not place any value on the bone except to the extent that the dog might lose it.

I’ve spoke of dog-bone behavior in the past. A few people automatically assumed I meant a different metaphor. Basically that owners make dogs do stupid tricks by enticing them with a bone. What’s interesting, though, is that while the metaphor is different, it also applies to most of the above situation. Women engaging in dog-bone behavior will wave the carrot of a relationship as a means of keeping the bone within its stable. Any time the guy talks about moving on or has moved on and she decides that she doesn’t like it, she waves the carrot/bone to get him back.

Even more interesting is another misinterpretation of what I meant by “dog-bone” behavior by Larry. He thought I was referring to this:

I was thinking of it in the context of the morality play where the dog has a bone in his mouth, sees its reflection in the water, and drops the bone he has to get “the other one”

And here is another dog-bone metaphor that also often dovetails with the original, or at least its more benign variations in my experience. The dog risks the bone he’s got for a better looking (or simply another) one in the water. A variation of the “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” theme. For years Tracey would tell me that taking me for granted and letting me go while in pursuit of bigger and better things was the biggest mistake of her life*. Though none were quite as adamant on that score as she was, she’s not the only one that has expressed that sentiment to me. And more generally it shares the connection of hoarding romantic interests that is exactly what Sherri accused Tracey of doing. The main difference between this one and the other two is that this one is a warning to the hoarder while the other two are warnings to the would-be bones in the hoarder’s pile.

* – She stopped saying that about a year or two before Clancy came along. I hope it’s because she moved on and got over it rather than that (a) she’s since made much bigger mistakes or (b) she’s realized what a prick I am and that she did the right thing. All three are possible.

A new movie (remaking an old movie and broadway production) is in theaters this week, called “Hairspray.” The plot synopsis given by IMDB is: “Pleasantly plump teenager Tracy Turnblad teaches 1962 Baltimore a thing or two about integration after landing a spot on a local TV dance show.”Regrettably, though I’m sure the movie’s fun and the musical numbers are entertaining (and it could be one of the first times John Travolta’s actually been watchable in years), I’m not so sure the movie has the right message.

Society’s got a love-hate relationship with body image. On the one hand, the weight/shape standards for women have become increasingly unrealistic; two cases in point would be Marilyn Monroe and Angela Lansbury, who were highly attractive actresses in their time but probably would be considered “fat” by producers today (Monroe was 5′ 5.5″ and around 120 pounds, which is pretty darn healthy but sure ain’t a size 0; the “in-crowd” these days are 5’8 or higher and under 90 pounds).

On the one hand, the film gives the message that a fat girl can still achieve her dreams, get the cute guy, etc. On the other hand, it does nothing to show the girl taking control for herself – regulating what she eats, exercising, showing some self-restraint. And I’m sorry to say that the words “pleasantly plump”, regrettable as it may be, are a euphemism for “a girl who needs some medical help before she develops obese-onset diabetes” in the case of this actress.

For point of reference, my household was not filled with skinny people. My family background is germanic and celtic for the most part; short, relatively plump people. However, even if none of my family will ever fit into small-size clothing, they were all active. My father was very reliable about a morning volleyball group and running; my mother taught aerobics and water aerobics; my grandfather is an organist and trombonist in addition to his own walks; my grandmother (before a tragic accident that cost her the use of her legs) walked with my grandfather and participated in aerobics and water aerobics as well. Fast food meals were the exception rather than the rule in our house.

Does everyone need to be a supermodel? Of course not. On the other hand, should the message be to children/teenagers who are seriously overweight that it doesn’t matter, or should it be that they need to control what they eat, exercise responsibly, and speak with their doctor if the weight doesn’t come off?

I would hope that the second message is what we should be teaching. Alas, instead of the healthy middle ground, we’re stuck oscillating between girls who drive themselves into sickness (anorexia/bulemia/other eating disorders) in pursuit of an unattainable Size 0 goal, or giving up so far that they destroy their own bodies, causing all sorts of other health risks with binge eating and lack of exercise.

And then I remember a fundamental shift – reading one of my dad’s old comic books (I think from 1971) I saw an ad for a product I considered unthinkable: a product advertised to young women who were too skinny to be considered attractive.

How far we’ve come!

(Addendum: yes, I am aware that young boys are taught unhealthy things too – everyone wants to be the overly muscled football star, etc. However for some reason, the “unhealthy weight” aspect is drilled into girls a lot more than into boys, probably because men don’t spend nearly as much time watching nearly-naked men prancing down a runway in fashion shows or seeing nearly-naked men on the cover of fashion magazines, as opposed to the myriad products marketed towards women this way.)

Having run in anime circles for nearly a decade now, I’ve run across a disproportionate number of people that have an interest in Japanese culture. My friend Quen speaks Japanese pretty fluently, as does my Deseret friend and coworker Milton. My friend Clint tried to take some classes and a group of us considered going to Japan to teach English in the JET program.

Generally speaking I believe it to be a good thing to be interested in cultures outside of America and Europe and I applaud all those that went beyond just watching anime and chose to learn about the culture. There is an underside to this, however. More than a few people that have done so turn around and use what they’ve learned to demonstrate their internationale cred at the expense of actual enlightenment.

To put a finer point on it, a number of Japanophiles I know are quick to argue that Japanese culture is superior to American culture. They point to Japanese artistic work (more than just anime and manga, usually), their long traditions, embracing of Buddhist (or any non-Christian, really) religion, and every way that their culture differs from ours as proof that their culture is more enlightened than ours. Implied is that they, by appreciating said culture, are more enlightened than we are. It’s an extension of the traveling abroad issue recently mentioned by Bob.

Even that wouldn’t bother me if these people didn’t so often complain about American culture in the ways that it is like and even less extreme than Japanese culture. For instance, the same people that exalt Japanese culture often complain about (to pick two examples) American conformity and the failure of our government to respect our rights. Say whatever great things you want about Japanese culture, but by any reasonable measure these are not things in which the Japanese demonstrate a better record than the US.

Quite the opposite, actually.

As a disclaimer I want to say outright that I am not saying that American culture is superior to Japanese culture. It’s beside the point even if it is true. Japan has its problems (not unlike America), but it remains a prosperous, cohesive nation that went from decimation during World War II to an economic powerhouse. Which culture is “better” depends largely on who you are. It depends on your social status, your economic status, and probably more than anything else your temperament. Some people are more naturally suited to American culture, some people more naturally suited to Japanese. So having said that bear in mind that I intend the distinctions between cultures to be relatively value-neutral simply because I don’t want to get into a discussion over superior and inferior cultures.

With that out of the way, it stretches credibility beyond the breaking point to say that American culture demands more conformity than Japanese culture or that Americans are further on the policing spectrum than the personal rights spectrum when it comes to law enforcement. But logic isn’t the point, feeling superior is. They see Japanese conformity as fundamentally different from American conformity. Better in some indescribable way that a simpleton like myself could never possibly understand.

Good grief, I really hate people sometimes.

The eruption after the whole Chris Benoit thing got me thinking about the morality of watching productions the cause its participants great harm.

Wrestling is one of those things. If steroid usage is as widespread as it often seems to be, we are watching an army of people destroying their bodies and/or consigning themselves to an early death for the sake of our entertainment. To the extent that we suspect this is happening are we or are we not morally bound to act on these suspicions?

Of course, what’s frustrating is that on television there is no drug-free alternative to the WWE. It’s not like boycotting Walmart and going to K-Mart instead because there’s nowhere for you to go. On the other hand, wrestling as a whole can be more easily replaced by comic books, and action shows on TV.

It’s not entirely a new question. To a lesser extent we see people putting their lives in great jeopardy every fall and winter Sunday. We watch boxers pound their face in. The difference, to the extent that there is one, is that in wrestling and football we are watching people compete. It’s an athletic competition. Wrestling, on the other hand, is an athletic display. Is that difference fundamental or something in my mind? I honestly consider things like figure dancing to be more a display than an actual competition even though it’s technically the latter.

What it actually reminds me of a little bit is pornography (I might as well earn this NC-17 rating that has been thrust upon me!). There are two basic moral objections to pornography that come to my mind. The first is that it is bad for the audience. Pornography combined with a lack of sexual experience can really warp one’s sexual mind. Their ideas of what a typical woman’s body looks like, what sexual positions are enjoyable or can be expected, and desensitization to sexual stimuli. The second is that it is bad for women. On top of the basic argument of objectification, many of them are selling their future employment and social prospects with images that last forever in a career that is typically very, very short-lived.

The last thing I am reminded of is gambling. For most people gambling is a frivolous activity or a fun game, but it ruins lives. We can talk all day long about how no one forces a gambler to go to a casino (just as no one forces anyone to audition for professional wrestling, play sports professionally, or star in porn), but be that as it may if there were no casino for him to go to his life would be materially better off and I’m not convinced that the lives of everyone else would be that severely disrupted.

I’m not advocating legally banning any of these things or even about government at all. They’d all persist even if illegalized. Rather, I am interested in the moral dimensions of engaging in activities of momentary benefit to you that harm other people a great deal. Even if you can handle pornography without getting desensitized, gamble without losing your life savings, or drink alcohol without drinking to excess, are we morally culpable for contributing to an industry that assists people in doing just those things? It’s not exactly something I’m comfortable with, but it’s hard for me to buy that I am not at least somewhat culpable. Sure, these things exist whether I partake or not, but that strikes me as something of a cop-out because it allows everyone to agree not to change their behavior.

One day when I was driving through Colosse, I saw a sign that said “Tattoos & Piercing”. My most immediate thought was that was a rather odd name for a lawfirm. Piercing I could see, but who in the world had the last name of Tattoos. What nationality would that be? How is it pronounced? Of course, once I figured out how it was pronounced I felt like the dumbest person on the face of the earth.

When I was in college I nearly made the fatal mistake of changing my universal password to reflect the name of the new love of my life, Evangeline. Considering that things fell apart (albeit not for good) a couple weeks later, it was fortunate that I didn’t put myself in the position of remembering that heartbreaker every time I needed to access anything. I think about that every time I see a tattoo with a partner’s name on it.

—

My brother Mitch is more-or-less the All-American guy. Blond hair and blue eyes, solidly built, degreed, and outgoing. Among the Truman boys he is the only one that continues to go to church week in and week out. He’s also the only Truman boy that has a tattoo (a lightning bolt on his shoulder).

When I was in Deseret I knew this girl named Judy. Judy was one of the most prudish, scoldish people I never met. She had a really Betty Bowers quality to her except with a Mormon twist. Nothing got her going on the morally decadent nature of Democrats, non-Mormons, not-exactly-like-her-Mormons, people that engage in non-procreative forms of sex, and on and on and on. On the subject of rape, she pricelessly exasperatedly said, “Don’t they know that you don’t have sex with people you aren’t married to?” (presumably she gave the raped woman a pass, though it was interesting that she felt that non-marital sex was his primary moral error).

But despite all this Judy the Prudie was not the most conservative dresser. Enough so that we could see the small of her back and see a tattoo that she had there. The day I saw that was the day that I determined that the butt-cleavage tattoos had lost any of the edginess they may once had possessed. If Judy was wearing them, they were by definition non-edgy.

A little while back the New York Times had an article on the newly tentative nature of tattoos:

Removing tattoos is costly, uncomfortable and time-consuming, but the
affinity for body art is so strong that some people say they do it to
clear space to tattoo all over again. {…}

On the horizon is a development that could change the very nature of
tattooing: a type of ink encapsulated in beads and designed to break
up after one treatment with a special laser.

The technology for the ink, called Freedom-2, was developed by
scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital, and Brown and Duke
Universities. It is to go on sale this fall.

Part of the very notion of a tattoo, in my mind, has always been the permanency. It’s actually hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of an impermanent tattoo. Maybe it’s because it’s the permanency that made me decide never to get one. I am always at my worst when making life-altering decisions. I left Julie only once I was contemplating an irreversible lifetime commitment to her. Clancy and I survived that leap, for which I am grateful, but only barely. I almost transferred out of Southern Tech a year and a half in and less than a year of going into computers I decided (too late) that I didn’t want to. There really was no doubt in my mind that if I chose to get a tattoo, I would regret the decision the next day.

But is a tattoo that is removable still even a tattoo? It used to be that the reason for a tattoo was a marker of rebellion, but Judy and my brother put the final nail in that coffin. Mark Morford and others lament that once tattoos are easily removed, it won’t be the same.

Then again, I suppose that once the technology is there for easy removal and application, there’s nothing to stop it from becoming a long-term accessory. I remember I was at an outdoor music show many years ago and saw a woman with the old logo of Colosse’s professional football team. “Why would she get that?” I asked a friend, “didn’t she know that there was a pretty good chance that the logo would change in her lifetime?” Easy removal, I guess, allows for such frivolity without the consequences of becoming outdated.

The tattoo industry is excited about it for just that reason:

“We think the fence-sitters who always wanted a tattoo but have been afraid of the permanence will jump in and get tattoos,” said Martin Schmieg, the chief executive of Freedom-2. “But as your life changes from young to middle-aged to older, from single to married to divorced, you get tattoo regret, so we think the tattoo removal market
will increase as well.”

Be that as it may, I don’t think I will be among those getting a tattoo. The most immediate obstacle is that I would like my arms to be a little more toned before I do something like that. There’s nothing that makes a little chub more unattractive than tattoo decoration. Then again, if I ever get a toned arm, why in the world would I want to besmirch it?

The permanency of a tattoo is both one of the most appealing and least appealing aspects of a tattoo for me. I’m a pretty wishy-washy guy

By way of Phi I ran across a discussion on the pro’s and con’s of homeschooling.

If/when Clancy and I have kids, homeschooling is an option that will be on the table. It will depend in large part what kind of public education system there is wherever it is we end up.

Dizzy, who was homeschooled from the fifth grade through high school, looks at the movement on negative terms:

Honestly, I think the homeschooling movement is a joke. It’s more common now to band homeschooling kids together to learn those subjects – everyone pitches in to hire a tutor or something. So that’s an improvement. And homeschoolers are now allowed to join sports teams in their school district. So that’s better too.

But unless your parents are BRILLIANT, well-educated, and stationed as missionaries in Burma or something, it’s not generaly your best option.

I know two people off the top of my head that were homeschooled and with whom I talked about homeschooling. I asked one of them about his experiences and they were quite positive. He had seven siblings, though, and said that some of his siblings did not fare nearly so well. About half probably did better than they would have in a public school environment and about half did worse. A couple did miserably and were probably irreversibly harmed by it in ways that he did not specify*.

There are a lot of factors to be considered before making the choice on whether or not to homeschool. One of the ones I’ve long considered in the negative category is the lack of socialization. Both Clancy and I have a rather restricted comfort zone and neither of us are particularly extroverted. These social setbacks could be greatly compounded by lack of exposure to other people. If they are disinclined to go out and meet people and they’re not forced to in a school environment, that could be very problematic.

I’ve begun to reconsider this stance, though, and wonder if maybe the social environment of public school is a hindrance. Not only when compared to private schools or better run public schools, but also when compared to lack of exposure overall. I have begun to wonder if I might actually be better socialized had I not gone to school at all.

We all have a tendency to justify or rationalize our negative experiences as learning ones. Often this is justified because we learn from our mistakes. But sometimes we learn the wrong lessons and learning the wrong lesson is usually worse than not having learned any lesson at all because not only do you still need to learn the right lesson, you also need to unlearn the wrong one. Arguably, ignorance is better than misinformation if for no other reason than you’re less likely to act on it.

I was a pretty gregarious kid. I was such a smiley baby that when I was really ill it would have gone unnoticed had it not been accompanied by excessive barfing and weight-loss. To the best of my recollection and from what my parents have told me, this remained true through church-run preschool until late elementary school. As with most people, my junior high years were absolutely miserable. I’d become so jaded that I completely missed out on the social opportunities that I had in high school and beyond.

I don’t want to paint a picture of myself as a depressive socially inept loser because that really wouldn’t be accurate. I am, however, so cautious that being around people is a draining experience. This despite the fact that I can’t even remember the last time I was actually an outcast and if I don’t get along great with people it has more to do with different interests than it does my not knowing how to act. For the most part, I have figured out how to act, how to make friends, and how to avoid annoying people or make enemies. People that get to know me generally like me, though I don’t make that too easy on most people.

But here’s something I’ve only recently figured out: The lessons I’ve learned about how to deal with people were almost entirely learned outside of K-12 and frequently involved unlearning what I learned while I was there. I learned more about how to interact with people from behind a keyboard and monitor than I did in the hallways of my various schools***. I learned how to work with other people only after college**. It took me well into college before I stopped being paranoid that anyone outside my social clique didn’t actively dislike me.

Factor in little league sports and church youth group, I honestly think that I might have been a whole lot better off educated in relative seclusion and given a copy of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and How To Win Friends and Influence People than I was being placed in the high school social environment. The best thing I can say about high school was not the social aspect of it or even the learning****, but rather learning how to operate within a structured environment not to my liking. Two years would have been more than sufficient for that.

My main concern with this, however, is that I shouldn’t universalize from my own experience. K-12 isn’t as ego-deflating an experience for everyone as it was for me. Indeed, had I never put on a lot of weight it may never have been that bad for me (though I don’t think it would have helped all that much). As my friend’s siblings’ experiences point out, it’s not for everyone developmentally. I also have another object lesson that may or may not be relevent to homeschooling and social problems: Walt was homeschooled.

* – Knowing what I do of at least one of his siblings, this problem was likely related to social development. She did not do well in any interaction that isn’t 1-on-1 or generally intimate. She got to college and was lost.

** – I could have learned a lot more than I did in high school as I started losing weight and make more friendly acquaintances, but by that point I was so jaded that I was oblivious to the opportunities that I had. I can’t believe that I didn’t realize that certain girls may have liked me and a lot of guys would have wanted to be my friend.

*** – In K-12+BS I was constantly stuck in the default group of people that couldn’t find other people to be with. They were generally not people that I would trust with my grades so I did most projects on my own for the entire group.

**** – I’m the kind of person who more-or-less ignored what the teacher was talking about and learned by teaching myself or getting help from Dad.

While I was visiting my aunt, my cousin-in-law Dehlia stopped by. Dehlia is married to Aunt Caroline’s eldest son Rodge (Roger, Jr). Dehlia is extremely pleasant and quite attractive. Rodge, on the other hand, is morbidly obese. Not only that, but he’s also not the most pleasant person to be around. He has a passive mean streak, put-down jokes that you aren’t sure are entirely jokes. For most of my life I’ve wondered how it is that he won her over. But during my younger days it did give me hope that I, too, might find someone like Dehlia.

It’s not uncommon in television to see a hot wife with a lukewarm (or worse) husband. The most commonly mentioned examples are According to Jim and King of Queens. Not only is there an attractiveness disparity, but one of maturity as well. I’m a believer that we are more influenced by popular entertainment than we believe. Though no one would come out and say it (or even recognize it), I think that a lot of guys look at those partnerships and internalize an optimistic view of what they might get if they try hard enough or get lucky. Even if they are outwardly pessimistic.

When I was a kid, I was fat, had acne, poor posture, unkempt hair, an introverted and awkward persona, and an uncool wardrobe. I wasn’t particularly optimistic most of the time, but looking back shows like Just The Ten Of Us (which paired a heavy Bill Kirchenbauer with a trim Deborah Harmon) and considering my cousin I was still left room to dream. Now hope is generally a good thing, but it can sometimes get in the way of a necessary self-evaluation. Or it can allow us to overlook the old maxim that luck is preparation meeting opportunity. Lady Luck almost always shines her grace on the prepared.

It’s worth noting that even within the context of these television shows, there is something that the hefty male characters have that most of their real-life counterparts lack: charisma. They’re generally outgoing and personable, if dim and immature.

It’s also worth noting that most of us can tell the difference between entertainment and reality. The problem is that we sometimes see (or think we see) televised perceptions in real life as well. No one past a certain age thinks that people can fly a la Superman because they’ve never seen it and it’s been explained to them that people can’t fly. However, little fat kids are not told by people whose opinions they honor that they’re going to end up old and alone or doomed to end up with a fellow fattie. And further they see numerous counterexamples, which brings me back to my cousin.

A guy can see them on the street and think to themselves (“Hey, if he can get a woman that looks like that, so can I!”). I used to the same when I was single and in search of a pick-me-up. We find hope wherever we can. What the person on the street does not see, and what growing up I did not know, was how exactly Dehlia and Rodge came to be. Once upon a time Rodge was an athlete in top physical form; it was only after they married that he let himself go. Also, Dehlia had a son in need of a father, which Rodge had to be (despite the fact that my cousin-once-removed is very brown-skinned and both his parents were right, it never occurred to me that Rodge wasn’t the father). Dehlia’s son is a great kid and I don’t mean to suggest that being his father was a steep price to pay, but it is precisely the price that a lot of moaners and groaners don’t want to pay.

Bob wrote on a variation a variation of the media-perceptions theme a little while back. He points out that our cues for what to look for in a partner are imperfect. Similarly, our cues for where we stand socially are equally skewed. This is particularly true for guys like me growing up who had absolutely no sense of reality because I’d never had a date. Once I was actually in a position where girls started liking me, I was able to gauge where exactly I was in the dating queue. Before that I was nowhere, but then a lot of people were nowhere, and one could realistically see that he or she wasn’t going to be nowhere forever. Waiting sucks when you’re fifteen.

The problem doesn’t go away, though, when one never does enter the dating scene for whatever reason. Their perspective becomes truly warped by media perceptions as David Alexander’s appears to have by pornography. Fortunately for me, I met a girl named Delsie. Through Delsie I discovered that real live girls were actually pretty cool even if they didn’t entirely measure up to my fantasies. Before long I discovered that Delsie lacked something that I needed, so I moved on and met Julie. After a long relationship I discovered that I needed something more than that, too. But even those flawed experiences were infinitely better than the perfect ones in my mind and I adjusted my expectations accordingly. Before long I learned that attractiveness comes in many shapes and sizes. The ones that I fell for the hardest were actually further from my earlier ideal than the ones that I left.

Clancy was offered a full-ride scholarship to Southern Tech when she graduated high school (a couple of years before I did). I sometimes wonder what would have happened if she’d gone to Sotech and we’d met in Colosse when she was 19 and I was 17. I’ve come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t have worked out. We both would have thought we were too good for one another.

Unfortunately, some people don’t get there. They hold on to the pop culture miscues and then become bitter when it doesn’t work out for them.

Recent conversations over at Bobvis and here reminded me of something that isn’t entirely on-topic for either conversation and deserves its own post.

When I was young, I did “put myself out there” insofar as I asked girls out. I didn’t do a very good job of it, but I did it. I think that it’s really bad advice to simply tell someone, young or older, only that they need to ask more girls out. Most likely that will result in a disproportionate amount of rejections and lessons learned that are either false or counterproductive.

What I didn’t realize in my younger years but was helpful as I got older is that you have to “put yourself out there” by making friends, particularly (but not necessarily) of the female variety. For someone introverted like me, that’s hard to do. It means going out in groups when you’re rather be alone. It means introducing yourself to people just for the sake of their getting to know you. Hard, painful stuff, but helpful in every walk of life. Most of the guys I know that have a lot of trouble with women either have relatively few platonic friends or they are in an insular group based around activities where males significantly outnumber females.

Costa Tsiokos posted a while back about an encounter he had with a woman where he stepped back immediately after seeing that she was married. Frankly I’ve done that myself more than once. Why waste the time and energy (which, if you’re introverted, is limited). As a commenter points out, meeting people like that is how you meet new people, some of whom are going to be single. Chances are that’s not going to happen on an isolated incident on the subway, but it is nonetheless important to try to extend your network. The easiest way to make new friends is through old friends, and one of the easiest ways to get a girlfriend or boyfriend is through a mutual acquaintance.

This sort of thing is really difficult to do while in K-8 (particularly because there is comparatively so little interaction between boys and girls), though gets a little bit less difficult in high school and even less so beyond. But for people like me it never gets easy. Thankfully, several years ago I went to a party that I did not want to go to and struck up a conversation with a brunette medical school student.

As is not infrequently the case, a discussion broke over at Bobvis about relationship theories and their validity. It reminded me of the great Onion article from a few years back:

Conspiracy Theorist Has Elaborate Explanation For Why He’s Single

The focus of Ericsson’s current research is the six-day period preceding his breakup with Osborne back in March 2004.

“According to phone-company records, I called Sara at exactly 7:34 p.m. on March 8, 2004, and asked her to have dinner with me—which she agreed to do after a quick shower,” Ericsson said. “Twelve minutes later, at 7:46 p.m., Sara called to say she had ‘changed her mind’ about dinner, but wanted to come to my apartment to ‘deliver some news.'”

It was there that Osborne announced that she no longer wished to marry Ericsson.

Ericsson continued: “What happened in that 12-minute gap? What—or who—got to her? And why won’t she release her phone records to me?” {…}

Recently, Ericsson examined a newly unearthed 1997 video of him and then-girlfriend Donna Soderblum at his sister’s wedding. According to Ericsson, repeated slow-motion viewings revealed a telling detail.

“See that sneer and eye-roll on Donna’s face, after she turns away from me and goes back to talking to my sister?” Ericsson said. “It’s all there in frames 336 through 408.”

Longtime friend Keith Warren agrees that Ericsson’s single status is not a fluke, but he rejects Ericsson’s analysis.

Said Warren: “I explain all of Bob’s difficulties in my meticulously researched and voluminously footnoted ‘Lone Wardrobe Theory.'”

Ericsson dismissed Warren’s analysis. “Warren’s theory is interesting, but it has a long way to go in explaining why I’ve remained single for more than two years. There is no explanation why, for example, I am rejected by women even when I go out to bars,” he said.

A related, also significant Onion article from a few years back:

Unattractive Man Just Like A Brother To Area Woman

The two spend a great deal of time together, talking on the phone for hours when Leland has had a bad day, shopping at women’s shoe stores and attending Drama Queens shows, at which Pelton generally carries all the equipment to the van while Leland lets men from the club buy her drinks after her set.

While Leland’s friends have never questioned the platonic nature of the relationship, Pelton’s co-workers have encouraged him to “take it to the next level.”

“I always tell them it’s not like that between Tara and me,” Pelton said. “And, besides, she’s seeing Derek right now. I think we’re too much alike for something like that to work, anyway.”

“Perhaps, though, if it were the right time, I’d be open to seeing her romantically, I guess,” said Pelton, whose skin still shows the slight scarring effects of heavy teen acne. “Because we really care about each other a lot.”