1.14.2006


You ever see a girl and your first reaction is "I would gladly cut off a finger just to talk to her for 5 minutes?" Yeah, you have. Your next thought is usually "Let's see, that means 10 fingers would get me almost an hour...I wonder what a toe would get me...". Every guy has been there.

Girls, don't even act like you've never had a similar reaction to a man. How do I know? Because I'm a guy. And every guy has had that sickening experience of being with some girl in a "friends" context when she pulls one of those "look...at... him..." things. The difference is, with girls, they're allowed to do it, within reason - I mean not in front of a boyfriend, or something, but otherwise its pretty fair game. Not so much with guys. It gets a little more sticky for us.

But que sera - that isn't where I was going with this anyway.

The other night I was running (6 miles, I'm back in the saddle - go me! Woot!) and I got to thinking. I don't have a huge ego - I'm fairly realistic about the fact that I'm probably pretty average. I'm not exceptionally tall or well built, neither do I have genius level IQ; I'm not exceptionally ugly or overweight, and I think I've proved in at least a few ways to the world that I'm no dummy either. I'm average. That's cool. I do have a great sense of humor and those that know me well know that I feign having a HUGE ego quite well, but its all a matter of keeping a sense of humor and always being confident about who you are. I'm plenty confident about being decently average.

But that's not exactly where I'm going with this either. The other night, running, thinking...and it hit me. Some girl, somewhere, once upon a time, may have had one of those "HELLO what have we here?" experiences about ME once. Little old me. And chances are I never had any idea that she was having the moment while looking at me. I mean I have those moments when I see a girl that fits my particular fancies, is it so unbelievable that it could have happened to some girl where I was the object of interest? I don't think its too ridiculous to say that it is likely that it has happened, at least once. I particularly think this is a reasonable proposition because while I have these "hello" experiences infrequently, I certainly have them every once in a while. So if I have had multiple ones, do the math...and you come to the very reasonable conclusion that I've turned at least one head at one point in my life.

And that's a great feeling. Not so much in stroking the ego - like "Oh yeah, I'm bad..." - its just good to know. Helps you remember that its OK not to be the tallest or the fastest or the richest or the smartest. You can do what you do best, the best you can, and that's enough to please someone, somewhere.

The trick is finding the person that has that reaction to you, and being blessed enough to have it back to them at the same time. If that ever happens.

(Of course, I do realize that love at first sight is pretty pointless without love at second sight, and third, and fourth, and so on...)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you may have been running through my neighborhood. Hello.

Jennifer said...

Interesting observation. Sometimes I've seen a cute guy, but usually my instinct tells me... chances are he's a psychopath or a serial killer. Life can be pretty sad for us girls. -Jennifer (friend of Margy's)