BillyStyle

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it in here before, but as a single guy around 30 years old, I’ve been put in so many ridiculously awkward date set up situations; you married people just don’t understand.

I realize that this only represents a small percentage of married couples, so I apologize to the majority of people who would never think to do such a horrible thing. Thank you.

I really don’t know what it is about people, namely married people. And, as a member of a very socially active church, I think things may be even more annoying for me than if I wasn’t religiously active.

I’ll skip really telling any history about set ups I’ve avoided and given in to because that would take too long. I will say that the best thing that has ever come out of any of the “dates” is a good steak dinner and some useless conversation that will never cross my brain again.

See, for some reason, people, mostly church people, feel that they are the ones who know exactly what I am looking for. They have just the girl for me. They often times tell me this immediately following our first introduction. For all they know, I may not even speak English! I’m just a tall, tan single guy (the handsome part is very debatable, the tall and dark part are easily proven) who has a tendency to treat strangers with kindness. These people see a guy like that and jump all over the opportunity to try and add some jewelry to my bare hands.

Now, here’s what baffles me. I would argue that the single most important decision of a person’s life is deciding if they should or should not marry their current boyfriend/girlfriend and spend the rest of their life with that person. So why on Earth would a middle aged married person have any thought at all that they probably know of a girl unlike any that I’ve met before, and will be the one to sweep me off of my feet. Of course there are many variables that lead up to the ultimate decision, but let’s look at the logic of that stranger being right about what my type of girl is.

First, let’s look inside the brain of the schemer, the one trying to set me up with their sweet-spirited girl. What could their reasoning be that could take them so far as to offer to buy me dinner if I but go on a date with this girl? Do they want to feel like a savior to me and have me be forever indebted to them? Do they just thrive off of prodding people into HUGE life decisions on a whim? Do they imagine that I’ve only met horrible girls who eat onions and asparagus, never floss, and haven’t heard of soap? Do I look like a desperate loser who would wet myself if I ever tried to ask a girl out? Do they think I’ve never dated a girl? Do they think I have no taste or horrible vision? Or maybe, just maybe, do they happen to know a 6 foot tall girl with the looks of Kim Kardashian and the personality of Zooey Deschanel’s character in Yes Man who happen to love wakeboarding? (By the way, if you know this woman, please disregard this post and do send her my way.) So far, that last one has never been the case.

Now, I know that none of these schemers actually, deep down, don’t care if I just meet her and say “No thank you.” Nobody goes to that kind of effort for that result, they just don’t. They all want me to date and marry the girl. Think about it. Why would they want anything else? This is the perfect match! I won’t just date her and then leave, get dumped, or dump her, then it wouldn’t be perfect! I will marry her and we will live happily ever after!

Okay, so that’s obviously how I see these people who insist on setting me up with their gentle ogre friends. Now let’s look at some things that seem much more reasonable to me, but never seem to happen.

Strangers never introduce themselves to me and suggest a restaurant to me. They never tell me that they just bought some new socks and they are super comfortable and then tell me where to get them and how much they cost. I’ve never been approached and given directions to a stranger’s favorite place to shop. And nobody has ever hunted me down to share with me their secret to building the perfect grilled hamburger. Why not? Well, in today’s society, that would just be weird!

I’m fine with all those previous things being thought of as a bit too personal to just blurb about to a complete stranger. So, answer me this: Why would ANYBODY EVER think it isn’t strange to suggest to somebody exactly whom they should decide to marry and deeply love the rest of their entire life? I mean really, think about it! All of the things in the previous paragraph would affect a tiny part of my life, and if I didn’t like the pointer, I wouldn’t really be changed too much. I’d either gain from it or just shrug it off. But a relationship affects you for the rest of your life.

I don’t really have a big concluding thought other than if you are one of these people who like to set people up on dates, PLEASE STOP! Tell people about your favorite salad dressing or shampoo or something. STOP TRYING TO RUIN LIVES! When you set two people up on a date, all four people are almost always going to get hurt. You and your spouse are two of those people, the one who got canned obviously will be hurt, and the one who did the canning will have to feel and/or look like a jerk. It’s a lose/lose/lose/lose situation!

Oddly enough, it’s been almost a year since I was talked into going on one of these dates. I ate the food, watched a movie in a theater and took off. I haven’t spoken more than 20 words to anybody involved in that night since, and none of those words were about said night. I’m just constantly baffled at people around me.

I realize that in many set-up type of situations, the schemers are “friends” or acquaintances of the poor target (me). I just see that as a much stronger reason to respect me and let me take care of my own HUGE life decisions.

Now that I got this off of my back, I’m excited to confront the next person who thinks they can waltz in to my life and magically send me spiraling into a storybook tale of everlasting love. This volcano will erupt!

You can watch this in HD here.

I have the amazing ability to lose something in less than a minute’s time. I can be holding it, set it down, take a few steps, then completely forget where I left it. It’s pretty awesome. Now, I’ve figured out a little trick that helps me not so much avoid losing things at home, but in public places.

Typically I will have my keys with me in public places, like restaurants, work, somebody’s house, etc. If I want to set something down, like a wallet, sunglasses, and what have you, chances are I’ll leave it behind on my way out. I’ve learned that as soon as I set that thing down, I should take out my keys and place them right there with the object. That ensures that even if I forget the stuff, I’ll realize I have no way of getting back into my car as I leave, so I’ll go back in and get my stuff.

The only way I can see this failing, other than thievery, is completely forgetting I even drove there and bumming a ride off of somebody else. At that point, I think I deserve to leave that stuff behind.

Probably around a year ago, I figured out a way to easily increase my tolerance for pain. I imagine it’s been well documented before by some ancient spiritual guru or something, but it was new to me. I think it probably only works with minor to medium amounts of pain, as I haven’t had a great amount of pain since coming up with this method. It’s a little mind trick I play on myself with minor injuries such as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, or even getting a needle inserted into your skin.

Let’s take my most recent one, which is when I reached into the oven to quickly remove a pizza slice that had fallen to the bottom. I didn’t think it through too well and hit the heating iron with my finger which made me pull back right away and left a hot throbbing spot on my finger for a little while. The typical way I used to deal with burns like this is try to do anything to reduce the pain (cold water, ice, blowing on it, shaking it). The problem with doing that is I was focusing on the pain the whole time. Now what I do is focus on the rest of my body that feels just great.

So my trick is to take my mind off of the pain by focusing on my whole body. It’s cool how it works, and it’s pretty easy to do. I usually think of my chest and stomach, since it’s the biggest part of me, and that usually feels great. Then I think of my legs, arms, head, even the other fingers on that hand. When I realize that there’s less than one square inch of me that hurts, it really seems to make that pain seem rather trivial. Another thing I’ve been able to take advantage of is the fact that our bodies are symmetrical for the most part. So in this burnt finger case, I can focus on that same finger on my other hand, and it seems to lessen the pain even more.

It’s funny how this works. I like to observe certain circumstances and people’s reactions to them. Pain is certainly a great thing to observe. This practice lets me now observe the type of pain more than before. In the past, I would be so annoyed by the pain, I would only focus on trying to make it feel better. Now I kind of pay attention to the phases of the pain and what my body does in reaction to it. Sure, maybe I’m a demented freak, but I enjoy it.

As I said before, I haven’t really had any very painful experiences since I started doing this, but I have had a couple of headaches (I only get pretty minor headaches). I found it much more difficult to do this with the headaches. I imagine it’s because the head is pretty much the control center of the body. Perhaps I will get better at this as things go on, we’ll see. I don’t tend to get many headaches or stomach aches, which I imagine would be harder to deal with as well.

Leave some comments if you’ve tried this out, I’m curious to hear more.