I asked Anne last week why she thought I wasn't getting any action, and, wonderful friend that she is, she pointed me to this book, Love Tactics by Thomas W. McKnight and Robert H. Phillips. I know, I know: skeeziest title ever. In fact, its full title is Love Tactics: How to Win the One You Want, which is, amazingly, even worse.
"Written in a warm, easy-going style, this book offers a wealth of practical advice on how to get the one you love to love you back. So don't just stand there — get out and stir some hearts!And, oh yeah, that McKnight author: he's a Mormon.
Nope, wait... Amazon has those "you might also like..." books and lists something called How to Make Anyone Fall in Love With You, which is definitely a worse title.
But Love Tactics is Anne-certified, and Anne said that she knows a lot of people who've also certified it, so I went to Borders today and picked up a copy. Dear God, I was embarrassed — and I'm someone who sat in Borders for two hours one afternoon reading Dating for Dummies cover to cover, in freaking public! There's something about walking up to a cashier, another human being, with a copy of Lurrrve Tactics in your hands that makes you feel greasy and sweaty on the inside.
Maybe it's that lewd rose on the cover or the fact that McKnight has few qualms about selling the secrets to breaking up other people's marriages, but I would've rather been standing in line holding a stack of fetish porn and guides to hypnosis than Lurrrve Tactics.Guess who I saw while I was waiting in line to pay? The girl I had an unrequited crush on back in tenth grade. The high school rumor mill said she told a bunch of, well, let's just leave it at "our mutual friends" how she'd never date me, even though I was miles from even getting up the courage to ask her to date me. She was like two people ahead of me in line. And I'm there. Holding Lurrrve Tactics. An instruction manual. For manipulating people into having sex with you. Awkward.
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2 comments:
Hi Jay,
Hope you're doing well - I know we haven't spoken in a few years.
You're apparently a regular blogger so I'm sure you weren't expecting to be anonymous, but there's always that veil of "internet" people vs. real people. So I guess I just wanted to give you a heads up that there are a few real people who read this entry. You know, to avoid any additional awkwardness in your life.
If you don't mind a bit of unsolicited advice, I hope you're not too genuinely upset about high school anymore. I like to think of being a teenager as some sort of prolonged illness, and sick people aren't very aware of other people's feelings. They lash out, and take things very personally. Basically what I'm saying is that kids in high school are 15, and jerks. Every single one of them - we all were self absorbed jerks for 4 years of our life. But then we grow up, and we find enough jerks our own age to worry about, and high school jerks seem kind of trivial in comparison.
So the advice is: Stop looking for things to worry about. Or you'll turn into your mother.
Take Care,
Chitra
P.S. Some other advice is that it's fun to yell "Get a job!" at teenagers. I do that at the mall!
P.P.S. Your blog is nice. Clean and quick loading, with a easy to read color palette.
Teenagers are rarely fazed by anything I have to say at them. That's the price you pay for getting old. I've moved on to sprinkling curse words into my conversations around little kids. They tend to be pretty impressed, and if swearing around children crosses a moral line for you, you can just make up fake curses. They won't care.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot: I wasn't a self-absorbed jerk when I was fifteen. That was probably a mistake.
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