Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me - Ben Karlin [49]
6. Alliteration is, according to Wikipedia, a poetic device which “contributes to the euphony of the passage, lending it a musical air” and may also “add a humorous effect.”
7. This does not imply that he had ever previously thrown her mail away. Tampering with or discarding someone else’s mail is a federal crime and is in no way endorsed by the songwriter or this book’s publisher.
8. When in a relationship, it is important to phrase physical observations about your partner in a positive manner. Instead of pointing out that some of her hair is gray, for example, our protagonist could have complimented her on the fact that most of her hair is not gray.
9. With this major concession, our narrator reveals the true depths of his commitment and the level of sacrifice he is willing to make in order to salvage the flagging relationship.
10. Mumbling “love you too” occasionally, as when ending a phone call, is here acknowledged to be insufficient as a verbal expression of true passion.
11. The subject of faith is often addressed indirectly in popular music, in order to appeal to religious audiences without alienating the more mainstream “hedonist sinner” market.
12. “Mess” here refers to the situation at hand, and not to the former lover herself.
13. “Skip town” is another slang term, defined by the Urban Dictionary as “to move to another city/neighborhood when your house/crib gets shot up by a rival gang.”
14. Although it is unlikely that the main reason she left was the sight of his shoes, he is presumably just trying to cover all his bases at this point.
15. In fact, they had circuit breakers, not fuses, but this did not rhyme.
16. “The blues” is a genre of music created by actors Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi and heard primarily in sports bars and at corporate events.
17. By repeating the phrase “I do” loudly as his final plea, the song’s narrator perhaps hopes to be overheard by a passing justice of the peace, who will then marry him to his ex on the spot before she has time to realize what’s happening.
Lesson#20
I’m Easy
by Paul Simms
Well, well, well. Just look at you, walking into this dreary bar and lighting the place up like the noonday sun at midnight, twirling a lock of your long auburn hair pensively as you search the room—for what? For a soul mate, perhaps?
(I know, I know—I hate that phrase, too. Maybe that will end up being one of those things we both hate.) Maybe a few weeks from now, lying in your bed on a Sunday morning, I’ll ask you, “What’s your least favorite word or phrase?,” and you’ll say, “‘Soul mate,’” and I’ll laugh till you say, “What? Tell me!,” and I’ll tell you how I knew that from the moment I first laid eyes on you, and then we’ll have sex again.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. You haven’t even noticed me yet. That’s okay, I can wait.
Maybe when your gaze settles on me, and we lock eyes in that mutual Hitchcockian tunnel-vision effect where the camera is, like, pushing in at the same time it zooms out, or however they do that, you’ll come sit down next to me and we’ll—
Now you’ve spotted the friends you came to meet. They look like good friends.
Maybe they’ll be my friends, too.
Our friends.
Your eyes just came to life like emeralds lit by subterranean torches, and as you move across the room toward your friends you shriek at them, “What the fuck is up, yo?,” in a voice so piercing that the entire bar goes silent for a moment, and I have to check my glasses to make sure the lenses didn’t crack. You continue to bellow your every utterance (including the lines “Jägermeister is the bomb, dawg!” and “Just ’cause I’m a white girl don’t mean I don’t got some serious junk in the trunk!” and “Random! Random! Random!”), and the bartender leans in and whispers something to his bar back, and they look at you and laugh.
You must be a regular here.
(Duration of crush: seventeen seconds.)
Oh my. What have we here? A rainy night in the city has cleared the sidewalks of all but the most intrepid pedestrians, and those