Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me - Ben Karlin [58]
I jump out of the SUV and begin running towards the dog. Everyone in the car watches, which encourages me. I will try and win over my crush by yelling at a dog in the middle of the street to stop defecating. I shriek “Stop crapping!” twice. I then bellow at the dog wordlessly, letting it know my sheer outrage that a dog would crap in the middle of the road. I am hoping this appeals to my crush’s own inscrutable sensibilities. It was the best I could come up with.
My request succeeds as the dog, astonished, stops defecating and looks at me. Then the dog decides, as my crush is deciding, that I am a crazy kid, not in the fun way, but in the way that crosses the line, the awkward line that is painful to watch. The graceful avert their eyes and sigh. The chill of humiliation causes me to turn around, away from the dog and the man who is now demanding to know what I am up to. I heave a flimsy curse in his general direction and then walk briskly back to the SUV. I want to run, but need to walk in an attempt to salvage some, any, dignity.
It didn’t work.
Before I despair, though, now that it’s over, how bad was it really? How deep in my skin did it embed? It shouldn’t have burrowed much, being a relatively minor event in that (a) while my love may have been spurned, she was perhaps too crazy to begin with or not crazy at all, and (b) it was embarrassing, but in front of a relative few. Three people aren’t a big deal. Of course, my mind is infested with fears of “what if they tell someone,” but for once I relish my anonymity within my school, my neighborhood. This invisibility gives me a grace period, to metamorph or incubate or simply jump from one point to another, to the socially viable person who can’t remember how it happened and doesn’t quite believe their own transformation. Besides, even if I insist that being horribly awkward and always rejected is my fate, I know that whole subcultures have sprouted for such people; depression is fetishized, commodified, gentrified even, and though being attached to a bunch of macabre-worshipers isn’t a great idea, it might be nice to have some community. It might help.
We pick up the sister and drive back the house. Trying to redeem myself, I wait for someone to talk to me in the car, or in the driveway, or in the kitchen. No one does. I call my parents, who do, and on top of that will also come pick me up. Thank God for parents. I leave the house without anyone noticing, departing their world leaving as little mark as I did coming in, besides, of course, for a slight depression on the love seat in the basement.
Lesson#41
Dating a Stripper Is a Recipe for Perspective
by Patton Oswalt
Sometimes love goes wrong because your partner changes. Sometimes it fails because you change. But, more often than not, love fails because you stop appreciating what you’ve got. You grow complacent and bored. Quirks become annoyances. Thrills become chores. Novelty becomes drudgery. Who wants “safe” forever? Someone who will cherish you, understand you, grow with you, understand the areas where you don’t mesh and react to that gulf with maturity and understanding—these are exactly the kind of people you become disenchanted with, and then leave, and then feel like a to-the-bedrock bastard for abandoning.
Sure, your journey of togetherness starts off all sprinkles and buttons. But even the sweetest apple plucked from the tree of love can become a rotted, flyblown failure full of disease, maggots, and yelling.
Yes, when love goes bad, it can fill an apple with yelling.
So how would you feel if I told you I can guarantee you a stable, healthy relationship?