Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me - Ben Karlin [63]
A few weeks later she dumped me. It annihilated me. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t like me. I had things going on. I mean, I cleaned David Spade’s apartment! I thought about her every day for almost two years, and prayed she’d return. She did an amazing job of giving me nothing, never calling back and just letting me die, slow, cold, and painfully.
When I started writing this piece, I hired a private investigator in hopes of getting back in touch with her.
“Gonna be tough,” said Detective Dave. “Single women in their late twenties, very transient group. Nothing holding them down.”
I’m not chasing Sasquatch, asshole. Just put her name or social security number or something into the computer and tell me where she is. Three weeks later, Dave sent me an e-mail with a subject heading, “Well, We Did It!”
Dear Jason,
I made contact today with Karyn Gadd!
She called me to ask what this was about and I told her you wanted to talk to her for a short story. I told her that you had no ill feelings about the breakup and that you did not want to hurt her in anyway.
I DID give her your phone number, so CASE CLOSED.
Sincerely,
Dave Dineen, PI
Hey, Dave, maybe she would call me back if he didn’t open with, “Hey, this guy’s not going to rape and murder you, so why don’t you give him a jangle.”
And that was it. I was out $250 and she never called. Perfect really. The girl who never gave me anything, doesn’t give it to me one final time. But what did I hope to hear? That I was obnoxious? That I was cheesy? That she started dating me because she thought I was cool, but quickly learned I wasn’t?
Karyn made me realize my greatest fear: that someone would see through my tricks. My own personal David Copperfield bullshit I’ve honed to make other people think I’m special. And that’s what she did, stripped me of anything valuable I had to offer.
More than her beauty, the thing I wanted most from Karyn was her calmness. Her ability to sit still, stare, and feel numb. I married someone equally as neurotic as I am and I love her and we make a very entertaining couple, but there is chaos everywhere we go. I slay dragons every day, or more to the point, I run from them, but I keep moving. Waiting, hoping one day I can rest and breathe easy. My wife is like Karyn in some ways. Smart, pretty, a tough audience. She hates when I need to be the center of attention. The difference is, I don’t listen to her. I walk around every day positive I’m a good dancer.
Lesson#44
Get Dumped Before It Matters
by David Rees
Unlike most of the “winners” in this book, I’ve never been dumped.
Let that sink in for a moment: never been dumped. A perfect record. What’s that thing in baseball, where batters are graded on some sort of numerical scale? Like, “Joe Smith is batting .300; he’s hitting one out of every .300 balls.” Well, when it comes to not being dumped, I’m batting 1,000.00. One thousand percent perfect. One thousand percent never-have-I-been-dumped.
You ask: “How did you get those awesome stats?” And, “Are your relationships available on baseball cards, so that I might learn from them?” And, “If so, what does the bubblegum taste like?”
The answers are, respectively, “Read on”; “Yes, from ToppsAdult”; and “Monogamy.”
Although I am proud of my remarkable statistic, there’s something you should know about it. Let’s turn it over like a nursing sow and take note: How many relationships suckle at its teats? One and . . . two. Ah! You see, I’m not such an intimidating badass, I’ve only had two relationships: A girlfriend in high school and a wife, presently.
My high school girlfriend never dumped me. Or, whenever she did, I made sure to resuscitate our relationship and counterdump her down the line—effectively canceling out her dumps, which is how I maintained my perfect figure. (Like how -3 plus -3 winds up equaling +16,