How I hate the awkwardness of flirtation. Well, not so much flirtation as the uncomfortable mix up of emotion and fear and discombobulation (a real word--I looked it up) of seeing someone and feeling the pheromones rush through the bloodstream and switching intermittently between the hope that he will talk to you and the hope that he won't because you have no earthly idea of what you would say if he did. Then he does begin conversation and my tongue suddenly swells up in my face and dribbles words all over where they don't belong punctuating them with awkward phrases and expressions. What a mess! Okay, so the actual tongue dripping thing was just an analogy but still... a mess.
If I am brutally honest with myself I will admit that while I am certrainly not ugly I could never be called a great beauty and while I absolutely love learning and study I am certainly no genius. Still, calculated objectively I can also say that I am not altogether hopeless as a female. Still, it seems that whenever I stand up in front of a boy...any boy... I end up looking more like Elmer Fudd than anything attractive at all. Well, maybe I don't look bald and baloon nosed but I certainly sound and feel that way. Blah. In an effort to help me out my sister (age 16) gave me a list of chit-chaty topics for my own use. Examples:
-"Darn it's hot..."
-"Do you have any pets?" Then she counseled me to bring up the tragic drowing incident of the family dog in the family pool thinking it would be a good subject. A bit morbid for my taste, but definately opposes the Elmer Fudd model so perhaps I shouldn't complain.
-"How about that meeting, huh?"
-"Are you concerned about global warming?"
-"What did you have for dinner? Do you cook?"
-Anything about herself she suggested.
*Most important-- Avoid politics with old people and liberals and cadaver lab stories with everyone and limit discussions about bodily processes such as digestion, respiration, and the lymph node systems,
Unfortunately the off-limits list contains all the conversation topics that I find truly exhilerating, but what can I do? I guess the best I can do is practice until I can be as good a conversationalist as my little sister, or at least as good as my boy Elmer. Meantime I'm working to keep my pheromones under control (even though I'm not allowed to talk about them.)
If I am brutally honest with myself I will admit that while I am certrainly not ugly I could never be called a great beauty and while I absolutely love learning and study I am certainly no genius. Still, calculated objectively I can also say that I am not altogether hopeless as a female. Still, it seems that whenever I stand up in front of a boy...any boy... I end up looking more like Elmer Fudd than anything attractive at all. Well, maybe I don't look bald and baloon nosed but I certainly sound and feel that way. Blah. In an effort to help me out my sister (age 16) gave me a list of chit-chaty topics for my own use. Examples:
-"Darn it's hot..."
-"Do you have any pets?" Then she counseled me to bring up the tragic drowing incident of the family dog in the family pool thinking it would be a good subject. A bit morbid for my taste, but definately opposes the Elmer Fudd model so perhaps I shouldn't complain.
-"How about that meeting, huh?"
-"Are you concerned about global warming?"
-"What did you have for dinner? Do you cook?"
-Anything about herself she suggested.
*Most important-- Avoid politics with old people and liberals and cadaver lab stories with everyone and limit discussions about bodily processes such as digestion, respiration, and the lymph node systems,
Unfortunately the off-limits list contains all the conversation topics that I find truly exhilerating, but what can I do? I guess the best I can do is practice until I can be as good a conversationalist as my little sister, or at least as good as my boy Elmer. Meantime I'm working to keep my pheromones under control (even though I'm not allowed to talk about them.)
