Girlside Assistance

A few nights ago, some friends and I were the recipients of roadside assistance. The young man in his safety vest and utility belt with a flashlight dangling from it made the job look appealing. While I'm fairly handy around my house and I've helped to build a house, providing roadside assistance may not be the right job for me. (Let's be honest: changing a flat tire poses a serious risk to my nails.) After thinking long and hard about what kind of assistance I could provide, I decided to help out guys with some girlside assistance.

If you're a guy who is about to embark on a date, keep the following tips in mind:

1. Don't kiss a girl on the first date. A first date never goes as well as you think it does. If on the off-chance, it IS going really well, you'll know. If you're not sure, it's not going well enough for a kiss. I don't care what you've seen on TV or in movies and unless you are both standing in Europe or one of you is of recent European descent/arrival, don't try to say it's a "European thing."
   
2. Don't touch a girl's hair or face without her permission. You might be able to get away with this during a moment of intimacy, but anything short of that, you better be really sure she's into you, because your premature transgression will be neither forgiven nor forgotten easily.
   
3. Don't try to convince a girl that your past army training gave you a deadly pinky. The only thing deadly about your pinky is the ring you're probably wearing on it and for the record, no former army member would wear red pants, a plaid shirt and a white blazer.
   
4. Don't mention how your alma mater beat her alma mater in a bowl game. And if you do, understand that just because her alma mater was allegedly the best team that season, no one thinks your alma mater was the best for beating them. It doesn't work that way.
   
5. Don't forget a girl's name 20 minutes into a conversation with her. It makes you look dopey and it pisses her off.
6. Don't date a girl if you're gay. The only acceptable dates would be shopping and dancing. In that case, "date" her all you want.
7. Don't alternate between making eye contact and looking at her chest. Really? I can't believe I had to add this one. If you can't be smooth about looking at her chest, there will be no all-access pass to it in your future.

Remember: "Dead men tell no tales," but women tell each other everything.

Felicity's #1 Fan

So since I am the most Highly Effective Teenager I know and "Put first things first" is Habit #3 for highly effective teens, I decided that getting a little dating done during my winter break would be smart. I made myself a profile the Friday before finals and by Saturday, had exchanged a series of promising emails with someone. My last Fullerton final was on Wednesday and following that, we had our first date.

The first date consisted of dinner at Cheesecake Factory at the Victoria Gardens. Other than the fact that I knocked down someone else's water glass, it went well. We had a lot of connections including the fact that he was the college roommate of a former colleague's brother. This guy was two years younger than me (which I tried not to think about) went to Harvey Mudd College and is a civil engineer for a small consulting firm in Newport Beach. Sounded promising! I asked him about his daughter before the night ended and found out that he drives down to San Diego on Tuesdays and Thursdays to visit her. Now, I won't turn down a guy solely because he has kids, but it is certainly something to think about before things advance.

Our second date was a lot of talking in the Starbucks of a local Target and later the front seat of my car. Again, we discovered more things in common (affinity for the Beatles and U2, for example). I also learned a little more about him. His ex-wife, mother of his 18 month-old daughter, lives in Escondido and is going to move up here soon to start a paralegal training program at UCR. Who gets divorced with a baby? How can I compete with this woman who is probably younger than me and the maternal mother of his child? This woman will be in his life for the next 16 1/2 years so I was definitely a little concerned about this, but not too much.

By the third date, I knew this would be his final chance to really impress me. We went to see Invictus and as we walked into the theater he admitted to liking "Felicity." I don't remember how it even came up, but it was enough to make me stop walking, turn around and make sure I had heard him correctly. Once we were sitting in the theater, I again had to ask him about this.

"Felicity." As he described it, it's about the trials and tribulations of a girl in college. If he had admitted to masturbating to scenes with the pink power ranger, even that would have been okay.

As we watched the movie, he was "cuddly" but in what I felt was a girly way. It was like I was the man and he was the girl. He would snuggle into/under me and then he would gently whisper in my ear "Are you comfortable?" It seemed like he took the submissive position when he cuddled. It made him seem like a little puppy dog or a little brother. Unfortunately, that really emphasized his younger age to me which already bothered me a little to begin with. When he laid his head on my shoulder, I knew I was done.