Five Tips for Approaching Men in Real Life -- My Version

So, I'm sitting here minding my own business on Facebook a few minutes ago...when this story popped up on my Facefeed...so, naturally, I decided to make fun of it.  I don't know how things like this get published and I certainly hope they got paid what I thought it was worth to write it. Seriously...people get actual real money for this drivel?  I also hope you enjoy it somewhat...and, yes, feel free to share it.  Share it on Reddit and Twitter and hashtag sites and MomMe and every other damn website that could possibly start paying me to write content for them.  Whatever that Grumpy Cat person did?  Do that.  Do that a lot for me.  Yes, I'm dead serious. 

I think you have to read their article first and then mine for it to make any real sense...so...just skip down first and then scroll back up when you've read it and then read mine.  This was written by Lisa Copeland...who, I'm thinking, is a self-professed "Dating Coach for Women Over 50".  Yes, it actually says that in the blog...so I'm giving her full credit for it.

Okay, let me get this straight here...but...let me straighten you out here...these are my five "new and improved" tips for approaching men in real life...

Make eye contact with him for a full five seconds. Hold his face steady for all five of the seconds...and employ one or both hands to do so.

I have to ask him a question...such as..."Hey, there are 17 other empty chairs in this Starbucks - at six other tables...but, I like this one the best because the sun is in my vernal biological equinox...do you mind if I sit here and stare at you a while?" Or, perhaps..."I'm thinking of getting a blue Mercedes likes yours parked outside...would you recommend it? Oh, you're not the guy with the blue Mercedes? Okay...um...well...um...the Earth's orbital rotation just shifted a bit...I'm going to have to ask if that other guy over there's chair is taken...sorry."

Let him answer a question you have for him...such as, "Um...is that your blue Mercedes in the parking lot with the out of state plates? Are you interested in picking up someone from their house for dinner with you in your blue Mercedes with the out of state plates?"

Take a cue from an old "I Love Lucy" show - and shove as many chocolate bon-bons into your mouth as you can at one time...sorta like Lucy and Ethel did in the "Candy Making" episode. Trust me...I'm sure you'll get his attention with this one a LOT better than dropping some cheap cell phone you just picked up at the Dollar Store for the sole purpose of dropping and shattering in front of him.

Lastly...and I quote from her article and not mine: "His job is to ask you out if he's interested in you. If he's not, it doesn't mean he's personally rejecting you. He might be married, have a girlfriend or you might not be his type." Hmmmm...I'm thinking "...might not be his type" is possibly "dating tips for women over 50" code for "he's gay"...but, apparently they couldn't come right out and say that because...apparently we are still dropping handkerchiefs as fast as instilling old Victorian sexual mores on clichéd dating tips websites.


This was fun...maybe we can do it again some day.

5 Tips for Approaching Men in Real Life


Mariann Simms aka Mariann Eperjesi is a freelance writer who is currently writing whatever she can to get noticed by anyone who will employ her for doing so.  She can be found most nights totally perplexed by what she reads online...and can be found at her blog, "Blogged Down at the Moment".  She is the founder of the interactive comedy website, "HumorMeOnline.com" although it is currently off-line at the moment, but can be found if you use a search engine.  She is also the 2003 Grand Prize winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.



I also apologize for nicking a photo off the Internet. As soon as I get my stuff back in the house (a tree fell on my house the end of June and we aren't back in there yet)...I will start taking my own photos again.  If you are the owner of this photo and I have infringed on any copyright you may have on it and have an issue, please just inform me and I will remove it promptly.  Thank you.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland...in Autumn

I went into Starbucks last Saturday and they already switched over to Christmas - or how they referred to them, "holiday", bags. It's like um - waaaay before Thanksgiving. No, I won't bore you with a tirade about how it was when I was a kid and they didn't stick Christmas stuff up until the day after Thanksgiving.

But, I'm thinking...isn't it about time to capitalize on the 21 Dec 12 thing? I mean, that comes before Christmas. Where's my "Doomsday"-themed Starbucks bag? How come I don't see any Doomsday decorations up -- but they put up Christmas ones? That's a bit presumptuous of them, isn't it?

 

My "holiday" bag from Starbucks.  The other side has a snowman.  I guess you could say these are "winter-themed" but I clearly heard the Starbucks person use the word "holiday".  I doubt they meant Thanksgiving - but it wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong.


 

Foreign Thoughts

Okay - first off, I am not a racist, nor someone who jumps to any type of conclusions about what you eat, what you watch, which church you go to, who you sleep with, what politician you like, how attractive you are, what your weight is, etc. Basically if you are nice to me - I'll be nice back and I don't care if you are pink, purple, beige, blue, brown, yellow, or orange. I really don't mind. I never have.

But tonite, after stopping at Starbucks to get my daughter a mochachocolatte, there were two men outside the building conversing with a foreign accent...speaking a foreign language. One was younger...the other about 20 years older. I don't know what language they were speaking - coulda been Arabic, coulda been Serbian...didn't sound Swedish and it certainly wasn't French or Spanish.

The bad thing is - I got into my car and mentioned to my daughter something about "Hope they're not terrorists." It wasn't exactly that - but it was along those lines. Then I stopped myself and told her how incredibly bad it was that I was thinking that...just based on the fact they were two men of a nationality which undoubtedly gets a lot of suspicious glances nowadays, i.e., they didn't look like the blonde guys who sang that "Take On Me" song.

Ordinarily I wouldn't have thought this - I grew up in Jersey - and many people were of Polish, Italian, and whatnot descent. I just kinda disgusted myself and wanted to share. How terrible it is to automatically think terrible thoughts because I've been conditioned by the media to fear someone who looks a certain way. Granted, terrorists did some heinous crimes and I don't discount those...but, to think that of these two guys outside a Starbucks just because they are "different" from me...just annoys me.

I grew up in a time (I was born in 1960) where the 1970s saw its share of plane hijackings, bombings in airports and the horrible massacre of Olympic athletes during the 1972 Munich games. I can never remove the image (or the name) of ABC news reporter, Bill Stewart, forced to kneel on the ground after being pulled from a van and then shot in the head. Why I have that one etched into my memory is beyond me. I guess it was because it was shown over and over on television at the time...and the shock of seeing a life one second and a death the next...has stayed with me. Just like images of people jumping out of the World Trade Center buildings...it's not something you can just erase.

And now I can't erase this impulse thinking I have in my head...and what was probably a pleasant conversation outside a coffee shop makes me anxious and I hope and pray nothing bad was actually going on.

That...to me...is sad.

And to those two men -- I apologize.