Pitching Woo

As Dan Aykroyd said in Ghostbusters, "Listen. Do you smell something?" You may not be able to smell it, but there is an aroma on the air. You have to try to catch it. It is the smell of portable grills, fried chicken, beer, bourbon, body paint, manicured grass, hope, pain, and struggle. In short, it is the smell of pigskin, and the football season approaches. While I am eagerly anticipating the start of football season and the merciful end to the Sports Doldrums that it brings (my Wahoos have their home opener this Saturday!), I find myself looking at another sport to help explain today's musings. It's something that Lawton and I have kicked around for years. We've both talked about it with lots of other guys. But it's not unique to us. I think tons of guys have considered this metaphor over the years, at least in passing. It seeks to categorize the skills of guys in dating world. It's really quite simple. The dating world is baseball, and guys are pitchers.

There's no question about it. Sure, this doesn't apply to everyone, but it generally works for hetero interaction initiated by the guy. Typically, guys can be broken down into three groups: starters, middle/long relievers, and closers.

Starters
In baseball, starters are typically the most talented pitchers on the staff, and they have the best stuff. They can usually throw three or four different pitches. They have the arm strength and the stamina to last into the late innings. They bring a solid game almost every time out.

In the dating world, the starters are very much the same. They are often good looking, charismatic, or charming. The best starters -- the Cy Young winners -- are usually all of those things. They are quite good at making initial contact with women, either alone or in a group. The key to that is that they can change up their approach depending on the situation. They can chat up a girl standing alone in a bar or introduce their friends to a group of girls out for the evening. Their good looks and/or charm are a big help there. Whether they have to work the eye contact or put a witty opening line into play, they can handle it. They are excellent flirters, and they know the right questions to ask. And no matter what happens, they're ready to take the mound again at the beginning of the next night out, regardless of whether they scored or got shot down the last time.

The best starters can last into the late innings, putting in the necessary work over time. They are the most likely group to manage to pitch a complete game and take the girl home, end up dating her, or some other desirable thing. If they're lucky, though, when they get into a little trouble, they'll have a middle reliever nearby to help them bring home the victory.

Middle/Long Relievers
In baseball, middle relievers are firemen. They come in during the middle innings when the starter gets in a jam and methodically work their way out of it. The largest part of their success comes from the change of style, as no two pitchers really bring the same stuff. If the opposing team had gotten to the starter, it will take some time to adjust to the middle reliever's style. The new pitcher throws the batters off a little bit. Middle relievers are talented pitchers by their own right, and they are also called long relievers because they can work several innings if necessary. However, they are the forgotten men in the pitching staff because they are rarely on the mound at the beginning or the end of the game. Once in a great while, a middle reliever will finish a game. Middle relievers are also sometimes pressed into starting duty, usually due to an injury or other absence of a normal starter. They can have some limited success in this role, but not for long, and usually only setting things up for a closer. They almost never pitch a complete game.

In dating, middle relievers work the same way. They come in to save the situation when the starter gets in trouble. The middle relievers are typically good conversationalists. They can talk to girls. Unlike starters, who mostly ask girls questions, middle relievers actively participate in the conversation, taking some of the burden off of the girls. That is the change of style that throws the girls off just a little bit. The middle relievers can often keep this up for a while. Make no mistake, though. The girls are rarely interested in the middle relievers, probably because they talk too much. Furthermore, middle relievers are terrible at flirting. They just don't really grasp the concept. They think their conversation is flirtatious, but they are wrong. Every now and then, a middle reliever will parlay the change of pace he brings into a victory of his own. It's rare, though, and it often happens when he lucks into a good bit of flirting that he couldn't possibly recreate if you paid him. In a small breakdown of the metaphor, the middle reliever often hands the game back over to the starter when his work is done. However, just as often, a closer is brought in to finish the game.

Because of their firefighting abilities and their knack for conversation, middle relievers are the best wingmen in the world. They smooth things over when the starter fatigues, runs out of questions to ask, starts looking at other women, etc. They can also occasionally make a start to introduce their boys to a group of girls. They can hold down a conversation with the friend of a girl a starter is battling, and sometimes they just make the starter look better by being who they are.

Closers
Closers in baseball are just what they sound like. They slam the door on the other team and secure the victory. They are often live-armed fireballers who bring the heat. They work fast and don't waste any time. You rarely see a closer use a full wind-up, instead efficiently pitching from the stretch. There are also some breaking ball and changeup closers, but they are less common. Those guys are sneaky good, though.

In dating, the closers come in late in the game, take girls home, and have sex with them. Occasionally, they end up dating a girl, but it's uncommon. That's usually left to the starters and middle relievers. It's all about the quick hitter for the closers. They are typically the best looking, most charismatic guys around, but they have no patience for prolonged interaction. They want to get to the endgame quickly. That's why they rarely work without a good starter or middle reliever or, ideally, both. They come in with some jokes, some shots, a charming smile, a roofie -- whatever -- and finish the job. The best ones only get into trouble if they are pressed into action too early. Their stuff often doesn't hold up over time. There are a few guys who are closers that you just can't figure out. They're not especially good looking or charming, but they have something that works for them. They are the breaking ball and changeup closers of the dating world. They have a stealth mack that just works.

There are a couple of important things to note here (thanks, Lawton). In the dating world, there really aren't any managers (with a couple of exceptions that aren't all that important). As a result, starters and relievers often end up trying things they would never do if a manger was running the show. Also, a guy/pitcher almost never has a home game in the dating world. Finally, most non-closers have a grudging respect for closers. The respect is because they all wish they could be closers, and the grudging is because their envy inspires them to hate the closers and consider them punk bitches who don't have to do any work.

Feel free to tell me I'm wrong, but it will take some convincing. The dating world is baseball, and guys are the pitchers. All you guys who read this were thinking about which type of pitcher you are. You girls have been thinking about guys you've dated and where they fit in. The metaphor probably needs some fine tuning, but the broad strokes are dead on. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Oh, for those of you who have to ask, I'm a middle reliever.

Web Watching the Wash

There are sooo many reasons I think the Internet makes the world a better and more fun place, it's hard to think of which is the most significant. It's been a lot of fun embracing and adapting to so many of the new developments over the years. These days, I almost never buy stamps because I can pay bills online, I can use Google to find the answer to almost any question I ever have, I can chat with people around the world at little or no cost, and I can always find out what movie that guy has been in. That's just to name a few of them, and there are new things coming out all the time.

This article talks about one that would have made my college life so much better: online access to the status of university laundry facilities and machines that text message you when their cycle is ending. I can't even imagine the number of times I went to do my laundry in college only to find that there were no machines available, meaning I had to carry my stuff back home or, in an emergency, to another laundry place. What a complete waste of time! How great would it be to be able to look online to see how many washers were in use? And how great would it be to feel free to not hover over the machine so you could be there when it was finished, either to avoid someone hijacking your machine and unceremoniously dumping your newly washed clothes on the floor (typically in a puddle of used motor oil mixed with Quik-Krete brand cement mix) or (for the go-getters and anal retentives of the world) to quickly remove your things to avoid those dreaded wrinkles.

Of course, this development might mean that the laundry room will always be devoid of people except for those brief moments when they need to start, shift, or remove their loads of laundry. That in turn might ruin the over-romanticized notion of meeting potential dates and/or hookups while doing laundry. But I'm thinking the Internet will probably provide lots of ways for people to find dates and hookups.

Tidbits from a Hero

In case you didn't know it, Dave Barry is without question one of my heroes. He's witty, clever, and often downright silly. Plus, he gets paid well to write funny things. I reckon that's good work if you can get it. Anyway, I've never known another author who could make me laugh out loud as much as he does. Unfortunately, he's currently on sabbatical from writing his column. However, he does update his blog (with the help of others), and it is a treasure trove of random and weird things. For instance, this woman gives new meaning to the idea of having a sucky day. Also, I don't think I could have ever imagined a headline this good. It's nice to know that he and his alert readers are on the job.

Sandpaper Smooth

So I've recognized before that women can be smooth. Of course, the point was not that I originally thought that women were bumbling clods; the point was that, the way things work, women very rarely have to behave in a way that will expose whether they are smooth or not.I would think it’s much easier to react than to act, and the onus of action – at least initially – is typically placed on guys. As a result, guys are forever taking the risk that they will, metaphorically speaking, trip over the curb of bumbling, fall down, and split their chin open as it cracks into the sidewalk of rejection. Then again, maybe that whole tripping and falling thing would be a good approach. Ron Livingston’s character in Two Ninas was able to parlay a trip to the hospital caused by Amanda Peet’s character into a date. But I digress. The point is that guys approaching women often run the risk of coming across as idiots.

Last Thursday, I went out with some friends. Actually, we were returning to the scene of the meeting with the girl who just would not go away. I guess we figured the place had to treat us better this time since it treated us so poorly before. This time, we enjoyed the stylings of a local cover band (inside, not on the rooftop). During the night, a guy I know was sort of talking to/standing near a girl he met there while the band was playing. He was being chided by a girl in our group to get this girl’s number immediately. The guy thought that he should never ask for the number before the end of the night, because what do you do after that? But he had to admit that the longer he waited, the more chance there was that this girl would leave, get hit on by another guy, or possibly both. So he says to her between songs, “Listen, I’m gonna disappear to go to the restroom, and I don’t want to miss you if you leave while I’m gone. So I’m wondering: could I give you a call sometime?”

Let’s think about that for a second. This guy is asking for her number before it’s time to go. He’s not at all sure that’s a good idea. So he’s looking to make an excuse for why he’s doing it when he is. Paraphrasing a bit, he said to this girl, “I gotta take a piss. Can I have your number?” I don’t know a whole lot about these things, but that doesn’t seem especially smooth to me. In fact, it seems to be the opposite of smooth.

However, as proof that I don’t know what I’m talking about, the girl gave him her number. I guess sometimes it just doesn’t matter whether you’re smooth or not. So now you have a new line to try for fun: “I gotta take a piss. Can I have your number?” Let me know if it works.

Three Jennifers

As much as I hate to give props to them, it sounds like Fox might have a good segment this year in “Ten Yards with TB.” I talked with the Big Head Kid today, and he was telling me about it. According to the BHK, the gist is that Terry Bradshaw sits down with different football players and coaches and asks them random and/or silly questions, has them play word-association games (TB: “Playoffs” Ben Roethlisberger: “Disappointing.”), and generally tries to amuse himself and the home viewers.

One of those segments recently featured the Redskins’ Clinton Portis. Terry asked Clinton, “Which Jennifer: Lopez, Garner, or Aniston?” [Aside: I think this is an excellent question, but a hard one to answer. It deserves some serious thought and more discussion than I am going to give it in an aside. However, the short answer is … I can’t do it. I’ll have to answer this later.] Portis said that he didn’t know who Jennifer Garner is. Terry told him that she is dating/married to/shagging/with [I don’t know what exactly he said, and I don’t really know which is appropriate. I can only hope he pointed out that she was once the hot, cute, and charming star of Alias, but I’m not counting on it.] Ben Affleck. Portis replied that he thought Ben Affleck ought to go for Aniston, ‘cause then he’d have been with all 3.

Later, Terry asked Portis what he would do if he didn’t play football. Portis said, “I’d be Ben Affleck so I could date those 3 Jennifers.”

Apparently, Clinton got jokes.

Do these words really go together?

In the car on the way to an off-site meeting with a co-worker the other day, we were listening to a CD of a comedian. This comedian probably has a name, but I have no idea what it is. He claims to have been born in Australia, but he moved to New York when he was 12. Maybe that explains his interesting and colorful phraseology. When describing something that frightened him he used the following words: "When I first saw that, it scared the ass out of me." He also used it again in slightly modified form, saying that something "annoyed the ass out of [him]."

That's a sequence of words that might very well never have occurred to me if left to my own devices. However, now that I've encountered it, thanks to this funny Aussie-cum-New Yorker, I love it. I'm adopting it as part of the official Abs argot.

The Wedding Dilemma

In case you didn't know it, I'm something of an expert on attending weddings. It's not because I've been married or because I'm a closet wedding planner or even because I secretly think about what it would be like to get married all the time. It's because I have attended a lot of them. I've lost the exact count, and it hurts my weak, little brain to try to recount, but I've been to somewhere between 25 and 30 weddings since college. I've been a participant in about 20% of those weddings, whether doing a reading, being the best man, or just standing dapperly in the homey line. Either way, that's a lot of weddings to go to. I suppose I could be considered a good luck charm, too, as none of the couples whose weddings I've attended have gotten divorced. [Knocks loudly on wooden desk.]

The truth is that weddings are kind of old hat at this point, but I still enjoy them quite a bit. Part of it is that I enjoy being around people so filled with promise about their new lives together. Part of it is that everyone at a wedding is just so doggone happy. It's such a nice change of pace. Part of it, though, is the dancing.

It sounds very funny, and I don't really like to toot my own horn very much, but I'm going to do it anyway. As Jeremy Grey (played by Vince Vaughn) of Wedding Crashers so aptly put it, "You and I both know I'm a phenomenal dancer." It's true. I don't mean that I'm a world class rump-shaker (although I might have done a mean Humpty Dance at one point in my life). It's the swing dancing. I'm not world class at it, either, but you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who does it better at any given wedding I'm attending.

One would think that the dancing really has the potential to make me look good. And one would probably be right. If it can be unleashed as a surprise, it's especially powerful. At the wedding I went to last weekend, I agreed to accompany a girl sitting next to me out onto the dance floor. The scenario that unfolded from that point onward is a fairly standard one for me. Because it’s early in the reception, most people aren’t yet drunk enough to venture out on the dance floor. So it’s me and my partner alongside maybe a couple from the bridal party and two or three elderly couples (who always still have the moves). It’s usually the second spin or the first dip that gets my partner’s attention (think of a facial expression equivalent of Susan Sarandon’s “Oh, my,” in Bull Durham), and the move after that that really draws in the spectators. Because they aren’t yet drunk enough to venture onto the floor themselves, and because my partner and I look a tad incongruous next to the sober, old folk, the guests are watching us, and they are more than a little surprised at the smoothness on display. The photographer will make his way over before long to snap some shots that no one wants in the wedding album. If there’s a video guy, he’s definitely filming us, and that will make the final cut.. Heading off the floor at the end of the song, my partner is a bit flushed and beaming in her pleasant surprise, while I try to diminish my somewhat self-satisfied grin that results both from the fact that my partner had no idea that she would enjoy the dance that much and from the fact that the people who turned to watch at my table, along with a few random others, are applauding. It’s a Good Thing.

Considering that this particular wedding was attended by more young, attractive, single women than any other one I've been to, I thought I was off to a pretty good start. Dinner hadn't even been served yet.

However, the whole dancing thing is really a double-edged sword. First, all the married women I know put themselves on the card pretty early. Plus, it's just not a wedding to me until I dance with the bride. Then, I usually dance with a few other girls. And those are just the partner-up dances. Usually someone convinces me to join them for just some random twitching around the dance floor.

I'm sure some of you are thinking that sounds like a lot of fun, and those of you with a Y-chromosome are seriously questioning my sexual orientation. Be that as it may, it can cause me troubles because I have a serious problem: I sweat like a thoroughbred. Seriously, I don't know why or how, but it doesn't take much to get me to start schvitzing. One song is usually enough to give me a bright patina of perspiration on my brow. Two songs and it's starting to flow. After that it's big trouble.

By the end of the night, I am invariably a soggy, sodden, dripping mess, and the very act that literally inspired applause at the beginning of the night leads to restrained grimaces of revulsion by the end of the reception. It’s not just my prospective partners. I think it’s gross, too.

This wedding was no different. I worked at breaking up my trips to the dance floor. I tried to sit outside and talk to people. But I didn’t know that many people there, and eventually all the people I wanted to talk to were on the dance floor anyway, leaving me no enjoyable choice but to join them.

So I find myself in the position of a wedding-ized Hamlet, holding up my drenched dress shirt and suit the next day thinking: “Alas, Wedding Abs, I know him well. To dance, or not to dance? That is the question.”

Maybe it’s sort of like drinking. I dance too much early, and by the end of the night, I’m just a puddle. I need to manage it better. Maybe I need someone to cut me off and make me switch to water for a while. I suppose if some fine young lass would drag me off to the bar to actually get me to drink more (ideally with an eye toward taking advantage of me) rather than dragging me onto the dance floor, this wouldn’t be an issue. But that’s not the way things tend to work out. Maybe I just need to wait to start the dancing about 30 minutes before the reception is over, but bring it quick and strong, like throwing down a couple of shots before last call. Maybe I just need to quit the dancing entirely and immediately. At least it couldn't drag me down if I did that.

I clearly don’t know what the best approach is. So for now I deal with both sides of the coin: built up by the schwerve, torn down by the schvitz.

Wedding Weekend

My last weekend was an excellent one. The fact that it was 4 days long helped, of course. But it also involved a trip to Greenwich, CT, for a wedding, and the whole stretch was quite nice. Even the 10 hours of driving didn't really take away from it.

It started out with a dinner party in honor of the bride and groom at a family friend's house in Greenwich on Thursday. I knew about 4 people there, including the bride and groom, but it was fun anyway. The bartender kept bringing me a new beer every time mine was empty, so it was hard to go wrong. Plus, the catering staff were walking around the patio with lobster nachos, coconut shrimp, and mini cheeseburgers for hors d'oeuvres. Mini cheeseburgers! At dinner, I sat next to a woman who might have been the wedding coordinator. Or she may not have been. I do know that, when I claimed to be a freeloader (which she believed since I wasn't part of the wedding party), she told me she wouldn't let me into the reception if I wasn't at the church. There's nothing quite like being threatened by an eccentric, older woman you don't know.

Friday, I drove out to Pomptom Plains, NJ, to play golf with my friend, Big Daddy. It was great and awful. Great to see Big Daddy and to hit the links. Awful to shoot a 108. Big Daddy shot a 76 and was irked. Sometimes, I hate that guy.

Saturday morning, we got to play 9 holes at Round Hill, where golf is really just strolling and swinging, since you have caddies to carry your bag. It was fun, and I even played better. However, the lesson I took away is that you should ask the caddy for a club and have him give it to you. That way, you can avoid accidentally pulling the wrong club for your approach to the 9th green and nearly killing the father of the groom as your ball arcs gracefully over the flagstick, flies the green, and hits the road 3 feet from the groom's dad before bouncing onto the roof of this very nice clubhouse. (Yes, I know there are numbers and letters on the soles of the clubhead. I have no idea how or why I pulled the wrong one.)

The wedding was gorgeous. Everything about it was elegant and classy. Well, maybe not the part where the church had no air conditioning, but some would argue that's a touch of old-school class. The reception was at a yacht club, the weather was nice, and the band was excellent. This wedding was classy enough that the band mercifully avoided playing all of the Big Four wedding dance songs (Electric Slide, Hokey Pokey, Macarena, and YMCA; if you're from northern OH or PA, substitute the Chicken Dance for the Macarena.) Plus, I've never been to a wedding so completely chock-full of good looking women. And the bride and groom were the picture of beauty.

A nice brunch on Sunday, during which I chased Scotty's little dude all around the yard, was a nice lead-in for the drive home that showed me two things I hadn't seen before.

First, traffic slowed way down on 95 South (that I had seen plenty). It was to rubberneck the goings-on on the other side of 95 (also a common sight). What was unusual to me was that, amidst a noticeably large cloud of dust and dirt in the air, I saw a woman rubbing a man's arm on the side of the interstate near some cars pulled to the side of the road, obviously saying comforting things to him. He was clearly freaked out by something. (That's a bit unusual, but not something I hadn't seen before.) As I wondered what was freaking him out, I saw a car (a Cadillac STS, I think) resting askew across the two right lanes. The thing I hadn't seen before was that it was resting on its roof and hood, all four wheels pointed at the sky and spinning, like a cockroach that had been flipped on its back and couldn't move.

That sight made me think it was about time to stop for a soda. As I did, I saw the second new-to-me sight: not one, but two people, asked me for gas money as I walked in and out of the service area building. I guess gas prices really are high. Flustered by these developments, I spied a sign that said "MEN" and headed in to relieve myself. I stopped short and flushed (no pun intended) pretty quickly, though, because the view from the doorway indicated that the part of the sign I had read was just the second part of "WOMEN." I am clearly an idiot.

Despite the strange and idiotic, finish, I hope all your wedding weekends can be as good. May the location be picturesque, may the food be tasty, may the dancing be smooth, may the eye candy be plentiful, and may you never see or hear the Macarena again.

Guy Behavior Oppressed

Some people think that guy behavior is lewd, crude, and socially unacceptable. And maybe they have a point. Still, we're kind of used to it by now, and it can be amusing at times. Plus, there are some women in the world who want a guy to be a guy, like this lovely girl. As someone who definitely qualifies as "slightly irregular," I have to appreciate her take on the situation. But we're not really talking about metrosexuality here. We're talking about things guys do in public. For instance, Jen seems somewhat vitriolic aobut the whole idea of spitting. It's unpleasant and even a little gross, but is it really that big of a deal? I could get behind it if she suggested one shouldn't spit on benches or or first dates or even sidewalks. But the whole outdoors? That seems a bit extreme to me. That said, given her strong feelings on the subject of spitting, I bet she thinks this guy got off easy. There's no question that it's tough on a man these days. And it's lucky she wrote that down. If she had said it out loud, I probably wouldn't even have heard her.

Still, what I take from that article is that when one must consider the world his toilet, he should aim for a compost heap.

Shoot the Hostage: Part Deux.1

I mentioned before about the experience that made me realize that it's possible for women to be smooth. So I suppose it's only fitting that I would now tell you about the experience that proved to me that guys don't have a monopoly on annoying and boorish behavior, either.

Last Thursday, I was having a drink with a few friends on a rooftop bar in Arlington. As it turned out, it was an eminently pleasant night -- one that really didn't belong in the DC area in July. The humidity was low, the temperature was moderate, Ryan was bringing me beers, and the company was good. I was sitting at a table near the railing at edge of the roof and talking with my friends Mike and Jenn. This wasn't one of those obscenely loud bars where you have to shout to talk to the person next to you. We were able to converse at normal volumes. I don't really know what we were talking about, but it could have been anything from whether guys really like Asian women to making up bold and ludicrous lies about each other's deviant sexual practices. It was really somewhat innocuous, standard bar talk. But it didn't last too long.

Suddenly, our conversation was interrupted by a bottle of beer and a small purse being thunked down on our table, followed by their owner asking, "DO YOU MIND IF I PUT THESE HERE FOR A MINUTE?" Startled mute by the unnecessary volume of her question, we all kind of shook our heads as she started digging into her purse and started having what might have been the loudest cell phone conversation ever. I don't know why she bothered with the electronics, as I'm sure the other person could have heard her without using the phone. This conversation went something like this:

"BLAH BLAH BLAH WHATEVER BLAH BLAH BLAH MY BOYFRIEND ... [pause] ... BLAH BLAH BLAH MY BOYFRIEND'S NOT COMING HERE HE'S IN COLLEGE PARK BLAH BLAH NO WAY I'M GOING TO COLLEGE PARK BLAH BLAH BLAH..."

Jenn, Mike, and I tried to go back to our conversation, but we couldn't seem to talk over this woman's conversation. We were looking at each other, half gaping and half grinning about the improbability of the situation and the sheer bumptiousness of this chick.

[Aside: Since I know some of you can think of nothing else, I will say that I don't really remember what the girl looked like. The image of her is completely clouded by the experience. I can say that she was blonde, and when she first came over, I thought she was not bad looking.]

Her conversation seemed to go on forever, but it was probably more like 5 minutes. At some point while it was going on, Ryan returned to the table with beers for everyone. Around that time, I started thinking that this was quite possibly the loudest and single most annoying woman on the face of the planet. To put it mildly, I wanted her to leave. At that point, I had a brainstorm. I could get her to leave! I'm quite adept at chasing women away, often without trying or even wanting them to go. If I concentrated on it a little bit, I could have her out of here in a jiffy.

I kind of smiled about it and eyed her purse, saying to Mike (although struggling to talk over the new chick's yammering), "Should I just throw her purse off the roof?"

He looked longingly at the nearby railing, laughed and said, "I'll give you a hundred dollars if you do."

I was seriously interested now, but I hesitated for some reason. "A hundred and ten," Mike offered. I couldn't pass that up. However, at that moment, the annoying girl got off the phone grabbed her purse, and ended my chance to get rid of her and make some money in the process.

---

Maybe the girl took our bemused and aghast looks as inviting ones, because she started talking to us. Something she said after about 30 seconds inspired me to say, "Well, if you're gonna come over here to get on the phone and talk about your boyfriend, that's not something we especially want to hear." I thought that would irk her enough to send her packing. Instead, she started off with, "MY BOYFRIEND IS GREAT -"

At that point, Ryan interrupted, pointing out, "But he's not worth a trip to College Park?"

"Well, you know, that's College Park. You know how it is. It's way up there in College Park." [I'm abandoning the caps because 1) she toned it down a tiny notch and 2) I can't stand them.]

"But your boyfriend can't be all that great if you won't even travel to the other side of the Beltway for him," I argued.

She started to respond, "My boyfriend is so great. He was my best friend for over a year, while I was dating models and rich lawyers and that sort of thing..." [No I am not making that up. She really said it.]

I was sure this gave me the key to her exit. A little Chris Rock would be sure to send her away. "So he's an emergency dick," I said. Jenn gaped at me. Mike nearly spit out his beer.

"WHAT???!!! NO! He's not an emergency dick! What does that even mean?"

"Well, you were dating models and rich lawyers while he was your best friend, probably listening to you complain about how they didn't treat you right. He was like a dick in a glass case. You know: break only in case of emergency."

I thought that was decently offensive and definitely not inviting of more conversation, but she thought she needed to argue the point, starting out with, "No, it's more like I recognized what was right there before my eyes."

"Oh, don't go all Survivor on me," I said, somewhat incredulously. She then proceeded to engage the rest of the group in lots of talking about why her boyfriend was great, how he was definitely not an emergency dick, and how there was no way she would go to College Park to see him because everyone needs some time to themselves and "if he wants to see me, he can come here, you know?" This went on for a very long time. Actually, it could have been only two minutes, but it seemed like a very long time. She didn't really give me much of an opening for a while. However, everyone else at the table was subtly clubbing her the whole time.

After a while, she said, "I feel like you guys think I'm retarded. It's like you're all laughing at me like I'm retarded." [Yes, she said 'retarded.' More than once in the same paragraph.]

There it was: an opening. I needed to choose wisely. Last time, I invited argument. I was too subtle. I decided to try a more direct attack this time: "So why don't you leave?"

That had to do it, right? Surely, no one would stick around after being treated to that kind of rudeness. Right? Wrong! She stuck around. I have no idea what she said in response. I was too dumbfounded that she didn't walk away in a huff. I went back to eyeing her purse (which she wouldn't put back on the table) and pondering the situation. She eventually left. I have no idea how or why. Naturally, she was replaced shortly thereafter by another girl who was trying to come across as the cool, saucy chick, but who mostly impressed us as someone who just would not shut the hell up. All in all, it was a tough night to be sober.

To bring the post's title back into play here, I was the hostage in this scenario. If it were you, would you shoot yourself? How would you get her to leave? What do you do?

Terror's New Weapon

I know I haven't finished my story, but I couldn't pass this one up. I am all about the idea that we should all be vigilant and report suspicious activites, but it seems like mabye someone went a bit overboard here. Maybe the driver thought it was some sort of environmental or chemical warfare device. Sounds like he's not too chuffed (ha!) about the way the whole thing turned out.