Old stomping grounds, new issues

“There's no way that moving in with your parents is a sign that your life is right on track. There's no way that you could fake this even, 'Yeah, things going great, I've got a terrific girl, making a lot of money, and if everything goes according to plan I'm gonna be moving back in with my parents soon.' It's like getting busted on a parole violation and getting thrown back into the slammer.”

So I left my job and my apartment to move home. Now I have no girlfriend, I have no job, I live with my parents, and I know the vital statistics for every Jedi in the Star Wars universe: I am now officially the biggest loser that I know.

“I can't believe this!”
“Oh, it won't be for that long.”
“How can I do this?! How can I move back in with those people? Please, tell me! They're insane! You know that.”
“Hey, my parents are just as crazy as your parents.”
“How can you compare you parents to my parents?!”
“My father has never thrown anything out. Ever!”
“My father wears his sneakers in the pool! Sneakers!”
“My mother has never set foot in a natural body of water.”

Everyone has a quirky family, and I’m not saying that mine is the quirkiest, but re-learning to live with your family’s quirks is a lot harder when at the same time you're trying to find a new job and avoid looking like a dead-beat parasite. At my dad’s recommendation I went to a job fair in Tacoma. I didn’t want to go, but I knew it’d prove to him (as much as to myself) that I was actually making efforts to find something, even when I’m not excited about the efforts required.

It turns out that the job fair was more like a convention of the world’s gayest careers ever convened under one roof. I wont mention what kind of industries were represented there, I’ll just say that they were all the type take zero qualifications to get a position with: more than half of them didn’t even prefer college grads.

“Don't you see? Women like that are like members of a secret tribe living in a forbidden city. People like me have not been inside in thousands of years...”

When I left I kind of felt like I should have known better than to think that anything would come of it. After all, looking for work is like dating: the only jobs that are actively pursuing applicants are the ones that nobody wants—same goes for girls actively pursuing boys. You can never find the desirable jobs and the desirable girls because they’re so consistently sought after that they’re never on the shelf… kind of like an XBOX 360 at Christmastime.

“Men, with no jobs, and no money, who live with their parents,
don't approach strange women.”

So, with no job prospects, I figured there was no way I’d be going on any dates any time soon. First off there’s no way I could afford to take a girl out; second, what girl is going to want to go out with an unemployed loser who lives with his parents?

“My name is George. I'm unemployed and I live with my parents.”
“I'm Victoria. Hi.”

Well, despite my pitiful situation I have a date on Friday… and not just any date: a date to a formal ball. She asked me, and ironically, she did it right after I told her that I have no job and live with my parents. Its like it didn’t even phase her when I said it.

“Ah, Ichy, you sly old dog, you.
What is this strange power you have over women?”

But don’t let the semantics fool you: this is not bragging. Just because a guy says that a girl asked him out doesn’t mean that he’s a ladies man with some mystical power over the minds of women. If this sounds too braggadocious, don’t think that when I say “a girl asked me out” that I’m saying that I’m being pursued by Jennifer Aniston or the like. And if this sounds all too familiar, don’t think that I make a practice of plagiarizing myself, it’s just that this seems to be a recurring theme in my life. Well, I think there my life has TWO recurring themes: 1.) the girls I’m interested in never like me and 2.) I never like the girls who are interested in me.

“What’s your name, trooper?”
“Malarkey, sir.”
“Malarkey... Is that slang for bullsh#?”
“Yes, sir.”

I don’t mind writing about this dilemma, but I HATE talking about it because everyone I discuss it with (with the exception of a few of my bros who suffer a similar fate) suddenly becomes a self accredited psychologist saying that I’m just the kind of guy who always wants what he can never have. I say that’s nothing but a load of malarkey. I don’t have a complex, but they DO have a point… they just have it turned around: I’m the kind of guy who can never have what he wants. I know what I want, I’ve just never met anyone who had it.

I hope that that explanation of my situation establishes enough credibility to ad sincerity to the cliché I’m about to use: the girl who asked me out is a great girl, she’s just not for me. I understand that anyone who knows me well enough to have heard me upraise a girl in the past will be quick to say that THAT was just a load of malarkey, so if you’d like a more detailed description of my opinion of the girl, feel free to give me a call and I’ll be a little less reserved over the phone. But I just saw an episode of Judge Judy (shameful: I know, but when you’re unemployed you end up watching a lot of pathetic daytime TV) where one girl was suing another for defaming words the defendant had posted on the internet, so I’m trying to keep this post as cordial as possible.

“Wait, wait! I know: ‘An unwanted creature,
but not a rat, a leech, or a cockroach…’”
“Then what?”

I could go on to repeat even MORE things that I’ve already said a hundred times about why I hate it when girls ask me out, but if you’re interested in hearing about that you can just go back and read my “Spooky October” post. I’ll just leave it at this: if a girl asks me out she can bet it will be the only date we ever go on together.

“Well, you know the solution then, don’t you?”
“Go on.”
“Next time there’s a ball, pluck up the courage and ask me before
somebody else does, and NOT as a last resort!”

When I met up with mom again after being asked, I told her the story and explained that it was all her fault (it was when I was waiting for her after church that I left myself exposed to the ask-out). My family’s great at playing hot potato with blame, so Mom was quick to point out that the solution was to already have a reason in mind as to why I couldn’t go. She proceeded to outline a list of excuses as long a Costco shopping list.

“And that’s when the attack comes, not from the front, but from the side.
From the other two raptors you didn’t even know were there.”

The truth is that this doesn’t happen to me often enough that I ever remember to be vigilant about it. And I’ve gone through this cycle enough in my life to know that the way it works is this: I WILL be extra cautious for the next month or so, during which time NO girls will pay attention to me (which probably means that I’ll like one of them during that time—according to recurring life theme #1), and that will cause me to let my guard down… and that’s when it will all happen all over again.