More Ass Kicking

Weeks ago my girlfriend R and I were out looking for boys and ended up palling up with a group of cute guys who were all high school friends from their very small town.

I ended up talking to one of them, the epitome of what you would think of when imagining a typical small-town-all-American boy: blonde, blue-eyed, naive, etc, etc.

Pretty much immediately, I knew there was no relationship potential since he was far too one-dimensional for me. But I figured it would at least be entertaining to spend some time with him, or at least I'd get a free meal out of it.

Oh, no no no was I wrong, except for the free meal part. I also got a trip to the museum out of it, but wow, he was more boring than jury duty (and that's saying a lot considering I just slept through eight hours of jury duty this week).

There's nothing particularly interesting about him. He was working in finance until recently when he, like most other young people in finance, was laid off. He likes sports. He has a sister and a brother. His parents are pretty conservative. He once hooked up with a stripper. And honestly, these are the highlights.

And not only is he completely uninteresting, he's also an absolute moron. He bragged about going to all the bars in Manhattan in the four years he's lived here and then promptly followed up with the fact that he's never once been to a museum in his life.

Thus, I suggested we go to the Natural History Museum, which was one of my favorite museums growing up. Considering it's filled with kids on their elementary school field trips, I figured it was a good induction for him into the world of museums.

Well, to sum up the trip, as we walked into the room of prehistoric animal bones:

He said, "Look dinosaur bones!"

I said, "No...I think that's a woolly mammoth."

Him: "Are you sure? It's big. It looks like a dinosaur. And in the TV shows, any time they walk into a museum, there are dinosaur bones."

Me: "Yeah...I'm positive that's a woolly mammoth. It says so right there...on the plaque...And the dinosaur bones are in the next room...."

Him: "Oooooooh, I see!"

Fascinating, huh? I'm almost positive I saw a fourth-grader rolling his eyes, except I was too busy rolling my own.

Anyways, after this fabulous trip to the museum, I heard sporadically from All American Idiot via text, but we never made any solid plans. And even though I had really no interest in him, his flakiness somehow made him more appealing. This just goes to show how idiotic I can be and how playing hard to get really does work sometimes.

I complained to both R and my little sister E that I hadn't heard from him.

R said, "S, he's a total moron. Why do you even care?"

E said, "He is an idiot and it's better that you don't converse with the likes of him."

Both terribly observant and good points, but for some reason I was really bothered by the fact that he wasn't calling for another date. My rationale was as follows: since I am clearly so much smarter and better than him, he should be BEGGING me to spend time with him so who is he to blow me off? Who does he think he is?

So after two weeks of noncommittal random texting, I'd finally had it. He texted me that he had a "busy week" coming up and was "out of town" during the weekend, so he couldn't make any plans.

I responded with: "Look, you either aren't interested in me and/or are seeing someone already. Either way, I don't really care, but I appreciate when people are honest with me."

He wrote back immediately with a defensive, "I am talking to someone, and it's very complicated, but I don't think I haven't been honest with you. I barely know you and didn't think I owed you anything."

Yeesh. For someone who hadn't even bothered to call me in the past two weeks, he was sure using some strong language.

On one hand, he has a point. True, we were barely seeing each other and he really didn't owe me any sort of explanation. And I hadn't been updating him regularly on my whereabouts and my dating situation.

But, my new policy is that I am holding people to a higher standard and if he wasn't interested in dating me again, then he could have told me so at any point, rather than stringing me along through a series of intermittent texts. Basically, I no longer have tolerance for any hint of flakiness and will call you out on it.

And hey, R and E were right. I really do have far better uses of my time than explaining to someone that no, those are not the dinosaur bones...