Insanity is doing the same thing while expecting a different result.
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Nice Guys
I’m not sure who wrote this, but I found it amusing. NSFW.
I see this question posted with some regularity in the personals section, so I thought I’d take a minute to explain things to the ladies out there that haven’t figured it out.
What happened to all the nice guys?
The answer is simple: you did.
See, if you think back, really hard, you might vaguely remember a Platonic guy pal who always seemed to want to spend time with you. He’d tag along with you when you went shopping, stop by your place for a movie when you were lonely but didn’t feel like going out, or even sit there and hold you while you sobbed and told him about how horribly the (other) guy that you were f****** treated you.
At the time, you probably joked with your girlfriends about how he was a little puppy dog, always following you around, trying to do things to get you to pay attention to him. They probably teased you because they thought he had a crush on you. Given that his behavior was, admittedly, a little pathetic, you vehemently denied having any romantic feelings for him, and buttressed your position by claiming that you were “just friends.” Besides, he totally wasn’t your type. I mean, he was a little too short, or too bald, or too fat, or too poor, or didn’t know how to dress himself, or basically be or do any of the things that your tall, good-looking, fit, rich, stylish boyfriend at the time pulled off with such ease.
Eventually, your Platonic buddy drifted away, as your relationship with the boyfriend got more serious and spending time with this other guy was, admittedly, a little weird, if you werent dating him. More time passed, and the boyfriend eventually cheated on you, or became boring, or you realized that the things that attracted you to him weren’t the kinds of things that make for a good, long-term relationship. So, now, you’re single again, and after having tried the bar scene for several months having only encountered players and douche bags, you wonder, “What happened to all the nice guys?”
Well, once again, you did.
You ignored the nice guy. You used him for emotional intimacy without reciprocating, in kind, with physical intimacy. You laughed at his consideration and resented his devotion. You valued the aloof boyfriend more than the attentive “just-a-” friend. Eventually, he took the hint and moved on with his life. He probably came to realize, one day, that women aren’t really attracted to guys who hold doors open; or make dinners just because; or buy you a Christmas gift that you mentioned, in passing, that you really wanted five months ago; or listen when you’re upset; or hold you when you cry. He came to realize that, if he wanted a woman like you, he’d have to act more like the boyfriend that you had. He probably cleaned up his look, started making some money, and generally acted like more of an a****** than he ever wanted to be.
Fact is, now, he’s probably getting laid, and in a way, your ultimate rejection of him is to thank for that. And I’m sorry that it took the complete absence of “nice guys” in your life for you to realize that you missed them and wanted them. Most women will only have a handful of nice guys stumble into their lives, if that.
So, if you’re looking for a nice guy, here’s what you do:
- Build a time machine.
- Go back a few years and pull your head out of your a**.
- Take a look at what’s right in front of you and grab ahold of it.
I suppose the other possibility is that you STILL don’t really want a nice guy, but you feel the social pressure to at least appear to have matured beyond your infantile taste in men. In which case, you might be in luck, because the nice guy you claim to want has, in reality, shed his nice guy mantle and is out there looking to unleash his cynicism and resentment onto someone just like you.
If you were five years younger.
So, please: either stop misrepresenting what you want, or own up to the fact that you’ve f***** yourself over. You’re getting older, after all. It’s time to excise the bulls*** and deal with reality. You didn’t want a nice guy then, and he certainly doesn’t f****** want you, now.
Sincerely,
A Recovering Nice Guy
Hide & Seek
What is good for the industry? Many people have ideas, but no one really knows the answer. Maybe a better question is what is bad for the industry. I would like to think most of us would agree on the items that would make this list, but that’s not reality. I’m not even sure Andre on Monday agrees with Andre on Tuesday all the time, why should I expect others to agree with me or each other consistently. One of the things that has consistently stayed on the good side is transparency.
Sunday night in Destin I received an email alleging wrong doing by a prominent group in our industry. The email had all sorts of details attempting to support the claimed wrong doing, none of which I could say with certainty were true or false. Personally I don’t think anything “illegal” was done, but things were done that wouldn’t be “legal” in a perfect world. It was in what many of us would refer to as the “Grey” area. I put “illegal” and “legal” in quotes because I’m referring to industry rules, not laws punishable with jail time. I’m not saying this to imply what was done shouldn’t have been done, in fact it’s probably the smartest thing that could be done. If the rules permit something to be done don’t you owe it to your group to do it if it helps your group? If it were a pyramid or tumbling trick we’d likely give credit for being creative, but other areas lead to someone’s moral compass being questioned.
After getting the email and getting back to a place conducive to work I forwarded the email to the person accused of wrong doing. This was late Tuesday night and I planned on giving her a call the next day. Instead she called me about 30 minutes after sending the email. We talked about the details and she explained what was going on, including many details I was asked not to share. I told her that I would be posting something about the issue on Spirit Post later that week and let her know if she sent a response I would include it. She said she would send me something, but wanted to be sure the official people received her response first. She later let me know she wouldn’t be able to send me her response, which I interpreted as legal action would be taken soon and she didn’t want to do anything that would put that in jeopardy. I was later sent her response, without asking for it, from another person.
I’m not certain of the order of the next few events, but it doesn’t really matter, and they all took place by Thursday evening. Among the events were more emails from the accuser with additional support for the claims and a response to the accused being cleared by the governing body. Let me repeat that, the accuser was sent a letter to let them know the accused was investigated and cleared of the allegations. At this point I decided there was enough info to put something on Spirit Post on Friday. I wrote a 3 sentence post. The first sentence said allegations were made, the second said the allegations were investigated and the accused was cleared, and the third mentioned a different allegation involving an event producer.
Within about 30 minutes of publishing the post I received a text from the same higher up at Varsity All Star that emailed me after the April Fools Day joke telling me I need to be responsible and a phone call from the accused implying slander or defamation of character. There seemed to be a great urgency to make sure no one knew allegations were made, even though they we found to be invalid, for no apparent reason. This doesn’t fall into the transparent category.
Posted in Thoughts
Tagged Cheerleading, Destin, Grey Area, Illegal, Legal, Transparency, Varsity
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Waiting to Exhale
April’s Fools Day came and went and I was only involved in 3 jokes. The first was using Spirit Post to say Varsity Brands was pulling out of the USASF. It was a short and sweet post that led to a firmly worded email from one of the higher ups at Varsity All Star along with a decent discussion on cheerleading message boards about whether or not Varsity pulling out would be good or bad for the industry. The second and third jokes started shortly after reading the email about the first while eating lunch. The second was a simple attempt to get Kat’s family to believe she just found out she is pregnant, while the third was an attempt to convince a male friend of ours that he got someone pregnant.
Kat’s joke started at lunch by having a friend, also at lunch with us, put a message on her Facebook wall saying how excited she was and hoping it was a girl. About 30 minutes later I posted on Josh’s wall, Kat’s fiance, that I just heard the news and I hope it’s a boy. This didn’t snowball as much as we thought it would, but Josh did get a message or two about it. The third joke took off as expected. It also started at lunch when we decided to ask a girl our friend got to know, in a biblical sense, a few months earlier if she was up for playing a joke on him. She said she was in, but we never gave her full details of what we were going to do, but told her we would send her text messages to send to him throughout the rest of the day. The first message just said she really need to talk to him as soon as possible and it was really important. She also said they had to talk in person. By the end of the day he was convinced she was pregnant and all of their friends knew it, despite us never having her say what she needed to talk to him about. We managed to increase his stress level enough that he was dialing his mom’s number to let her know the news as we told him it was all a joke.
My last judging event of the season was in Destin, FL. Leading up to the event I ate lunch in 5 different states in 5 days. Monday was Jackson, MS, Tuesday in Nashville, TN, Wednesday was Lexington, KY, Thursday in Birmingham, AL, and Friday I was in Destin, FL. The weekend in Destin was great in large part due to having a day with nothing to do on both sides of the competition days. All of the people were great, but Kelly, “Becky”, and “Sparky” led the charge. Kelly started it off by being completely unfiltered. It she thought it, she said it, and it was usually funny. Kelly was the cause of one of the most interesting and entertaining dinners I’ve had in a long time. Becky & Sparky kicked in after the event. What started as a attempt to have a low key night by cooking dinner and hanging out in the condo turned into a bit of craziness thanks to the do whatever the sheet of paper says to do game introduced to us by Becky and Sparky.
For my parting shot I want to remind people to live in the moment and to live in the present. By live in the moment I’m asking you to be involved with the people around you. Don’t sit at dinner with a group of people and do nothing but text the people that aren’t there. Enjoy the time with the people you are with. By live in the present I’m asking you to realize that the past is over. The good and bad of it is something to learn from, but life goes on. Don’t let it pass you by.
Posted in Thoughts
Tagged Destin, Jokes, Josh Jones, Judging, Kat Jones, Pregnant, Varsity
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Chase-ing
After speaking at the Illinois Conference I went to St. Louis to visit my cousin, Sean, and watch basketball. Sometime during the visit and watching basketball with his old friends, and my new friends, we had 2 discussions about the best. One was who is the best player in college basketball and the other was about what is the best phone on the market. To make a long story short I’ll just point out there’s a reason other players were being compared to John Wall and other phones are compared to the iPhone.
Before leaving St. Louis I tried to find a Chase Bank. Actually let’s back up. Before leaving Lexington I used Google Maps to see if there was a Chase Bank in the St. Louis area because I knew I would need one and wouldn’t be back in Lexington for a while. Google Maps indicated there were some branches so I thought all was good. Back to leaving St. Louis. The branches Google Maps said were there weren’t so I checked online with Chase. When I checked there were none in St. Louis, but a few options about 40 miles away. The Chase website specifically said the ATMs were open 24 hours and could accept deposits. Sean and I decided to drive up to one to get there and not be able to get to it. Sure the ATM may have been open 24 hours, but the building the ATM was in was not. At this point I was only a little annoyed because Sean and I made the most of the drive.
The next day I called Chase hoping talking to someone would be useful. It was an absolute waste of time. The person I talked to was unable to locate a branch or ATM close to St. Louis and wound up transferring me to a branch in Chicago that was closed. Since I still needed an ATM I decided to detour by a different Chase ATM on the way to Mississippi. This detour was about an hour out of the way. I got to the ATM this time, but it did not take deposits. I stopped by 2 other ATMs on the Chase list of ATMs that were deposit friendly and neither accepted deposits. I left St. Louis ready to leave Chase.
I’m done for now, but there’s more coming soon. I haven’t yet made it to Destin or Atlanta or talked about any Cheer Drama. My ending thought is to remind people their first instinct is probably the best one to go with. The amount of information you can process without realizing you are doing it is incredible. This is what you first instinct is based on. Trust it. Trust in yourself and if you don’t believe me read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink.
Posted in Thoughts
Tagged Blink, Chase Bank, Google Maps, Illinois, iPhone, John Wall, Malcolm Gladwell, Sean, St. Louis
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