The Geometry of Romance

Love triangles are far too messy. A love line makes so much more sense. From point A to point B. Less complicated. And definitely much better than a love circle. That involves way too many people, like a communal hot tub...Great idea until you realize you're sitting in people soup.

If I perish by shark bite, I'm going to say I told you so with my dying breath.

I have what some have labeled an irrational fear of sharks. It's greater than a fear. It's flat-out terror. And I say irrational because I grew up (and currently live) in a landlocked state, have no plans to ever try surfing, don't resemble a seal, and when visiting a beach, I rarely go above knee-level when "swimming" in the ocean. I also have no intention of going on a cruise, because aside from group dinners with strangers not being my thing, I'd probably be that clumsy f*cker who trips and falls overboard while everyone is busy at the group dinner I deliberately avoided. Suffice to say that I probably won't encounter a shark in my lifetime. At least not one not contained within a tank at an aquarium. Another irrational fear of mine: very small things that have a LOT of detail crammed into their smallness. This includes seahorses. Good thing human babies come out unblemished with unnecessary detail, smooth and squishy, like Silly Putty with a face. Otherwise, my future mothering of youngsters would be difficult and I'd have to rely on the children's father to raise, and in general, look at them.

If this works, no need for a dress code at the wedding.

So Cosmo, always the leader in dating tips for the modern woman, recommends if you spot a hottie in say, a bookstore, that you remove one of your earrings (they even go so far as to say hide it in your purse, I guess because they want to make sure you get the idea that you're supposed to have lost the earring. Get it?) then go over near the handsome target and linger for awhile. When he notices you hovering, absentmindedly touch your ear and then look around at your feet and exclaim that GASP! You seem to have lost your earring! Can he help you find it because men have much better vision than women! Naturally, he'll be inclined to help a damsel in distress, right? So they say. They also say it will "literally bring him to his knees." Ha! Oh that Cosmo, so clever.

But it got me thinking. Why stop there? I'm saying, why not up the ante and remove your PANTS (don't forget to hide them in your purse to fully embrace the the skills of the pick-up magician), and then when you "exclaim" that you seem to have lost your pants, he'll be like, Whoa, you need my help finding them? And you can be like, Heck yeah, they're my party pants, can't leave home - or this bookstore - without them! That way, not only do you subtly attract his attention, but you also portray yourself as classy, fun-loving, and yet responsible. A date, and possible future marriage (and at this rate, likely, children) is secured.

Genius skips a generation. And sometimes trips right into others.

Sometimes I'm glad I’m behind a desk all day. Twice this week I've realized my pants have been unzipped, then had to wonder how long I'd been too distracted to notice. I'm going to be that mother who drops her kid at school not aware that he's still strapped to his carseat. I'll absentmindedly think it's his backpack. And the teachers will shake their heads and say, That poor Tricky, good thing he's so gangSTAR.

LIFE is a journey, made better with hydraulics.

LIFE. Not the one we’re living but the game, with all those damn pegs for kids. Mine always fell out of my little plastic play-piece car, which I secretly wished and pretended was a candy-paint, illegally tinted, souped-up lowrider 1960’s Impala. Instead, my first real ride was a white two-door manual 1984 Jetta, with purple tinted windows (only one opened, and all were peeling), a gas cap that whistled loudly on hot days (and, it seemed, especially when stopped at a stoplight next to cars with cute boys), and black vinyl seats I had to peel myself off in the summer every time I got out of that no-AC death trap. I later sold it – for all of $800 – to a kid from Española, New Mexico who very excitedly told me he was going to paint it, possibly with an image of the Virgin Mary, and then “slahm iiit and put rihms on iiit...!”

I think I cried. It was like I’d married off my first-born daughter to the perfect man.

The games people play. And the people those games play right back.

I'm an illogical, often irrational nut in real-life, but somehow I'm pretty decent at games of strategy and planning, like Battleship, Mastermind. Twister. Chutes and Ladders, too. Actually, I don't know about that last one, because I always believed you could and should run UP slides instead, which I think flat-out contradicts the rules of that game. I did it all the time anyway on the playground as a kid because it was more fun than going down those thick plastic slides that pumped your hair full of static and shocked the crap out of you the whole way down. What a dirty trick.

Capes, on the other hand, are one-size fits all.

I like my name. It's unique. I can 100% guarantee with little to no actual research or scientific fact, just general assumption, that no one in the world has my exact combination of First and Last-Last name. And in spite of the fact that my name caused momentary sadness as a kid when I would look for and never find a keychain or mug or other such pointless token of my existence to have my first name exactly as I spell it, or that the combination of names proved obnoxiously long when filling out scantron sheets for exams and I was still bubbling in the double Rs and double Zs of my double surname, while everyone else was well into the test, I feel I've grown to truly appreciate the cocktail. I do sometimes think my parents totally missed an amazing opportunity in not naming me Batman, though. I'd be famous, by now.

Surfing pre-school's wave on a cot.

I won the Bunny Hop in pre-school. I even got a t-shirt to commemorate my victory. The Bunny Hop involved an entire room of three year olds jumping around to music. Kid who hopped the longest was champ. Our teachers probably wanted to tire us the crap out so we'd nap. I don't think I had a clue as to their motives, I just wanted to get my feet a few centimeters off the ground. Repeatedly. That's probably about as far as I considered the purpose of the exercise. But boy, did I hop. On toes even. And hopped. Hopped all around that room and didn't stop until all the other kids collapsed in exhaustion and envy and then I kept right on hopping. I think my teachers finally had to tell me to stop with all the hopping and just nap already. I have yet to find where to apply this hopping skill in my adulthood. Went ahead and put it on my resume though.

Intro. Unrelated: this whole blog will not be aquatically-themed. This post is coincidental.

No one over the age of five should own a fish. WHAT do they do? If they brought you the paper, or taught you how to swim in and out of tiny castles, then I could see their value. Otherwise, it's the most unfulfilling human/pet relationship ever. If I owned one people would be like Why is there a dead fish next to a tennis ball?, and I'd have to be like, F*cker didn't know how to play catch.