For Your Guys Only

I think it’s safe to say that every male with a female companion has been through this nightmare. Girl tries on a new dress or shirt or blouse or some other random covering, steps out in front of you when you’re in the middle of watching a game or sweating over some power tools, and prompts you with the deathly, “How does this look?” question. And you wind up saying the wrong thing and you’re left living in the aftermath for the next hours or days or however long it takes to recover.

Some guys, even the most experienced, may lead to you believe that there’s only one answer to this question. “You look wonderful!” But even this doesn’t work in all situations, especially with females. Keep in mind, your significant other can likely sniff out a lie better than you realize. And if you don’t believe me, watch how females relate to each other. Take any two females and have them spend the day with each other. It doesn’t matter if they’ve been best friends since they were kids, I guarantee they will lie to each other multiple times throughout the day, and both of them know it. But this is how they relate. One says something like, “I’d never eat anything like that,” and the other will filter these words through their built-in BS filter and hear instead, “I try not to eat that kind of food but sometimes I cheat and eat it anyhow.”

As a guy, when a female volleys the question “How does this look?” and you blurt out “You look wonderful!” you better believe she’ll sniff through your lie if you think clothing X is horrendous. So what do you do? How should you react?

The key most guys miss is what the female is doing when they ask the question. She isn’t asking a guy’s opinion. In fact, she could care less what you think. Especially if she’s known you long enough to realize that she doesn’t value your taste in clothes, which in many cases not without cause. What she’s really saying is this: “I want you to validate my opinion.” You can count on your girl already having an opinion about the piece of clothing she’s showing you. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have tried it on in the first place. So all she really wants is for you to support her opinion.

The next thing you’ll ask is, “Well… what is her opinion?” This is the tricky part. Tricky because it requires this: You need to interpret her opinion and do it fast – you only have the second or two between her asking and you answering. This interpretation often comes from the look on her face, they way she asks the question, the way she shows you the clothing. And only sure way to do this within the allotted time is to get to her inside and out. Learn how to read her. Learn how to pick up on the subtleties that are always there in females.

I will admit that the old standby response of “You look wonderful!” does in fact work most of the time. This is because by the time the clothing makes it off the rack and onto your girl’s body, chances are her opinion is positive. But many other times, she may still be unsure of her selection. It’s in these cases that “You look wonderful!” comes across as a bold-face lie and will likely lead to… well, let’s just say bad things. If you instead read her nonverbal signals and verbalize what you are picking up on, your words will undoubtedly ring truer with her. You could say, “You seem unsure about it,” which may prompt her to verbalize her opinion for you. And once she does this, all you have to do is agree with her. Again, she doesn’t want your opinion; only validation of her own.

So in short, get to know your girl. The old adage “Listening is the first step toward loving,” is truer than you may realize.

Mmmm... Ice Cream

Sure, you’ve got you’ve typical ice cream flavors; vanilla, chocolate, tapioca chestnut. And though there are more flavors available than ever before, I've always feel there’s always room for more. Here are a few random flavors from my warped mind:

1. Pizza Ice Cream – You’ve got pizza, you’ve got ice cream. Where can you go wrong?

2. Tea Ice Cream – Coffee ice cream has been readily available for years. Yet tea is by far more popular worldwide. Where’s this flavor?

3. Grape Ice Cream – It’s strange that such a popular fruit (used in jams, jelly, wines, raisins, fresh off the vine) isn’t already in ice cream.

4. Sprite Ice Cream – I don’t mean the grinding up little elf-like creatures for your chilly desert. I mean the using the non-cola.

5. Cranberry Ice Cream – Works for Thanksgiving, why not desert?

6. Jolly Ranger Ice Cream – This, as well most other popular candies, are completely absent from the ice cream selections.

7. Cinnamon Sugar Ice Cream – Why not? It’s tasty just about everywhere else.

8. Pop Tart Ice Cream – Pop Tarts, of course, are artificially flavored to taste like other things. Yet, they also have a taste all their own.

9. Hamburger Ice Cream – Like the pizza flavored, it’s all good. Might as well combine the best of both worlds.

10. Three Musketeers Ice Cream – There’s ice cream with M&M’s and other treats, but none with my favorite candy bar.

Chick-fil-a Junkie

I don’t know about you, but I’ve become a bit of a Chick-fil-a junkie. Though I know it’d surely be the death of me, I have no problem consuming the chickadee goodness week after week. And naturally there’s no other day that I crave for it more than on Sundays, the day the world must live without. Over the years I’ve come across several people who share the same sick cravings and most are convinced that those evil cows inject some sort of addictive substance in the chicken. And I’d agree that there’s something in there. And it’s not the Mickey-D sort of chemicals where you eat and then you’re hungry again a few hours later. It’s more cunning. It’s the type that weans you along week after week that somehow prevents your taste buds from getting tired of it. Such evil should be punished! Banished! Exiled! Well, maybe not exiled. Or banished. Or even punished. I mean, it’s only chicken after all. Besides, I want my Chick-fil-a.

Disney, the Fakest Place on Earth

I often tell people, if you’re looking for a screaming, crying, whining kid, look no further than Disney, the “happiest” place on Earth. I have mixed feelings of Disney. It is undoubtedly a monstrous conglomerate with a facade of happiness that cranks out superficially artist movies and annoyingly poppy music. But really, is that always a bad thing? When searching for a nice, sterile environment that at least feels better than the rest of the world, there’s almost no better place.

Take vacationing, for instance. There are many who travel to tropical resorts to places like Mexico or the Bahamas to enjoy a little slice of paradise. But in reality, when most folks visit these places, they never see the extreme poverty or drug gangs or homelessness or crime of Mexico or the Bahamas. Instead, they stick to the candy-coated resorts that shield them away from the realities of their “paradise”. How is this different than Disney, a place that screen their employees based on physical appearance and place more emphasize on cleanliness than the quality of their food?

And then there’s Disney’s music, something that often hits me like a wasp to the ear. Yet I find myself playing this music for my kids… on purpose. Why? For the same reason that when my kids are in the car, I flip the radio to either local Christian pop station or find something from the 50’s or 60’s. These options are often already filtered and sanitized for my kid’s ears.

And then there’re the gems in Disney productions. There are a lot of Disney movies and other creations that are… well, garbage. Things that are so bad I feel insulted having wasted my time on it. The ending of Lilo and Stitch for one. But through the muck, there are certainly productions that are wonderful. The Fox and the Hound remains one of my favorite movies of all time. And I occasionally catch myself singing “Chim Chimney” on a particularly good day. And in spite of the distaste toward crowds, I’ll openly admit that I have annual passes to the parks that I take my family to enough times that both of my kids could easily be park tour guides.

So, love it or hate it, Disney is Disney, forever earning and spending billions on fake happiness for millions of families and other nuts who need a little sanitized get away. And I would openly admit that I too am one of these nuts.