How To NOT Pick Up Wimmins

Mojo's recent Hooters anecdote combined with a recent brush-by over at Cosmic Connie's regarding the plethora of ultra-lame How-to-Date materials on the internet reminded me of this anecdote. I didn't want to share it, since it shows a young innocent Mojo at somewhat Less Than Her Best, but honesty is important to Mojo. Especially if it lets her laugh at others.

When I was in college a gazillion years ago I shared a house with various genders. Once when I returned something I had borrowed from a male roommate as I left the item on his bed I couldn't help but notice (Mojo is NOT snoopy, but she has the sometimes unfortunate obsession to read every word she is exposed to in the environment she finds herself in) one of the books on his nightstand was entitled "How to Pick Up Girls".

I just left his room with the book untouched, being the saintlike creature that Mojo is, but when I (rather gigglingly, I admit to my now-somewhat-more-adult shame) eventually told one of my female housemates it turns out she had a remarkably different view of people's privacy. Meaning, she just shrieked "Oh, we HAVE to READ THAT BOOK!" and she ran up and brought it down and started following me around the house reading it aloud while I kept shrieking "No, no, put it back! Before we get caught!" (Yes, Mojo is a coward. What, you're just FIGURING THAT PART OUT?) We were both journalists and editors-in-training, so you can imagine this poorly written and edited tome got pretty badly trashed on a variety of levels.

I will spare you the details of young bubbly late-teens early-twentysomethings giggling about Stuff, although I am afraid it may be too late for some of you. My roommate's dramatic interpretations of the text were especially funny, but I've blocked most of it out of my brain except for the very loud proclamation "TELL HER SHE'S BEAUTIFUL!", since she laughed so very hard over THAT one. She repeated it over and over again until it became a running gag among ourselves. I can't count the number of dull events made a lot more cheerier by one of us suddenly turning to the other and muttering the hopelessly non sequitur "Tell her she's beautiful!" in a sort of idiotic authoritative voice. Whereupon we would start laughing anew.

I felt bad for the guy, since he was pleasant and charming and yet somehow felt the need to waste money on such stuff. (We were laughing at the lame-ass BOOK, mind you, NOT him--HE was a very nice person.) I have always suspected that all of the dating stuff out there is probably more of the same: "TELL HER SHE'S BEAUTIFUL!" But I haven't ever bothered to research it to decide if indeed this is true, so I might be TOTALLY WRONG. But given the tenor of the various screaming ads out there on How to Pick Up the Wimmens, I'm guessing the technology really hasn't progressed all that much beyond that.

My roommate at the time, I gotta say, *WAS* downright beautiful; I mean model-like GORGEOUS. (Mojo has LONG reconciled herself to the role as being "the funny one".) She used to work as a waitress in a swanky restaurant in a swanky section of the city and she was always getting hit on by guys. She was also very funny (luckily for her funny enough that Mojo didn't mind her honing in on her territory) and her descriptions of these poor besotted fools trying to pick her up were priceless. One tried to impress her, for example, by saying he was related to the Kennedys (her response to that was "Really? Well, I understand NOW why people keep trying to SHOOT them." See? I TOLD you she was funny. This apparently made the poor guy Really Really Mad, but I digress).

I think my all-time favorite Lie To Impress the Pretty Waitress was the poor schmoe who tried to impress her by claiming He Invented the Spork. Now, it doesn't take a jeenyus like Mojo to notice this is not only an out-and-out LIE, but such a BAD, OBVIOUS lie is doesn't say much about the liar's opinion of his victim, huh? I mean, we were using sporks in freakin' ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, idiot! Plus, as I have recently noted, if you're gonna LIE, why not lie about something COOL? Like--I dunno--HARLEYS? Or BLACKHAWKS? Or BOWLING BALLS, fer heaven's sake! What's the POINT in LYING if you're just going to look DORKIER?

Every once in a while, to this day, I am tempted to add "inventor of the Spork" to my résumé. Because it has made SUCH an impression upon me, even hearing it second hand. In fact, your assignment this weekend is to find some social situation in which you can proudly proclaim "You know, *I* invented the SPORK!" And then just WATCH the wimmins fall at your feet.

It will be because they are ROTFLMAO-ing, but hey, take it where you can get it, stud!

Mojo