Bedevilled
I habitually check the birthday
reminders so that I can greet the day’s celebrants. I send greetings and they do
not always come in the form of Friendster messages or comments; if I have the
person’s number, I send by SMS.
It was a dark and stormy
night (don’t you just love that line?) when I have sent an SMS birthday
greeting to one of my college acquaintances. I had forgotten then that only a few of my college
acquaintances know of my current number. After all, it is different from
before. I didn’t expect him not to know about it (and he still don’t know about it). So he promptly replied with a question
of who I am. I was tired then, that I went to bed without responding to him.
Big mistake!
As one of my idiosyncrasies,
I spell everything out whenever I send SMS’s (and as you may have noticed, I
don’t write SMS as “text messages”). Call it societal stereotype, but common
perception says this attentiveness to details is feminine. A “real” guy would
“typ lyk dis!!!!!!!”, wouldn’t compose messages in full English, and wouldn’t compose
messages without plugging “astig” or “dudez” or “pare”. The criteria themselves
are fallible, yet people don’t leave room for doubts that some may defy
categorization.
It comes as no surprise that my friend
thinks it was a girl who greeted him. Alas, he has the reputation of eerily pushing
too hard, without much forethought, to be close to a girl; he’s the poster boy
for desperate. Here’s an example from past experiences: a girl we didn’t know of belonged to my group
when our class, along with a few others, attended a mandatory seminar. Despite
not belonging to our group, the guy approached this girl and asked for her
phone number. That he could do it even if he hadn’t spent any time with her is
a proof that his courtship methods are downright bizarre (and lame).
I’ve seen loneliness making
decent people do mad things, and the world couldn’t be lonelier than nowadays in
spite of progress and technology. But though he bears empathy, gee, SLOW the hell DOWN!
Somebody needs to practice restraints by remembering the first step to a
relationship: self-introduction.
I haven’t introduced the
owner of my number, but it’s amazing how he just assumed that it’s from a girl who
showed momentary thoughtfulness on his birthday. And now, I’m subject to his
advances. How? Everyday, operating under a laughable concept of flirtation, he sends
me unabated waves of SMS’s, and they’re making me brainsick!
Gee, just how many quotes do
I need per day? He sends around 3 per morning and 3 per night! Even if I was a
girl, I won’t like this excess! He tries to enlighten me by throwing zillions
of Biblical quotes and so-stilted-I-could-barf Paolo-Coelhoisms. He ingratiates by discharging
“cute” verbal diarrheas and hokey pseudo-jokes. I tried to stay quiet, but the
last straw broke when he sent me a frizzy logo of teddy bears and hearts. Ugh!
Won’t he ever stop?! I haven’t sent him an SMS since his birthday, so where the
hell did he get all this aggression? His messages don’t receive my cursory
glance before I summarily delete them, so he’s really just wasting his money!
It’s so risibly pathetic
that someone can waste countless pesos courting a girl that isn’t even there
(a personified The Man Who Never Was?). If we can learn something from this,
it’s that he needs love.
And, dammit, it’s not coming
from me!
