By Riggs
Date: 3 January 2001
The Man Who Thought Too Much
There was once a man named Sam. Sam had a group of friends whom he saw relatively infrequently and to whom he was close with only a few. Sam and his friends had varying degrees of success with women as is the tendency with young men. They had streaks of good luck and good fortune when they were in high demand. And more regularly long stretches of poor fortune and celibacy.
To look at, Sam could best be described as unexceptional in most areas. He wasn’t tall or handsome. But neither was he ugly. Sam was a person very much the same as the vast majority of us. Destined to travel through life without gathering much attention either positive or negative.
Sam as I previously mentioned, had varying fortune with girls. However his major concern was that he seemed unable to sustain a relationship for any significant length of time. And what concerned him the most about this was that it was not a situation of his own creation but rather exactly the opposite. Sam invariably was on the receiving end of the breakup and the reason most often given was that he was a really nice guy but his current love interest was not ready to commit to a relationship right at this point in time. Over time Sam became convinced that he was one of the world’s luckless “nice guys”
Who treat women the way they all talk about wanting to be treated but still ends up getting fucked over anyway without being given a reason that wasn’t a half assed lie offered in an attempt to soften the blow.
Sam analyzed his situation endlessly. Each new progression or setback in the cheap paperback that was the story of his love life, was given the third degree. What was happening all the while was that his overactive imagination was destroying him. Information would pass into his head in its pure form. It would then be kicked about and thrashed and pummeled and tugged and dissected until it came out the other end bearing absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to its original form.
As is the case with most of us, a phone call canceling a date at the last moment claiming some unforeseen event, caused a certain degree of pain. But to Sam, such a phone conversation, which may last all of three minutes and ends with the girl apologizing and asking if they can reschedule, will be reworked by his brain until it is a veiled stab with untold layers of subtext.
Sam got a phone call last night. Awfully similar to the one we have just described. The previous day Sam had arranged a date with Jenny. As Sam was preparing to set out to pick her up, the phone rang. It was Jenny apologizing and asking if they could possibly reschedule their date until the weekend as she had forgotten she had to baby-sit he niece. Sam was a little put out and said that he would have to see how his week was and he wasn’t to sure when he would have a free night. The fact that she had suggested Saturday and he was already perfectly aware that he was not doing anything yet seemed irrelevant at the time.
After hanging up the phone Sam sat down and very quickly came to the conclusion that her excuse was extremely flimsy and she had simply blown him off after having received a better offer. Now to most of us a late phone call canceling a date with such an excuse would seem a little suspect. So is Sam a tragic Hamlet who will ruin his days by analyzing every second of his existence and reading things that aren’t there, or is he simply someone too smart to do as so many of us like to do, and that is attempting to believe the lie because it is less painful that confronting the truth when it is right in front of us.
I can’t decide…..
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