Blond Asians

No matter how often I see it, I will never get accustomed to groups of Asian guys with bleached blond hair. 

First of all, I think that any person with bleached hair can look strange, especially if their eyebrows are still their natural color.  Secondly, as a person whose entire extended family consists of mostly Asian, Hispanic/Latino, or some combination thereof heritage, the blond Asian looks like an alien hybrid of some kind.  Which is really saying something since I myself am a hybrid Asian/Caucasian. 

I understand in an academic sense why someone who might live in a fairly physically homogeneous society might want to break the mold and try new and interesting things with their physical appearance.  In fact, bravo!  You break that mold!  You challenge that stereotype!  Just understand that I’m still going to think you look weird.

I’m back in school for the first time in years (with a ridiculous goal of earning a Master’s degree).  Now that I’m back to student-hood, I have realized that I have not been around large groups of people on a regular basis other than when jammed onto public transit.  Now that I’m back, though, I have noticed a LOT more dark-haired people sporting crazy bright blond hair and naturally darks brows (and not all of them are Asian).  Is this a new college-aged fad?  Is this what some people call “fashion?”  If either is the case, you have no idea how incredibly grateful I am that I have less fashion sense than a demented gerbil.

It isn’t like I am about to be the next guest on What Not To Wear, but come ON, people!  When there is a fad or fashion that is so silly that even I, of all people, notice it?  That’s as sure a sign of insanity if ever I knew one.  So for any of you out there who are mad stylin’ the bleached blond hair with bushy brown/black/dark eyebrows, you have been duly informed of my vitally important opinion on your hare-brained tresses. 

(See what I did there? Hare-brained?  Yeah, you see, it's funny because it's a play on words.)

Rethinking online dating

I’ve had a profile up for a few months now.  At first I was hesitant to try online dating, thinking that setting up a profile was admitting that there wasn’t any other way for me to meet someone.  After all, I’m still young and I’d like to think that I’m not terrible to look at.  I tend to make people laugh, although it’s not by using jokes so much as they tend to be amused by how completely oblivious I am. 

My other big concern was what kinds of people I would run into online.  I wasn’t sure what I would see, but I worried that all the guys online would be the stereotypical 30-something living in his mom’s basement who never showers, with no job and no prospects, but could claim success in life because he is the DM for a Dungeons and Dragons game every Sunday.  Although, to be fair, I totally did date a guy who prided himself on his extensive knowledge of D&D and he ran a number of games throughout our two-plus year relationship.  It wouldn’t be all that bad, but I didn’t want to end up with a bunch of creepy guys with no social skills messaging me.

Now that I’ve had time to get used to the online dating thing, I’ve discovered that there are far more guys that irritate me for one reason or another than those that I am attracted to.  I’m really not sure if I’m just being too picky or what.   I mean, people tell me that I should stay true to myself and have some standards, but then I tell people what some of the basics are that I’m looking for and they balk and say I’m asking for too much.

Is it really all that bad to want to see guys put up pictures of themselves smiling?  Or what if I want to ask that they use correct grammar and punctuation?  How about proper use of capitalization?  Once people hear that I’ve totally ignored people just because they write poorly, they give me The Look.  You know what I’m talking about: the expression that says, “You are crazy, but I really don’t know how to tell you without you going berserk.” 

I’m so conflicted.  If they can’t take the time to write a decent profile for themselves that is aimed, theoretically, at their future significant other, what does that mean for the effort that they will put into a relationship?  If they don’t even bother to write correctly, what makes me think that they are going to bother putting in any significant time in a relationship?

I often see the profile pictures of the guys messaging me and think, “Is this it? Is this the best I can do?”  On one hand, I like to think that means that I have some modicum of self-esteem, but I also wonder if I am being too judgmental.  I feel like I’m being reasonable, but I just don’t know.  After all, how can you be objective about your own opinion?

I recognize that I can be incredibly vain sometimes.  However, I also like to think that I can do better than a guy with nothing beyond a high school education and a minimum wage job.  I understand that for some people that can be incredibly fulfilling because it might be exactly what they want to do with their lives.  However, even though they can support themselves now with jobs like that, if they are thinking of the future and what they want, minimum wage really isn’t going to let them do much in the long run.  One of my long-term dreams is to have a house and a dog.  If my significant other is only working a minimum wage job, that won’t really let them contribute much towards that goal.

A lot of the guys who message me seem genuinely nice and like they could be fun to hang out with, but I’m just not attracted to them for one reason or another.  Then I end up second-guessing myself because those are the only guys messaging me.  Maybe my opinion of what I should be looking for is too high.  To use an example from college, I think that I’m about a 6 on a 1-10 scale with 1 being “PLEASE wear a bag over your head” and 10 being “HOLYCRAPYOUAREAGODDESS!”  When I told my friends that I thought that I was around a 6, they said that they agreed.

We later decided that people generally end up with someone around their own number, give or take 1-2.  That means that I could end up with someone who is anywhere from a 4-8.  I think that I’d like to end up with a 7.  That’s typically the kind of guy I end up going for, but I end up getting messaged by guys that I think are more of a 2-3.  They aren’t tragic, exactly, but they also aren’t exactly the kinds of guys I picture girls tripping over themselves for.

Is this typical of everyone’s experience?  Old Man Sharrett has also run into these issues, so it isn’t just on the girl’s side of things.  Perhaps we should stop trying so hard.  Take things less seriously.  Regardless, this probably means that I should take a hiatus from the world of online dating. 

The Neighbors' Housewarming Story

My friend is a great storyteller.  His stories quickly become infamous among our friends and his sarcasm and mine make for a fantastically snarky friendship. He has agreed to write for Serially Singular occasionally so that you all might also experience Story Time With Old Man Sharrett.

Enjoy!
For a long time my parents lived on this little dirt road and our only neighbor was this old man and his wife who had gone to high school with my grandfather. We lived the white trash dream. Our dog ran around everywhere. I wandered the nearby woods with my machete in hand. We burned everything we could get our hands on. Then, for some ungodly reason, people started buying the lots next to us. I remember very clearly the day one of the first new neighbors moved in.

I was wearing my white trash uniform: dirty (formerly) white tennis shoes, paint stained shorts, and a Hard Rock Cafe tank top that was 3 sizes too big for my scrawny high school body. I was in the front lawn breaking up a desk using a maul (a sledgehammer with an axe on one end of the hammer). Several very nice cars drove past and everyone of them slowed down to stare, terrified, at me as I continued to destroy this desk. They all quickly parked across the street and all but ran into the house. They stayed for a while, during which time I finished breaking the desk down into manageable pieces.

They were all just leaving when I had gotten the fire ignited and had a roaring blaze steadily consuming the broken desk. Gravel flew in every direction as they peeled out trying to escape. It was glorious.

Many people ask me why I was burning a desk that afternoon. When they ask this I can only shrug and tell them that was just our way. That, and we really enjoyed burning that crap.

On Nice Guys

I hear my friends, both men and women, complain often about how “nice guys” always get shafted.  While I could get into nitpicky semantics about what qualifies as a nice guy, I will resist for now.  

I have a friend who constantly bemoans the fact that he is always passed over for other guys.  He believes that this is because girls are shallow and don’t want to admit that they want a nice guy who also looks like a movie star. 

Now this friend is not unfortunate looking.  In fact, objectively, I can appreciate how some people would find him rather attractive.  No, this is not a case of me body checking him into the friend zone because I’m afraid of ruining the friendship or anything like that.  I simply am not physically attracted to him. 

Additionally, this friend has a bit of a white knight complex.  Every time one of his friends is in the slightest bit of distress, he wants to ride in to the rescue.  While some girls might be attracted to this, I am not.  I would appreciate having a partner who is willing to bail me out every once in awhile, but I don’t want to be with someone who will take over a situation instead of letting me fight my own battles. 

I think that our friendship works just fine, but I’m not interested in moving into the realm of the romantic.  Yes, part of it is the lack of physical attraction (I’d be the last to deny that I can be painfully superficial), but a larger part of it is that things that I tolerate as a friend would drive me absolutely nuts if I were to date him. 

I’ve turned him down on multiple occasions and have explained what most of my reservations are.  At one point he even pushed me on whether I was turning him down just because he doesn’t look like a supermodel and then refused to believe that there was more to it than that.

So what is it?  I don’t understand what it is that he thinks will change if he keeps pushing.  He laments that I have nice-guy friend-zoned him, but that isn’t the case at all.  Also, why do these so-called "nice guys" think that women even need to justify not going out with them?  Just because someone is a nice guy doesn’t mean that they should feel entitled to having people figure out that they are a diamond in the rough every time the "nice guy" finds them attractive.  That would be like me pining after some hot athlete and expecting them to realize one day that I’m the sexy librarian they’ve always dreamed of.

Should nice guys feel that since they have been so loyal to their female friends that said friends should give them a chance, purely on principle?  Is it like an airplane mileage plan wherein after so many breakup breakfasts and why-am-I-so-alone cocktails with their friend, they earn enough points that they can cash it in for a date? 

I think that a lot of what guys don’t realize is that just being a nice guy isn’t enough.  One of my good friends really captured what I mean: "I'm dating a nice guy, but he's more than just a nice guy.  'Nice guy' is just the base model." 

I guess that to me it boils down to a few things: primarily, what do you have to offer other than being a nice guy?  If you are pursuing someone, consider what it is that they need in a relationship.  I don’t need a white knight.  I need a partner who will tell me when I’m being stupid, wait for me to fall on my face when I inevitably don’t listen to him, and then help pick me up without saying “I told you so” right away.  That trait doesn’t exactly come part and parcel with being a nice guy.

What if a girl wants a guy who can provide financial stability in case they want to be a stay-at-home mom one day?  If you are a nice guy, but don’t have a job, then being nice just won’t cut it.  If a girl wants someone with ambition, the nice guy needs to do more than say, “one day I want to be the CEO of a big company.”  Regardless of their goals, nice guys need to demonstrate that their ambition is more than just a pipe dream.

I mean, really, people.  Not every nice guy deserves to catch every great girl.  Not every girl looking for guys that care about her for her mind instead of her looks are going to get the leading man in a romcom.  BUT!  If my own experience with watching my friends begin new chapters into their happily ever afters is any indicator, those nice guys do end up with great women and those women looking for nice guys find them. 

Rarely have my friends told me that their spouse is the person that they thought they would end up with.  In fact, my best friend turned her now husband down three times before they started dating.  After years of saying that she wanted to marry someone who could also be her best friend, she couldn’t see what was right in front of her until he asked her three times! 

So, nice guys, please stick with it.  Work on making yourself into someone who will be able to provide what your future soul mate will need from you.  Ladies, keep an open mind.  Just because someone isn’t Mr. Hardbody doesn’t mean that they don’t have the capacity to become the person that you want to spend the rest of your life with.