The Moment is a Masterpiece

Thanks to Plenty Of Fish, and having gotten over my fear of messaging pretty girls (not just the ones I think would have me), I have engaged in several wonderful conversations.  Each time, I am amazed by how dynamic and intelligent they are.  Then it hit me... I'm a raging sexist.

I have to be.  I don't marvel when a dude turns out to be cool, but when a woman does, I'm bowled the hell over.  Delightfully so, but still.  Now, it's no secret that my dealings with the fairer sex have been few and far between throughout my life, and there was The Ex Wife who dominated me for an entire 1/3 of my existence on this earth, so my preconceptions tend to be based far more on a curved prejudice than on experience.

But why be astounded by their awesomeness?  As a guy who places femininity as a whole high upon a gilded pedestal, why not instead be surprised when one turns out to be a psycho?  It's as though my core concept of women is inherently damaged, thereby I'm caught off guard when I talk to a girl who's a sweetheart, rather than expecting her to be so.

I feel like such a dick.  But I'm working on it, I promise.

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Ok, so I've been thinking about this all day and kind of had a revelation.  Turns out I'm not a chauvinist pig after all.  Shaggy always said to me that for someone who has the biggest ego, I have the worst confidence.  I myself have long pondered this paradox, and my realization does a nice job of resolving it.

It's not lack of confidence.  Say some p-y-t has a camera in her hands.  I'll be all over her talking photography, quite confidently.  What holds me back from just simply talking to a woman is fear.  Not the usual fear of rejection, that's too easy.  Besides, rejection itself doesn't really bother me.  Hey, you can't appeal to everybody.  It's this irrational fear that women without that humanizing element (such as the camera) are somehow a step above, god-like, immediately passing negative judgement on imperfect little Andy.

Those two conversations changed all that, and my surprise at their humble sweet human-ness isn't from a place of sexism, it's just straight lack of exposure, lack of experience, and the gullibility to buy a lot of the pop culture image crap.

Now this is going to sound like the biggest "Duh, Andy" I've ever posted on here, but it's one of those things you can know without feeling.  Well today, it really kind of sank in with some context and a whole lotta logic.  Ready? Here goes...

Women are people, just like me.

I know!  Duh, Andy!  It's not like I haven't known this all along, it's just that I've matured to the point where it's finally sunk down to the level of feeling, not just knowing.   I feel it now.  This really forced my eyes to see unfamiliar women not up on some lofty pedestal, but on an equal playing field.  People have been telling me this for most of my teens and all of my adult years, but you can't force it to absorb.  I finally had the proper blend of events to crack my defenses and let it rush down from my head into my heart.  I owe the vast majority to Dark Haired Girl, and how she picked me up when I was down and spent the past five years building me up.

Dazzled by this lightning bolt moment, I immediately started chomping at the bit to go and say hi to people.  And I did.  We're working at a nursing home, and I met the eyes of, smiled, and said hi to every nurse I passed.  Not in an effort to flirt, and it wasn't one of those instances where I was consciously forcing myself to do so.  It just happened.  It flowed naturally from me, and I soared high on the ecstatic feeling that after 32 long years, I'd finally busted through to the other side of one of my life's most debilitating mental brick walls.

I talked to girls, and I wasn't scared. :-)