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The Best Turn-Down for a Date I Ever Got, and What I Learned From Itby Gary North Recently by Gary North: 'Yes, Virginia, There Really Is a Free Lunch'
First, the basics. For 98% of boys, aged 11 or 12 until marriage, here is reality. Second, there was this girl. . . . There always is. She was a 10. I know what you're thinking. "Memories of an enthusiastic male who had stars in his eyes." Quite true. But she really was a 10. I saw her at my 50th high school reunion. She is now an 8. I don't mean an 8 when compared to all the other 68-year-olds at the reunion. I mean an 8 walking down Sunset Boulevard. You might say a 7. You'd be wrong. But let's not quibble. Say a 7.5.
She was a 10 in 1956, when I first saw her. She was a 15-year-old equivalent of the little red-haired girl. I did not know then that she had been in the movies, danced with Gene Kelly, danced with Fred Astaire, and had gone on the road as a professional dancer. Nobody else did, either. She never talked about it. She still doesn't. She had walked away from it all when her father died. She was all grown up. I wasn't. So, anyway, I didn't drum up enough courage to ask her out for the next three years. I was Charlie Brown. But then, when I was student body president, and she was the elected secretary, I finally asked her to the senior prom. The Big One. Gene Shepherd had not yet written Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories. I did not know what I was doing. I was asking Daphne Bigelow – a nice Daphe Bigelow, a Daphne Bigelow with good sense. Which I lacked. I had been dating another girl for a year. So, Miss 10 told me: "You should ask Susan." Like a ton of bricks, it hit me. Of course I should ask Susan. Susan by then was not going to be asked, because the other guys figured she would go with me. Susan was at least a 7. Girls that high up the scale scare off most guys. They are high-risk, probable turn-downs. Guys play it safe. They are not devotees of "nothing ventured, nothing gained." They fully understand "No pain, no gain" – and they prefer no pain. They settle for "pretty good gain, not as much risk of pain." If they didn't, the human race would be much smaller. Also, hardly anyone would go to the prom. Susan was no Wanda Hickey, but the Wanda Hickeys of the world deserve to go to The Big One, and lesser ones, too.
January 3, 2011 Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible. Copyright © 2011 Gary North
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