Asking Women Out (No, not me)

Monday night I had excellent seats (front row just past 3rd base) to the Tigers game at Comerica Park (or as I prefer to call it, Tigers Stadium) where they presumably took on the Minnesota Twins. The good news is that although they had something like 17 hits we only allowed them to score twice. The bad news is that we only scored once (and we will not discuss the number of men left on base in scoring position).

The story here isn't the game itself, it's about me trying to get my friend Jim to talk to a girl. A girl in whom he was greatly interested, I wanted to clarify that so nobody thought I was making choices for him. Jim is the guy who left the note on my car way back in the spring when I was home with the shingles. Anyway, Jim took off at one point to use the facilities, buy another beer and have a cigarette and when he got back he said that he saw a really cute girl in whom he was interested. Turns out that she was sitting one section over, one row back and on the end, so I could check her out – he wasn't sure if she was 21 or not and we both agreed that picking up jailbait is not a smart thing. The problem was that the game was in the other direction so I had trouble seeing her face. Eventually we got Glen involved and he said she was definitely at least 21, so one hurdle over!

Next hurdle was getting Jim to talk to her. She was with a friend, so that's difficult, but the friend disappeared for a long while and I kept nagging Jim to go over and talk to her. He would pretend he was going to stand up but he was being wussman that night. The friend comes back and I smack Jim upside the head for missing a golden opportunity. I then noticed that the seats directly in front of Cute Girl and Her Friend were empty. I suggested that he go and sit in those seats and occasionally turn around to comment and talk, whatever. Yeah, he didn't listen to me and we see that two other guys (older) were sitting in front of the two girls and chatting away. I smacked him again. ;-)

Top of the ninth and I look over and see movement which means to me they're getting ready to leave. I push Jim to get a move on and catch her before she leaves, because then all he'll have is regret that he didn't do anything about it. He hesitates a few times and then finally takes off. Glen and I watch him all the way up and he kept looking back and I said, "Go!" He went and caught up with her and it ends up that she has a boyfriend, but at least now, Jim's not wondering "what if." And I was proud of him for talking to a stranger. I did give him one tip: If you see two women together and you're only interested in one of them, NEVER approach the friend and ask about The One when The One disappears to do whatever. It's rude and mean and terribly demeaning to the friend whom you approached first and perhaps got her hopes up a little bit that you were actually interested in HER. I say this from more experience than you could possibly imagine. I reached the point that when the guy would say, "Soooo, who's your cute friend?", I would turn away from him and say, "She's my sister and you can talk her when she gets back." And then I would pointedly ignore him. It's RUDE, men! RUDE!!!!!

And yes, I understand that it's just as hard for men to approach women as it is for women to approach men, blah blah blah, but it doesn't change the fact that in this society it is more acceptable for the man to approach a woman in whom he's interested than the other way around. And that makes a big difference. Although I'm not dissing Jim at all on that. I was very proud of him for going for it and he didn't seem to lose any self-esteem over it. He just accepted it and the next time it should be easier, right?