Tri, Try Harder

You must excuse me for yet another post about yet another woman, but this 2-part set was already typed up, and I’d hate for it to go to waste.
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Dear follow-up readers,

...continued...

The pretty blonde did not have a ring, just as that gentleman had said. I need to improve my ring-spotting skills.

She came by the next night, and I remembered her name and her prescription not only because she was pretty, but because she was a troublemaker. People with any kind of insurance or attitude or other problems get that label, which means that I spent, or will have to spend extra effort on their prescriptions. Like in public schools, only the problem-children get any attention. Note to pharmacy goers, if you pitch a fuss, the pharmacy will take extra care of your prescriptions just because we want to limit the face-to-face time as much as possible.

Hers was a weird issue which I had figured out overnight using some knowledge and intuition. She was not impressed that I remembered her name; she is probably used to people going out of their way to know her name and fawning at her every desire.

I explained what had happened to her prescription the previous night, and she nodded reassuringly, confirming what I thought had happened.

Blonde 8.5: ‘Yea, I had left because I saw how busy you were. I wanted to give you a break.’

At some point in the will-call to register to signature capture, she glanced at my name tag.

Blonde 9.5: ‘That’s an interesting name. How do you pronounce that?’

I said my name, wishing that she would do the same. My wish was soon granted, but not in the way I had hoped.

Blonde 9.0: ‘Tri, try harder.’ A subtle grin appeared on her rose-colored lips.

‘Wow. I haven’t heard that since high school. You’re bringing back horrible memories.’

Blonde 9.3: ‘Oh, I’m sorry. High school sucked for everybody. But look where you’re at now.’

She continued her coy smile, as pretty girls are wont to do when they’re teasing you. She wasn’t really sorry.

Me: ‘Well actually, it wasn’t all that bad.’

At this point, I should have just reflected her smile and stopped talking. When I get nervous or flustered, I start talking random gibberish to fill the silences, and the stuff that comes out oftentimes isn’t favorable. So to try to impress this girl, I rambled on and on about AP tests and how I became a book hermit to get out of school a little quicker.

It was like a scene out of a chick flick where the nerd thinks that explaining the difference between speed and velocity* would somehow make him devastatingly irresistible to women.

I guess I had made some stupid comparison to jocks, and so to humor me, she said something like, ‘where are they [jocks] now?’ Thinking on that question, they are still probably scoring, but to a lesser extent (the player-hater side of me hopes so). Jocks are like American light beer: they're best when they’re fresh. I hope I’m like premium wine: better with age.

So after I had sufficiently stuffed both my feet in my mouth with talk of my nerd-dom, I ended with my customary, ‘Have a great night!’ The awkwardness was painful to endure on my end, though I’m sure she’s used to it because she has caused many a man to find himself speechless.

One thing I’ve learned in my interaction with people is to never read too much into things. You’re not that important for people to prepare themselves to talk to you. Most people just say the first thing that pops into their mind, and you should just take it at face value.

Was Blonde 9.7 (her score increased from 8.5 to 9.7 for teasing and humoring me) interested in me? No idea, but my bet would be on ‘no’. Face value: she asked how to pronounce my name and made a cutesy jest out of it.

As I grow less socially awkward, I hope I can parlay these very minor indicators of interest into some digits without violating HIPAA.

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*speed is distance per time and is scalar, whereas velocity is displacement per time and is a vector; velocity takes into account the initial and final position of an object. Example: if you made a complete revolution around the earth in an hour, your velocity would be 0 m/s, because your initial and final position would be the same. In contrast, your speed would be a value larger than the number of Charlie Sheen's horizontal tango partners, which is a lot.