You wouldn’t know it by looking at me today, but I used to be shy. In middle school, I couldn’t even talk to girls. In high school, I got a little bit better, but was still deathly afraid of rejection. I had a warped sense of romance. I used to read Shakespeare, I loved his sonnets. Required reading for sure, but I thought they were the epitome of romance. My favorite was sonnet 130. To be honest I didn’t remember the number, but through the magic of Google, I just typed in “Shakespeare sonnet breath” and that’s all it took to bring it up. The internet is amazing. This was my paradigm. I thought this was the truest expression of romance.
So instead of asking girls out to a movie or for ice cream, I just kind of stared googly eyed at some unrequited object of my desire, (extremely sexist, I know) Instead of going to dances I spent my time laboriously writing sonnets of my own. A few times I even mustered up enough courage to give them to some girls.
I wouldn’t recommend this.
The empirical evidence suggests that your chances of obtaining a date this way are extremely dismal.
A sonnet is a fourteen line poem written in iambic pentameter. In case you don’t remember, iambic pentameter is a combination of ten unstressed and stressed syllables. It gives the poem a song like rhythm, you know . . .if you actually can read it out loud with self-confidence.
Needles to say, I am not longer a fan of poetry. I fucking despise poetry. I’m strictly prose. I just buy cards like everyone else. I’m not really a fan of them either.
A couple of weeks ago someone pretty special, her name is Kim, gave me a little book entitled I Like You, by Sandol Stoiddard Warburg and illustrated by Jacqueline Chwast.
I can not pronounce either of their names.
It was cute, really cute. I could probably plagiarize the whole thing and it would take up a page, but it was nice and sweet. One of the lines is:
“I like you because
When I tell you something special
You know it’s special
And you remember it
A long long time.”
It’s poetry and I like it. I like it because I like the person that gave it to me. It was much more thoughtful than a card, but what really floored me was the fact that she wrote something underneath the book cover. I unwrapped it like a gift. I’m not going re-write it, because it was special, just for me.
I’m 34, and this is the first time anyone’s ever written anything like this for me. I just felt the need to share that. Sure I’ve received cards, but those are things written by other people. This book was written by someone else, but the little inscription on the inside cover—that was her. That was different. That, among other things, is why I’m in love.
