Girls, what a topic

My goodness. Appease the masses. That is what I am here for.

This is a topic I have held in confusion for a good amount of time. Hitting on, Flirting, brushing up on, etc. All these terms are used to describe it when a person (normally male) is talking to another person (normally a female). It is in this area that I have struggles with.

As I am sure some of you know, I have been homeschooled for my entire life. But that does not really have anything to do with it. Well, it might, but it is more my parents then anything else. Have any of you heard of the book ‘When I kissed dating goodbye’ by Josh Harris? If you have, then you can basically find me in that context. Lets just say that I have not had much contact with girls for most of my life. Now there are the few exceptions that we have. Friendships founded in childhood, friends of our parents, girls that work same ministry we are, and so on. ------ interlude start ------ One of the questions eventually asked when I tell people I homeschooled was ‘how do you get your social interaction?’ And I know there are homeschoolers reading this, I know you will be able to agree with me: Depending on what choices you make, a homeschooler can have as much interaction, if not more, than a public schooler. I am not going to get really deep into it right now, but you can guess what can happen. But what I am getting to is one of my sources of socialization. God blessed me with a good amount of baseball skill, and as such, I have played baseball basically for ten months out the year, ever since I was about 12. As I got older, the discussions among the guys changed from what birthday party did you go to over the weekend, what did you get on that one test, to talk about what type of bong is best used for what amount of weed, and what happened at that party at that girls house. I have always been raised to treat anybody, but especially girls, with the utmost respect. When I hear talk such as that last example going on, I just shake my head and wander to someplace else. Now would that be anti-social? I am sure you could classify it as that, but would that also be moral? To even listen how guys my age and even younger treat girls just gets to me horribly. But this is getting off the subject.

------ interlude end ------ Now due to my very limited time spent with girls my age, I have no idea really how the whole ‘hitting on’ thing goes. When I do spend time with girls my age, they are normally ones that we have known for a good while or at church. And I like to know about people. If I just met somebody, and they are not mean or anything, I have no problem just sitting there as if we had all day just getting to know then better. And this is what I am getting to. Where does the line stop with getting to know somebody and start with flirting or hitting on. Example. My baseball team in MD was away on a tournament. Two of my teammates brought their sisters along. We all went out to a sports pub and started ordering our meals. After we finished, we all went sit down at the looong table. And of course, all the ‘cool’ guys got on one end and the rest on the far end. So of course, I went to the far end, where both the sisters also were. So I just started talking with one of tem for a while, and I found out that she tried to attend church as often as she could, but her parents really did not make it a point to do so. Church. I can talk about that. So I made conversation with her, just talking about random things throughout the night. So when we got back to the dorms, one of my teammates said something like “Man David (what I went by at the time) you sure were practicing your skills tonight, flirting with ____ for long enough.”

? I don’t get it. This teammate was good kid, one that I normally talked to when everybody else was off at hooters for the night. But at what point did that conversation turn from just trying to make that girl comfortable and getting to know her to hitting on her and flirting? I guess it is just one of those things that comes from being in public school. I dunno. I have friends that are girls at collage now, and given a choice between talking to a girl or boy, I will probably talk to her. It seems as if a girl is far more willing to make idle chatter, and if she gets somewhat warm to you during that time, and you approach the right subject, you can be talking for quite a while. And I think I can hold up my end of the conversation well enough, which sometimes seems unusual for a guy. Hey, even writing about this topic for everybody to see would seem unusual, by I guess I have never normal.

I hope this blog has given you some glimpse into the way my mind works, and if you are totally freaked out about it, then go ahead and do that. I just feel as if I have had to get this out for a while now. If you actually read all the way down here, congratulations, and I hope you leave a comment, because this is a topic I am sure at least most of you can give an opinion on.

Most assuredly yours,

Matthew