Talkin' Shit About A Pretty Sunset

"If you're having girl problems I feel bad for you, son. I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one." - Jay Z

Opinions based on experience are worth their salt. Being a smug married guy, it's hard for me to properly weigh in on being single today. So I read dating blogs. Here's a short summary of the modern single's life, clipped from some DC blogs, along with analogies to my experience with appendicitis in 1987.

Games. Here's some advice I found given to a girl who couldn't figure out how to respond to a guy she met: "Never contact him again and let him chase you down. Pick up the phone once every two or three times he calls. Reply to text messages every other time with very short answers. Don’t bother replying to emails. Play the game, and play it hard. If he’s the type of guy that is susceptible to this game ... he’ll ask you out again."

I was 14 when I had my appendix removed. There was little to do in the hospital room for a week, so I played lots of games. My favorite was filling hypodermic needles with water and squirting people as they walked into my room. It was essential to play these games---just like in dating.

Frustrations and Pain. From another DC dating blog: " ... for the last few years I've been stuck in that uncomfortable, queasy stomach getting-to-know-you date phase. It's never the 'we're a comfortable couple' phase. I've never gotten there for whatever reason. I know it exists, I see other people experience it every day. Yet for me, right now it seems like this hypothetical concept."

During my stay, doctors and nurses would push their fingers into my queasy stomach, trying to feel for inflammation. That prolonged state of limbo drove me crazy---just waiting uncomfortably for the freaking operation while people tortured me. It's no coincidence that "waiting" and "dating" rhyme.

Loneliness. From a pink backgrounded blog: "My neighbors, Abby and David, just got engaged and they are so in sync and so in love with each other and it's great. But I look at them and wonder if I would ever find that with someone. Not because there's no one good enough out there, but because I just can't wrap my brain around the idea of being 'one' with another human being."

Holy christ, being in the hospital was lonely. Sure, people visited me, but mainly I just had the TV for company. That's sort of like being single: you sleep alone, wake up alone, come home to no one, cook for yourself and repeat the process innumerable times.

I miss being single like I miss having appendicitis.