New Old Maid to Add to the Deck

Seriously, I remember the old maid in the deck looking a little something like Mrs. Crumplebottom (Sims2 players know who I mean). But for some reason, despite a life expectancy nowadays that would make us octogenarians before the reaper comes for us, being single in your 40s (in some cases, your 30s, sheesh) automatically puts you in the Old Maid category.

What the unholy shit?

I really don’t care for Jennifer Aniston. I’m not very impressed by her acting, and I do agree that she’s kind of boring. Interviews with her are so generic and lame that it makes me wonder if the entire thing isn’t 100% scripted. But for real, independent and filthy rich, living a life filled with extravagance, Aniston seems to have it made, in my opinion. Apparently, there’s some formula that women are supposed to follow to have a happy life, and by not being married or having children, Aniston is freaking everyone out by not conforming. Instead of furnishing a nursery, she dropped 21 mil on and 8,500 square foot mansion (with a vineyard), and that is just unacceptable!

I once read an article about her online, where one of the commentors said, “I’m tired of hearing about this woman and her mediocre career. Write about her when she does something worthwhile, like get married or have kids.”  Because, you know, the only worthwhile thing a woman can do with her life is get married and have kids. Nothing at all worthwhile about being a movie and TV star and having your own production company.

Aniston allegedly turned down Justin Theroux’s (who, to this day, I only know as the Irish mob guy Seamus from Charlie’s Angels 2. Oh, and I just realized that he wrote the screenplay to Iron Man 2) proposal because she felt that he did it under pressure, that it wasn’t legit. And everyone gave her shit for it! Wouldn’t we rather her be engaged to someone who proposed in an actual romantic moment (even if it’s just romantic for them) than popping the question as a knee-jerk reaction?

The answer is probably no. Much the same way everyone asks the single woman “What was wrong with him?” when she breaks it off with a guy after a short time. Unless he did something explicitly “wrong,” the rest of the world can’t even imagine why a woman would choose to be single over being with a man that she had no feelings for. I personally run into this with every one of my friends.

Let’s say I have a date with… Pete (I’ve forgotten his name by now). He’s a super nice guy, but incredibly, amazingly dull. And a little socially backward. Not even awkward, but backward. Typical expressions and phrases were lost on him. For example:
I was telling him about a recent wedding I was going to be in that was subsequently cancelled, which is what left me available to have lunch with him that day. The wedding fell apart because there was so much fighting between the bride and groom over lack of organization, one of the major sources of disorganization was because “there were twenty people standing up” in it. Pete asked why there were so many people standing up, and I said I had no idea, but I thought the couple was in love with the idea of a big flashy wedding because they weren’t really that in love with each other. Pete looked confused for a second, then said, “So twenty people were planning to object to the wedding because they don’t think the couple is in love?”  At this point, it was my turn to be confused. First off, they don’t even do that objection part in most weddings anymore. It took me a few more minutes to realize that he thought ‘standing up’ at a wedding mean objecting to it, not being in the wedding party. When I explained what I meant, he told me that he had never heard that expression before.

I gave it a second lunch… and it was more of the same. He has no idea what movies were out. In and of itself, this is not a big deal – a lot of people don’t know what movies are out at any given time. However in this case, he had to have lived under a rock. I don’t remember right now which movie it was, but it was the equivalent of the Avengers marketing earlier this year or… Magic Mike. Or the Twilight Saga movies. I’m talking huge marketing campaigns that you couldn’t go anywhere without knowing about. The way Twilight: Eclipse was doing marketin around Eclipse gum, or Dr. Pepper featured Avenger characters. There was no way, short of living underground in some capacity with absolutely zero social or media interaction, that you couldn’t know that this particular movie was out. I have a vague memory that it was Sex & the City, so let’s just pretend that it was. The conversation was basically him asking me what I was doing the rest of the day (I don’t know if it was simple curiosity or if he was trying to extend the date), and my reply was, “I’m going with some friends to dinner and then to Sex & the City.”

He asked me what that was.

Pete didn’t know what Sex & the City was. Which had to mean he had either never ever turned on a TV, never gone to the grocery store and saw magazines in the checkout aisle.  Between this and the wedding expression, I had to wonder if he had any social interaction with any human other than his mother, ever.

So when I declined his invitation for a third lunch (and he was all about lunches. No dinners, just lunches), I had at least five people ask me what the problem was, and tell me that I would never find anyone if I kept being so picky. In short, it was somehow my fault that I wasn’t interested in this guy. The very fact that I’m writing this demonstrates that I am all about social interaction, so what in any God of any faith’s name would make anyone think I would be happy with someone like this?

I never in my life thought that I would liken myself to Jennifer Aniston, but damn, just because we’re not married or pumping out kids doesn’t mean that we’re not doing anything with our lives.