July 8th, 2009
As early as the 4th grade, I remember my classmates having boyfriends and girlfriends. For the most part, elementary school relationships were pretty innocent. Couples would hug and hold hands. Then in junior high, these couples discovered what kissing was, and people started bragging about who they got to make out with. Pretty soon, high school started, and the making out escalated into sex. Parents no longer had to chauffeur their kids to the movie theater or to dinner. By this time, teenagers could drive themselves to their desired destination, and hormones were raging.
I guess I was a late bloomer when it comes to relationships. Up until the middle of high school, my love life was pretty much nonexistent. Of course, I still had crushes on boys and daydreamed about being in love. But I was not and am still not ready to give it all up to a guy. Call me a prude, but I just believe that sex should always wait until a person is both physically and emotionally ready. Read more…
July 2nd, 2009
In a few days, my third month of summer break will officially begin. Sadly, all I have to show for these past couple of months is that I am finally two-thirds of the way finished with my summer reading goal. After reading partway through a few novels, I finally settled on one that didn’t bore me half to death.
Love & Other Recreational Sports by John Dearie is a fiction novel told from the perspective of a thirty-five-year-old single male living alone in Manhattan. This is one of the most entertaining books I’ve read in a while, and to my surprise, it wasn’t totally predictable. This novel is witty, realistic, and frankly, it’s my kind of book.
From the novel, I pulled out several theories that were either reassuring or eye-opening. A few of these theories were ideas I had already come to terms with; the others were new and refreshing. But all of them I agree with, one hundred percent. Read more…
June 26th, 2009
My attention was brought to the subject of kissing diseases when someone (who shall remain unnamed) complained about his mouth ulcer the other day. “This is why you don’t go around kissing people – you might end up with this,” he warned, as he showed me the underside of his bottom lip where an ugly canker sore had been living for over a week. Read more…
June 23rd, 2009
Fictitious Love
In third grade, I voluntarily wrote a persuasive essay begging my mother to buy me the Harry Potter book. Needless to say, I was a big nerd, a real book worm. I could sit on the couch and read for hours upon hours, stopping only to eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. But now, reading has somehow lost its appeal, and I’ve decided that that’s something I want to change. So I decided that I would set a goal to read at least three books this summer. Sure, three doesn’t seem like a lot, but I’m taking baby steps here. Three books means I should finish one book for each month of my summer break. I am now almost two months into break, and so far I have read a grand total of one. A gay romance novel. And a very explicit one, at that.
So I finally forced myself to revisit the library last week and wandered into an adult fiction aisle. As I was browsing the shelves, I realized that every book that I randomly picked up was about love. And so that’s how I ended up with three romance novels sprawled about my house.
First up is a typical love story for the hopeless romantic: boy meets girl, boy immediately falls in love with girl, boy goes to great lengths to win girl over… that’s as far as I’ve gotten so far, but I can already tell that these two lovebirds are going to end up together, happily ever after. Now that’s all fine and dandy except for one thing: it’s not real. I used to buy into all this true love and destiny bullsh*t. Romance fiction authors feed us crap about how we’re going to meet our soulmates on a spontaneous plane ride one day, and we’re going to fall madly in love, and all our problems will cease to exist. I used to eat this stuff up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the thought never crossed my mind that it was all fiction, that there was no knight in shining armor waiting for me to one day buy a plane ticket in the seat right next to his.
Finally I realize why I stopped reading. The only kinds of books I ever really enjoyed reading now nauseate me. They are sickeningly sweet to the point where none of it is believable anymore. Maybe if I was young again and didn’t know what real life was like, I could allow myself to delve into this little fantasy world again. But the truth is, everything that I’ve learned these past couple of years gives me cause to believe that these stories could never possibly be real.
This leads me to my upcoming entry about love and relationships. The people who know me are probably wondering what in the world I know about love. Well, I have news for all of you: you really don’t know me that well, and I know a lot more about love than you think.
In third grade, I voluntarily wrote a persuasive essay begging my mother to buy me the Harry Potter book. Needless to say, I was a big nerd, a real book worm. I could sit on the couch and read for hours upon hours, stopping only to eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. But now, reading has somehow lost its appeal, and I’ve decided that that’s something I want to change. So I decided that I would set a goal to read at least three books this summer. Sure, three doesn’t seem like a lot, but I’m taking baby steps here. Three books means I should finish one book for each month of my summer break. I am now almost two months into break, and so far I have read a grand total of one. A gay romance novel. And a very explicit one, at that.
So I finally forced myself to revisit the library last week and wandered into an adult fiction aisle. As I was browsing the shelves, I realized that every book that I randomly picked up was about love. And that, my friend, is how I ended up with three romance novels sprawled about my house.
First up is a typical love story for the hopeless romantic: boy meets girl, boy immediately falls in love with girl, boy goes to great lengths to win girl over… that’s as far as I’ve gotten so far, but I can already tell that these two lovebirds are going to end up together, happily ever after. Now that’s all fine and dandy except for one thing: it’s not real. I used to buy into all this true love and destiny bullsh*t. Romance fiction authors feed us crap about how we’re going to meet our soulmates on a spontaneous plane ride one day, and we’re going to fall madly in love, and all our problems will cease to exist. I used to eat this stuff up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the thought never crossed my mind that it was all fiction, that there was no knight in shining armor waiting for me to one day buy a plane ticket in the seat right next to his.
Finally I realize why I stopped reading. The only kinds of books I ever really enjoyed now nauseate me. They are sickeningly sweet to the point where none of it is believable anymore. Maybe if I was young again and didn’t know what real life was like, I could allow myself to delve into this little fantasy world again. But the truth is, everything that I’ve learned these past couple of years gives me cause to believe that these stories could never possibly be real.
This leads me to my theory about love and relationships. The people who know me are probably wondering what in the world I know about love. Well, I have news for all of you: you really don’t know me that well, and I know a lot more about love than you think. Read more…
June 22nd, 2009
For those of you who are out of the loop, the show Jon & Kate Plus Eight is a reality show starring a family of ten: a Pennsylvania couple and their adorable set of twins and sextuplets. I was introduced to the show on a fairly recent Spring Break trip to Florida with three of my friends. During early mornings before hitting the pool, we would flip to Jon & Kate Plus Eight after watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
Of course, as luck would have it, as soon as I become addicted to the show, Jon and Kate’s relationship falls apart, and the whole show basically loses its appeal for me. No longer is the show about this lovely family in a small town, it’s about whether or not Jon and Kate are having affairs.
I guess the whole divorce isn’t all that surprising. I mean aside from all the allegations about the couple cheating on each other, I think it was pretty obvious from the show itself that Jon and Kate were bound to separate sooner or later. I know the cameras don’t always show the best in people, but man, this couple did not know how to communicate. Kate was bossy and anal. Jon was totally whipped. I guess after ten years not being able to have his say in things, the guy finally had enough.
What worries me is that this is happening to couples all over the country. It saddens me that a lot of people don’t take marriage as seriously anymore – I mean, why would they if divorce is so easily accessible, right? I know the calculation for the divorce rate is faulty and all that, but for effect, let’s just pretend the divorce rate of America really is fifty percent. Whatever the real number, it’s ridiculous how many marriages end up in divorce these days. How sad it is that this thing that ends marriages could one day become more popular than marriage itself! Who knew that King Henry VIII would start something that would become so widespread?
For those of you who are out of the loop, the show Jon & Kate Plus Eight is a reality show starring a family of ten: a Pennsylvania couple and their adorable set of twins and sextuplets. I was introduced to the show on a fairly recent Spring Break trip to Florida with three of my friends. During early mornings before hitting the pool, we would flip to Jon & Kate Plus Eight after watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
Of course, as luck would have it, as soon as I become addicted to the show, Jon and Kate’s relationship falls apart, and the whole show basically loses its appeal for me. No longer is the show about this lovely family in a small town; it’s about whether or not Jon and Kate are having affairs. Read more…