That Girl and Mr. Text
July 15, 2010 
9 Comments
Recently I had a rather humiliating experience while trying to get to know a new guy via text. I met Mr. Text through a mutual friend after a super fun night of dancing to the B-Radicals. Since he was cute, a great dancer and asked for my number I gave it to him, something I’ve learned to rarely do.
Throughout the following week we exchanged witty texts and attempted to meet up multiple times without any success. Saturday night I headed downtown to hear the Longnecks, one of Spokane’s best and only blues/funk bands, knowing all too well that Mr. Text would probably be there. When he showed up, I should have just gone right up and said hello, but like a coward I shied away hoping that he would approach me. I strategically placed myself in his visual path so we would “bump in to one another” but he seemed to look right through me every time. Finally I got fed up and confronted him with “Hello.” He said “Hi” back but nothing seemed to click.
I had been communicating with this guy for a week and a half and was getting nothing. Did I have something on my face? I started to panic and turned to introduce myself to his friend. After introductions were made Mr. Text turns around, takes a good look at me and responds, “Oh you’re that girl?!”
Here I had fought a frustrating battle with the T9 function on my phone, sending off my most witty texts to this guy for a week! I even lowered my standards of communication to include the pathetic winking smiley face. Someone shoot me please. After this experience I’ve decided that in our already technology saturated world, my love life is one arena that could remain devoid of most technology. To all my fellow Spokane singles out there, do yourself a favor and muster up the courage to spend some actual face time with the people you’re interested in. I’d be willing to bet you’ll get far less “that girl” responses this way!
About the Author
Finally someone posted something after 3 weeks.
Since this is an election of heroes and villains more so than any other election in recent memory I find it negligent of the Spovangilist posting nothing political …
Has the Spovangilist jumped the shark?
Well that aside, Here is some advice for the love starved girl who wrote of the dating misstep,
The boy you were texting all week got freaked out by all the attention you dumped on him.
Think about it;
You meet a girl and get her number and she spends all week texting cute, clever notes to you. Can you spell d e s p e r a t e on your cell phone?
You two are not dating yet you texted this guy all week…like a girl friend or wife. You came across as clingy and anxious…
What he is thinking is if she is this clingy now, what will she be like if we actually start to go out? Smothering?
You are like a little kid fishing that yanks on the poll because the float just bobed for a second…
Next time (this guy is now gone for now) employ some patients and finesse. Save the cute texting after you have been dating for a while.
Keep the mystery and the challenge alive. Something that is worth working for is more valued, at least to a psychologically mature male…
There are other fish in the sea kiddo….
What a pain in the ass!
I’m struck by the ways in which we can be oblivious to each other. Electronic tools — social media — can be wonderful ways to enhance a relationship or to work out particulars, but they’re usually untrustworthy in terms of creating relationship. Not always, just usually.
One of the things I learned a while back when working with learning communities separated by distance and difference was that somethings — like getting clarify of purpose and building trust — really required the “band-width” of being face-to-face.
Unfortunately, too often, we waste the opportunity of being together face-to-face with things that either could be done at a distance or that are banal and come mostly out of our fears and/or loneliness.
Cheers, Bob
When my wife and I were dating, we went out of our way to make hand-written notes for each other all the time. It’s not like we ever write-stuff by hand anymore, but it’s nice to have that tangible record of courtship to look at years later.
(I guess on a darker note, if the breakup is bad, you have something that will burn quite nicely on your average charcoal or gas grill.)
Spowind, So glad you missed me. Part of the reason I’ve been gone has been to work on these campaigns. If I had a Paypal account would you pitch in to help keep me more current?
Plus there has been so darned many fun things to do around Spokane this summer. Bike proms, scrapbooking parties, grand openings for design studios, BeGins, tea parties at new clothing boutiques, the list goes on.
I can relate to this. My last relationship started out on line. We seem to connect but I never really got to know her until we had some hard times while we where living together. Then her true self came out and I had to end our relationship.
With my current relationship I have gone out of my way to make it a “face to face” relationship. The work has paid off so far.
Its easy to to text or IM, but you miss out on the aspects of the person you can only get when you are with them.
The other down side I have found is that when you get to know some one at a distance your connection is not close. There is a connection but its not the same as getting to know some one face to face. There is no face to connect to the messages so you will just be “that girl”. I found my self even doing that when I was trying on-line dating sites, I knew the women by a screen name and nothing more.
Getting to know some one via our new communications is easy to do, but most things that are worth doing are hard to do.
I’ll go out on a limb here and say that, in any kind of relationship between humans, face-to-face is optimal. One thing in my life that I’m sad about is that I just don’t get enough time with people I like. Everything is so busy and hectic and yet, you can meet all kinds of interesting people using the internet. Frustrating.
What campaigns besides Bonnie Meager’s? Ms. McKay?
(I saw your mug and moniker on her ad.)
YEAH, the Spovangelist is back!
This is the double edged sword of modern technology. It both connects us and drives us further apart. It gives us access to info we would otherwise not get, but it also depersonalizes us. On the relationship front, I agree that only face to face contact can show if there is a connection (or some other type of personal contact).
Spowind, I agree that there should be more political topics. We have some very interesting local races and there are some good intiatives out there. And I believe Mariah is helping Andy Billig, who’s the best we’re going to get from the Dems right now (though I did not vote for him).
THAT is funny…not because it happened, but because its happened to me too…and its was Ms. Text instead.