MYSELF COLUMN: Get references before meeting strangers
By Erin Peters
Early in the summer, my friend Lyndsey and I happened upon something of a blind date with a graduate student who seemed like an interesting person: he read books and he liked school. What could be better than meeting a guy who knew how to spell not only his own name but the names of his friends?
Tweety, as I now prefer to call him, was excited to meet us when Lyndsey spoke to him on her cell phone about half an hour before we met in a bookstore. He arrived just a little late, apologizing in a mono-toned voice. His appearance and demeanor was that of someone who would be totally unaffected if a car bomb went off behind him.
“I’m really glad to meet you both,” he said, with just a hint of nothing. “I spent all day getting ready to come see you.”
Lyndsey and I looked at each other. Sure, Tweety came dressed in nice clothes, but he was so excited to meet us that he forgot to iron them or comb his hair.
That was fine though, even a little cute.
However, when we walked around the bookstore together, it became apparent that Tweety wasn’t the catch of the day. For one thing, while we both thought it was a major plus that he read books, we didn’t think that it was neat that he had read every book in the store and had a negative comment for every book we said we liked.
This entire time he was putting us down, he was proud of himself. It wasn’t that he was trying to insult us, he was just trying way too hard to impress us by using his superior intellect to dominate the conversation. I guess that no one ever told him to smile or take interest in the people you’re talking to.
Finally, we wandered over to biographies and I saw one about Liberace. I thought to myself, ‘he couldn’t possibly say anything about this.’
So I say to Lyndsey, “Hey, I’m thinking of buying that Liberace book. I’ve always wanted to know more about him.”
And he says, “You know I have a friend who had a dog once who had a strange connection to Liberace.
“Really. It was a small fluffy dog that was purebred and related to a dog that Liberace owned. We liked to call it ‘small fluffy dog related to Liberace.’"
Lyndsey commendably did not laugh in his face. I, on the other hand, asked if I could quote him for future reference. He generously obliged and repeated himself as I wrote his Liberace tale down word for word in my handy notebook.
The moral of the story: you know you’re trying too hard when you claim to know Liberace.