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After the words fell from my mouth, I cringed: "I think that maybe I might like you."
Good grief. I've never been much of a smooth talker, but c'mon. Think? Maybe? Might? Talk about hedging your bets. What was wrong with me? I should have told her how I really felt: that I thought she was beautiful and smart and funny and unlike anyone I'd ever met.
I'd been readying myself for this moment for weeks, ever since a friend at church introduced me to the pretty new blonde all the guys were talking about. For the last hour, as we walked along the river that ran past her apartment building, I'd been gathering my nerve, mulling over what I would say — and the best I could come up with was, "I think that maybe I might like you." Ugh. What a clunker. I'd blown it.
Growing up, I had never enjoyed speaking. And not just in the public sense, I mean speaking in general. I had good reason: I was terrible at it.
First of all, I spoke too quickly. Words burst out of my mouth and scurried all over each other like mice fleeing a burning house. I had to repeat myself over and over and over. Slow down, people would tell me, breathe.
I also had problems with enunciation. Words ending in "p" or "t" sounded anything but crisp when they came out of my mouth. How could I finish a word when another one was already barreling through my larynx? These, of course, were mere mechanical issues. The real problem was that I had difficulty thinking of things to talk about. Not with my friends, that was easy. We'd talk about girls, or TV, or girls we'd seen on TV. But talking to girls, well, that wasn't so easy.
When I was 15, the friend of a friend of a cute girl from a nearby town stopped me in the hallway at school. She told me that her friend's friend (the cute girl, bear with me) liked me. So, I rang her up that night and we talked for a half hour. I thought we had a wonderful chat.
The following Friday, I hitched a ride to the cute girl's town. When I entered the arcade where the local kids hung out, I saw her, and the look on her face said it all: she didn't like me anymore. She said it would be best if we were just friends. We never spoke to each other again.
I spent the rest of the night sitting on the ground behind the hardware store, alone in the rain, feeling sorry for myself. The rain was cold and soaked through my jacket but it seemed appropriate. I thought I was the biggest loser who ever lived. What had I said that was so bad?
Eventually, word got around that she thought I was boring. I'd talked a bit too much about my new running shoes. I didn't recall talking about sneakers, but it was possible, I guess. I had been nervous; in truth, I didn't recall much of what I'd said.
Things got better when I went to college. I still wasn't the most confident guy around, but I was comfortable with who I was, or, at least, who I was becoming. So what if I couldn't dazzle girls with pretty talk? I was a nice guy. They would see that.
But my bumbling mouth continued to cloud their vision. One time, I was having coffee with a girl that I liked and the conversation turned to high school hobbies. "I used to run track," she said.
"Oh, you must have been in good shape back then," I replied. I wasn't implying that she wasn't still in good shape. But that's how she took it. She grabbed her coffee and left.
My roommate didn't share my handicap. When he talked to a girl, his voice turned to syrup and he'd coo in her ear and tell her that he'd never felt "this way" about anyone before. If that didn't work, he would share heartbreaking tales of his troubled childhood, even managing to squeeze out a tear or two. It was all show, of course, but a darn good show.
I didn't want to be like him. The voice I spoke to my mother with was good enough for everyone else. I wasn't going to make up stories to get attention. Besides, I knew that someone, someday, would give me a chance to make a second or even third impression. And, who knows, maybe she would see that a good heart is more important than good diction.
Years later, on an unusually warm October evening, during a walk by a river, I had hoped the pretty blonde beside me would be that "someone." But with a typical display of verbal buffoonery, I'd erased that hope. Or so I thought.
She stopped walking and looked up at me. She laughed. It turned out, in spite of my less-than-impressive linguistic skills, she kinda sorta liked me, too. And two years later, she married me.
"I think that maybe I might like you." You know, come to think of it, that's not so bad after all. It's cute, in an awkward sort of way. Maybe I'll give Hallmark a call.
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