I’m really hoping you know what feeling I am talking about. You know, the one I feel when I see that boy out on a Saturday night, that boy that I have forever admired from afar. At least, I have thought he is the cutest boy in my PubPol 55 class for the past 8 weeks of the semester.
Once I see him out, the conversation that I was too afraid to start in the classroom seems completely acceptable on a Saturday night.
Embarassingly enough, this feeling has happened to me on multiple occasions in my last two and a half years here, sometimes it was a boy I admired across the classroom and sometimes it was the boy I always saw in Perkins. Actually, I have seen it or experienced it so frequently, it’s as if there’s a procedure the interaction follows.
Step 1: Spotting him out tipsy on a weekend. Check.
Step 2: I explore an internal debate, do I make the first move? The debate ends in yes, it is the 21st century, get it, girl.
Step 3: An approach, an introduction, etc.
Step 4: Whether my night ends in a simple conversation at the bar or a cab ride home together, I’ll leave that up to your imagination. I suppose it depends on the night and the boy… Either way, he should definitely at least know my name and face.
I am hoping for your sakes that you don’t know this procedure as well as I do, however, I am afraid that the screwed up justifications as to why I should make the first move happens to many of us at least once in our Duke career. After all, it is the beauty of the stereotypical Duke social scene. I guess I hope you’re just not as familiar with step 5 as I am…
Step 5: A week or two later, we pass each other on the plaza or maybe he looks up at me as I walk by him in the library. Regardless of the scenario, we definitely make eye contact. As I am about to smile, he snatches up that iPhone and nothing in the world is more important than a game of Scramble with Friends. No verbal or nonverbal recognition is made, huh?
After many of these encounters I decided to take a stand. Naturally, I was sick of being ignored. So for the past month, I’ve been testing you, boys. Every boy that ever took me on a date, rubbed against me on the shooters dance floor, or tried to convince me to go home with him, I have been trying to kill them with kindness. It is incredibly enlightening, and I have received remarkably diverse reactions.
Besides the expected half-hearted waves, I received a direct quote from one victim, “Wow, didn’t see that one coming from you, but then again, you are always doing the unexpected.” I also received feedback from a male friend, who said that one of the boys that I had said hi to “felt thoroughly confused because sometimes I said hi to him and sometimes I did not.” Sounds like he never thought to say hi to me first.
So girls, I dare you to try it– turn that “Why doesn’t he say hi to me?” into “Why shouldn’t I say hi to him?”
Do:
-Seem genuine.
-Use his name when addressing him, this makes him feel more guilty if he does not remember yours, and it makes it harder for him to ignore you in the crowded plaza.
Don’t:
-Accept his ‘let’s get dinner some time.’ remark. No need to relive the past.
-Dump the rest of your life problems on him if he stays long enough to ask how you are.
The reactions you receive from these boys can be entertaining and empowering. Or, better yet, I dare you to have that beginning conversation midday, maybe in class, and break what occasionally seems to be the barrier between day life and night life at Duke. After all, Duke’s 2011 social survey from the Social Relationships Project shows that more than one in every three students are actually in committed relationships. This means that a large chunk of Duke undergrads don’t fall into the procedural steps I explained above on their typical weekend. So experiment with making the first move, but during the day time, girls.
The boy I purposefully took the seat next to every day in history class just happens to be my adoring boyfriend. Is that too much girl power for you, Monday Monday?