Diary of a Recovering Idiot

Chapter 27 - Qualities

        

Every day you meet new people with their opinions and attitudes towards the things and people they encounter, but when I met, let's call him Mark, I can honestly say he was a new level of wacky. Believe me when I tell you this guy was so desperate for a wife that every woman he saw he quickly tried to get involved in a relationship with, and I mean every. The thing that made me laugh most, and people it was not funny, was that he looked at a woman he met and talked to for about an hour and professed adamantly that she had qualities. Was he serious? Like I said, sadly yes.

So what does he mean by qualities? Well, believe it or not, he is referring to how trustworthy or honest a woman is and he is convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt this is a good woman he has discovered. He was so far from the truth it was frightening but often nothing could be said to sway him. The thing is that the women he picks up so quickly have one quality in common, they want his money. It is sad how easily he could be tricked into seeing these women as good and wholesome. What is even more frightening is the fact he couldn't seem to understand this is really the way these women operated no matter what you told him.

How did I manage to meet this clueless boy-man? Well, it so happened that I needed to get my computer fixed and was pointed in the direction of this individual. As it turned out more than one problem had to be dealt, and with his continued visits we got into conversations on a personal level. When he expressed interest in me I tried not to laugh in his face because in no uncertain terms would I be getting involved with a wet behind the ears youth. Despite telling him no, furthermore never, this youth remains convinced I would someday be his bride.

As time progressed I became more and more weary of this strange young man because with his every word I question his process of thinking. On one occasion he came to me talking about some young woman he picked up at a bus-stop and how good a person she was. All of this he concluded after a simple car ride of less than thirty minutes. I was downright shocked at how serious he was about every word he said. I had to ask him point-blank if he had lost his mind. How could you after meeting a person an hour say how good they are and state they had "qualities"? I told him exactly the type of person I thought she was but he insisted not this girl, not her. In less than a week all he could do was hold his head in confusion at what he was discovering day by day about this woman. She had qualities all right, all the bad ones.

That was one woman, what about the other one that caused even more drama? The one that he took to his house that pretended she was so exhausted that she fell asleep then couldn't get up in the morning. He had to leave her in his house with his security system off. Then suddenly the good job she supposedly had, she left and also she needed some place to live. His place seemed perfect of course. In the end, he was hard-pressed to get rid of her. After all her major quality was that she was a gold digger and she was of the opinion she had just walked in an untapped mine.

I have never talked to such a naïve, like I said boy-man, with not an ounce of street smarts. One day I put the scenario of his situation to another young man not yet twenty years old and asked him what he thought. His first question was if the young woman didn't have a home if she was so tired she should have gone there in the first place. When it came to the security system he said the man could only be stupid, that when he came back home he shouldn't have even found the house, much less the contents. I was close to rolling on the ground with laughter due to this young man's continuous deadpan answers and I knew my earlier assumption that the other guy was several bricks short of a load, was accurate.

It's true the qualities of a person attract people to each other, but there is no way one can discover the "full measure" of a person in a day far less an hour. To really get to know someone takes time and even then you may discover something that shocks you to such an extent you go racing in the opposite direction. I thought I knew my husband but what he did felt like a bullet to the heart, so in comparison someone who you just met could be much worst.

Finding that right someone takes time but this man's problem was a result of his deep desperation. Running around like a headless chicken was getting him nowhere and led to the women he was picking up, who threw his life into a free fall of chaos.

Unlike him, I wasn't desperate for a husband and can truly say I'm enjoying my newfound freedom. With every day that goes by, I'm learning more and more about how to read people and how to react to the various things I encounter. It's proving to be an interesting learning curve but most of the time that is what life is all about, looking, listening and learning. Sadly this young man missed the memo about that, and if he got it he doesn't know how to read or comprehend.

If I were to actually think of getting back into the whole dating thing for sure I wouldn't be jumping into it without looking carefully. After all, with the number of dubious characters floating around out there, you need to have your guard operating at Defcon 5 or is it 1. I'm not sure how the scale runs but you get that I mean, at the highest level of alertness possible. Even then there is no guarantee you will keep out the wackos.

It is a whole new level of adventure now when you go out there and think about getting into a relationship. You can't keep yourself totally locked awayor you wake up and find yourself an old maid asking how you got there. Then again you can't go in all devil-may-care. Testing the waters and wading slowly in is the order of the day. From there it becomes a process of discovery, like peeling away the layers of a cabbage to get to the heart. This is what we want, to discover the heart of the man or woman we are willing to take the risk on. Qualities are numerous and varied, they could be the truth or an act but the heart of a person is the core of their being and from this, there will be no lie or deception.