Dear Pizza Delivery Guy,

After realizing I own a bathroom scale, I owe you an apology, instead of you owing me 12 garlic knots.

Respect,

The guy that lives at 325 West 26 Street

Prosopagnosia Pt.1

Sometimes I seriously consider whether I suffer from Face Blindness. This was suggested to me after an odd encounter with who I thought was an ex-girlfriend. Walking around my Universities campus, I saw a light haired woman, roughly 5'6" and in a bad mood. I thought to myself, "Hey, isn't that Samantha?" Names have been changed to protect me. There is a reason we aren't dating anymore. Long story short: I let her insanity get between us. Hyperbole, but not really. Anyway, I thought I saw her in the main square but I wasn't sure. Out of sheer bewildered confusion, I ended up staring at her for what must have been 30 seconds. Eventually, her Feminine Extrasensory Creep Detection Signal (also known as FECDS, not found on medicinenet.com) went off and she turned to see me staring at her. She, clearly fazed (less by my smokey blue eyes and more by my stupefied look) resumed her jaunt, quickening her pace, all the while staring back at me with the same confused face I had presented her with a healthy dose of revulsion included. It wasn't her. Shocker. Ordinarily, I would need a good 8 days of hiding in my apartment and walking through scenarios where I could have saved face. But I was so dumfounded by my inability to recognize a face, I forgot all about my routine of wallowing in self pity. What had happened? Well I did a little research. Or rather, I typed words and phrases into the google search bar and the search engine found research by other people.

For those of you who, like myself, don't have an imagination to grasp this situation, please allow me to copy and paste what medicinenet.com told me  Prosopagnosia, otherwise known as Face Blindness, is the neurological condition where an individual has difficulty recognizing or differentiating faces. Usually caused by damage or abnormalities in the Fusiform Gyrus portion of the brain (as highlighted in the image below), this condition can render the individual unable to recognize even the most familiar of faces.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Gray727_fusiform_gyrus.png

Initially, I was a little nervous. What if I can't recognize people? What if it gets worse? Then I realized, this is the excuse of a lifetime! I can ignore anyone I want, all I have to do is start explaining "my condition" to people and learn how to correctly pronounce prosopasno- posrop- prosopagnoti- I'll just go with Face Blindness. That large open world out there is no longer full of people I need to worry about. I'll update you all on how my Adventures in the land of  Proso- Face Blindness go.

Wednesday's Worrier: The Marriage Jar

Some pains in life simply just don't go away. They aren't meant to, at least for a while. This can be a beautiful thing which can humble us and make us see others and the world around us in a kinder light.

And sometimes there is nothing redemptive about it: It just sucks.

To embrace this, I've decided to get creative. I am a single. Yup. Male, college student, graduating soon. So, without fail, when my dating life becomes a conversation topic, the following sentence is uttered in one form or another-

"How is a great guy like you still single?"

1. Yup...don't you just love it?

And it is usually followed by something like

2. "I'm sure there is a girl out there for you somewhere! In fact, let me introduce you to this friend of mine. She's..."

First, On a scale that measures how awful something is, these sentences are on par with an infant vomiting on you while holding it. You can't get mad at them. Their intentions are more than kind, but you are now 'marked' with a bad taste in your mouth.
Second, it doesn't matter how amazing the female is you are trying to set me up with, the description will be less than flattering (Why is the go-to adjective "she's such a sweet girl"?).

I recently saw a "Swear Jar" in an office. The idea is to clean language by requiring anyone who curses to put a dollar into the jar. The money is then used to throw a party or buy something for everyone in the office. Not a terrible idea right? And it gave me an idea.

I'll start my own marriage jar. Every time the conversation of my unsuccessful dating life and or floundering quest to find someone I want to spend the rest of my life with arrises, I'll put a dollar in my "Marriage Jar". What will I do with the money? I have no idea, but it is going to epic. At least better than my dating life is currently...and there goes the first dollar.