The 1989 movie When Harry Met Sally spent a lot of time on these three deep, dark secrets about relationships between men and women:
1. Men and women can't be friends. The sex thing always gets in the way.
2. Women love to fake orgasms. Especially in restaurants.
3. There are high- and low-maintenance women. Note: The movie implies at first that you are supposed to want to be the low-maintenance woman, or at least the medium-maintenance woman with a good repair history.
I was pondering secrets #1 and 3 recently, in the context of wondering if perhaps I had bothered my previous cubemate too much. Example: My favorite pen that had fallen apart. This wasn't an especially a fancy pen or even a sentimental favorite received on a special occasion. It was a nice Pilot with dark pink ink - a color that is less threatening than red if you have to proofread someone else's work.
I asked the nice guy in the cube next to me if he was good at fixing things such as this. He took a look, saw my sad face, and said, "I'll give it a try." After a few minutes' fiddling, my pen was back in business. I profusely thanked my cubemate and then we both went back to work.
About an hour later, I became bored and decided that I hadn't played KnockOver with my cubemate in a while. KnockOver is when he puts unbreakable things on his desk, and I engineer various hooks, probes, and sticks-like devices to knock over just one thing on his desk. He had put one of those stupid "Hi! I'm a stress relieving object from a random consulting company!" objects in plain sight. Game on!
But later that same day, I wondered how much time I spend bothering this poor man. This is the list of stuff with which I have kindly asked his assistance in the past month:
1. Untangle the wildly snarled chain of my pendant necklace. I didn’t have time to put it on at home and just shoved into my pocket.
2. Tell me whether my hair looked better this day or the day before.
3. Debate why there isn’t a phrase for “good afternoon” in his home language. Hey, I'm trying to learn some of his home language for our next trip to India, and "good afternoon" seems to be suspiciously missing if you ask me. Why don't they care if their friends and neighbors are having a good afternoon? The people who speak this language place a VERY high value on manners and etiquette.
4. Pick up cheap tea bags for me at the cafeteria because the 'fancy' Tazo ones tasted like grass clippings and made me gag.
5. Loan me $20 when I forgot my wallet.
6. Tell me whether a particular new hairstyle I attempted should ever be repeated outside my home.
7. Lend me various plastic forks, spoons, knives, salt and pepper packets, and stirring sticks.
8. Tell me that the resulting swelling from my wisdom teeth extraction actually makes me look younger.
9. Fix any number of highly stupid things I’ve done to my computer by accident (such as making my Start bar disappear forever) that I was too embarrassed to call the Help Desk about. I mean, I don't want to get a reputation for being one of those annoyingly high-maintenance customers does ridiculous stuff to ther computer every day... even if that might be true.
10. "So I am trying this new makeup thing that is supposed to cover up dark circles better. Do I look any better rested today [this was during a 2 week insomnia marathon]?"
I'm going to blame some of this on my cubemate. I would never normally pester a male (or female) cubemate about most of this stuff. He had cheerfully offered feedback - thoughtful feedback - instead of some guys, who will just scream, "This is a TRAP!" and run. No, this guy would say, "That is such a pretty outfit. I think it might look really good with the hairdo you had last week when your hair was all straight and you wore one of those headband things." And yes, he's straight as an arrow, and newly married.
I shared this list with my husband. He immediately said, "That guy has my sympathy. Now he knows what it is like to be married to you!"
