My Own Contradictions

An old "version" of my closet--the clothes have changed but the order has not.

I'm sure I have many, but the one that I'm most acutely aware of after this past weekend is my compulsive need to have a neat and sparkling house--but I absolutely loathe the act of cleaning.  If there were ever something I wish I could afford to pay someone else to do, it would be this.  Despite more than one person comparing me to Monica from "Friends," cleaning does nothing to soothe my soul. 

But I can't NOT do it.  When I see clothes lying all over the floor or dishes piled up in the sink, my left eyelid starts involuntarily twitching.  I see a ring in a bath tub and I start to cringe.  I see water splash on a bathroom mirror and my upper lip begins to curl in disgust.  Clutter of any kind makes me want to grab a trash can and just start chucking things into it.  This makes things a little tense when I have a husband, a toddler, and a dog with a shedding issue.  I volunteered for each of them, and I wouldn't trade them for anything.  It's just a difficult adjustment for me.  I'll admit, there are things I still won't "adjust" on.

Clean rooms make me happy.  Patrick Bateman's apartment described in "American Psycho" makes me happy.  A gift card to The Container Store and two days with nothing to do but re-organize drawers make me happy.  My closet is a beautiful site to behold and I could be blindfolded to pick out a specific article of clothing.  My CDs (the ones I have left over from a world before iTunes) are alphabetized. 

I just don't want to have anything to do with scrubbing toilets, baseboards, mopping, or sanitizing the shower.  I hate that so many things stain a white porcelain sink.  I do, however, go back to that eyeball twitching thing if they're not done.  But once I start, it almost becomes an exercise in futility--I meticulously start doing one thing but while doing it, I notice at least two other things that really need to get done so I put those on my list.  By the time I've finished a basic clean, it's turned into me wearing a HAZMAT suit walking around with Q-Tips and peroxide to get every dirty nook and cranny.  I move furniture to vacuum under it.  I lift up electronics to dust between or under them.  I've vacuumed the dog.  She still runs from the Dyson.  Human beings were not meant to spend their time this way!

And being lenient on or understanding of those who don't put things back in their designated spot immediately after use does not come naturally to me.  It's so blatant that my not-even-22-month-old daughter has gotten in the habit of closing doors all the way that were not.  She brings me shoes that someone has left out.  She puts clothes in the laundry basket that were on the floor.  She's really good at picking up all her blocks and putting them in the bag when I tell her it's time to clean up.  She thinks it's fun to carry around the microfiber dusting tool and clean stuff with it.

I struggle with this insanity week after week.  I dread it each time, but spend far more time than I want to completing the tasks.  And I've been thinking all day that I didn't vacuum over the weekend, so I absolutely have to get it done after work tonight.  It's going to cut into my writing time again, but if I don't do it I'll just be annoyed.  Do they make a pill that fixes this yet?

Fab Friday

What the Camaro looked like before it went all Frankenstein's Monster

I think I might have gotten a little carried away with yesterday's post.  Sad part is I cut it down and left out several details in an effort to make it more blog suitable.  Whoops.

So in an effort to not make any one's brain melt today, I'll try to keep it short. Annnnnnd click "publish."  Ha!  Lame joke, but I couldn't resist.  I'm feeling especially Monty Python-ish today; maybe it's all the John Cleese commercials I see during evening Olympic coverage.

Today's a great day for me.  A personal project of mine is entering the final stages of completion, and after almost 7 years I'll finally have an outcome.  It's a car--yes, I know it's not the typical project for a chick but I think I've established by now I'm far from normal... bordering on insane.  I'm okay with that.  More importantly, it's a 1969 Camaro.  I started out with a 15 year old's dream to turn one into something amazing--looking classically restored on the outside, and a modern monster under the shell.  I'd like to think I was able to somewhat stick to that dream, but the monster side may have been more prominent than I originally intended.  The roll cage, 12 gauges, multiple switches, and 5 point harnesses fitted to stock seats will give it away to someone who knows cars, but oh well.  I'll just have to do my best to act like an F1 team and prevent people from looking/photographing under the body or hood to hide the rest.

Everyone has one of those projects, either personally or professionally, that starts off simply enough and then before you know it, it's barely recognizable as the original idea.  This one is mine.  Looking back over it objectively, it would have been a LOT smarter and cost effective to buy a crate motor, drop it in, and be done with it.  But I held on to my idea of having something unique a little too hard.  If this were a business project, the NPV, IRR, and whatever other financial tool one can think of to evaluate the worth of a project would have been dripping with red ink.  I probably would have shut it down, redirected it, or put it aside to revisit later had it been business.  But emotions got the best of me.

Of course I can say all this because it's not 100% complete and I haven't driven it yet.  I'll probably change my mind once I crank the engine for the first time sitting in the driver's seat.  I've sunk more money into this car than I care to admit, my dad has advanced birthday and Christmas presents for me well into the 22nd century, and at least 5 different shops have had their hands in it.  I'm eternally grateful for their help because without them, it'd be at least another 7 years in the making.  Probably several more.  Time and money are precious commodities, and I couldn't be more humbled that so many have shared theirs to help make this absolutely ridiculous dream a reality.

Today, it rolls out of the last performance shop under its own power and heads to the body shop for paint, glass, and seals.  I'll need a pre-flight checklist to go through every time I start it, but there really will be nothing else like it on the road. 

Every once in a while, one of those ideas that shouldn't happen because it doesn't make sense does happen.  And the end result can force even the biggest skeptics to take a step back and wonder if maybe they should try something crazy, too.

Walking Around Upside Down

Me and my partner taking 5th at Nationals for synchronized trampoline

The Olympics' coverage of women's gymnastics is always bittersweet for me.  I enjoy watching it because it's rarely given decent coverage the other 3 years (seriously--I think they only air it on ESPN "the Ocho") and I spent 11 years within its depths.  I see the mistakes that the average viewers miss, I know the proper names of the tricks, who they were named after, and I know the track record and medal count of many of the gymnasts going back to Nadia Comaneci in the 1976 games.

Gymnastics is a unique sport.  It's highly individual, yet they force a team aspect out of it.  It's incredibly repetitious yet constantly asks you to take huge risks.  It's physically brutal yet the mental aspect can cost you more than a failed joint.  It's full of contradictions, snap judgments, and double standards.  Coaches, gymnasts, and judges can play extremely dirty and the stories about children being put through what many might consider a form of torture are rampant (and often not unfounded).  Countless kids have had genuine breakdowns by the age of 12 under the pressure of competition, leaving the sport for good, cursing the lasting emotional torment it's left in their lives.

And yet, for 11 years I absolutely loved it and was engrossed in the life.  I didn't leave because of an injury, a mental breakdown, or even because of the time I got screwed out of medalling in my first Nationals.  I left because I somehow lost the favor of my coach--he began taking his personal problems out on me and over the course of 6 months or so I began to seriously question whether or not I was prepared to make the personal sacrifices necessary to get to that next level.  Because that next level was to move into that world of the Elite gymnast--where home schooling is the norm to work around 8 hour a day practices, compete not just around the state and country, but around the world, and compete against girls who could sometimes be 6-8 years older than me with the same extra years experience in competitions.

To this day, I often wonder if things would have worked out differently had my coach not found a new "favorite" on the team.  Would I have questioned how much farther I could realistically go?  Would I have started wondering what a "normal" life would be like?  Would I have lost my passion and dedication?  Would I have to wait for that career ending injury and following surgeries to make my decision for me?  I'll never know, but these questions still linger.  Unfinished business.  Possible life altering mistakes that I have lived with for almost 20 years.  No, the questions don't fade with time.

I do know that I put all my medals and ribbons in a shoe box and didn't look at them for a couple years.  They're still in that same shoe box today.  I took down all my posters of other gymnasts I idolized.  I put every reference to the sport out of my room, and I refused to watch it on TV for a while.  The decision to leave tore me up inside, the way very few things in life can do. I defined myself as a gymnast and now suddenly had to start from scratch on figuring out who I was as an individual.  I was 14 years old and didn't know what it was like to not immediately go to the gym almost every day after school.  I had only a handful of friends who weren't gymnasts.  I had very little to relate to my peers with because I was behind on movies, music, cute boys, and even the cool stuff to wear because all of my focus was dedicated to gymnastics or getting good enough grades so I could keep doing gymnastics.

The kind of gymnastics I flourished in wasn't your traditional all around with beam, bars, vault and floor.  Although that's where I started at the age of 3 in a program called Kinder-lites with my first coach Mrs. B.  My parents were looking for an outlet for my energy--and I found sanctuary.  We moved three years later and found a local gym--the head coach had been a former assistant to Bella Karolyi.  I was star struck--a real link to Mary Lou?  How could I not be?  I still remember try outs to make the competitive team at 6 years old.  I made it--and the prize was my very own "belt" with my name in purple, the color of the mighty Titans to which I now belonged.  I cherished it and wore it proudly EVERYWHERE.  I remember various coaches--Cheryl, Ed, Kelly, and Raymond, the team head coach.    One of them was not so nice in their coaching style and made some of those torture rumors ring a little bit too true.  But that coach got results and quickly ruled out the mentally weak--so it's difficult to say it wasn't effective.

I competed, I placed, and I got to a point where I wasn't going to advance anymore in that gym.  So, not being too emotionally attached at that point, I left for a year and started playing soccer.  Turns out I wasn't very good at it.  I didn't have the natural ability like I did in gymnastics.  So fate intervened a little--I attended a soccer friend's birthday party at a gymnastics center.  But this was something called Power Tumbling and sanctioned through the ATTA (American Trampoline and Tumbling Association--and now seems to have become a part of the USGA).  Instead of a square floor, there was a bouncy strip you tumbled all the way down--no dance moves.  Instead of bars and beam, there was a trampoline you did a routine one instead of tested new tricks.  The coaches hosting the party were coaxing me to do some of my old tricks and I was like a duck in water.  They asked me to join their team that day.  How could I refuse?  I was reinvigorated.  I was a mediocre soccer player at best, and I knew I had the chance to be truly great at this.

In the span of two competition seasons, I managed to move from Novice to Advanced.  I was having fun.  I had learned more new tricks in two years than I had in 6 years of all around.  This was where I belonged.  My mom diligently took me to fabulous destinations like Lawton, OK for meets.  And then, in 1992, I qualified for my first Nationals.  There I lived a gymnast's worst nightmare.  I fell on my face in my first event, killing any hopes of being on the podium.  But I still had two more events to go and I had to pull it together for those.  I pulled off my routines, but they weren't good enough to medal... or so I thought.

When I went to check my posted scores to see how I did, my mom noticed the math didn't look right on one of my events.  She pulled out a calculator to double check, and yes, they had shorted me two full points and the correct score would have put me in 2nd place and qualified me to go to the World Competition in that event.  She went to the judges, argued, was denied, argued some more, found the people running the event, argued with them--and all of her effort went in vain.  The math error cost me a medal at my first Nationals and a chance to compete representing Team USA.  I was devastated, angry, and determined to not let it happen again.  I felt cheated--so much more so than I ever did in all around where they would deduct points if your hair got out of place during your floor routine.  Because some idiots couldn't double check their math, I missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime.  It was my equivalent of an Olympics and I'd been robbed.  Now I'd have to wait two years for a chance to make Worlds again.

1993 led me back to Nationals and my first international stage, the Indo Pacific Games.  But that's also the season where it fell apart.  My coach at the time, Chad, started having relationship problems with his girlfriend, pretty serious financial issues (the gym even closed a couple years later), and came to practice frequently taking his frustrations out on the team.  My teammates were no longer my best friends thanks to various changing social structures from joining the world of teen angst and what I can only assume self preservation to stay out of Chad's cross hairs.  If the negative focus was on me, then it wasn't on them.  From all sides, I was an outsider trying to claw my way back in while trying to maintain my focus on my events and routines.  It was exhausting.  I cried after going to bed many nights--I didn't want anyone to see or hear me.  I started dreading going to practice because I knew I'd get yelled at, ignored, or even ridiculed sometimes outright, with the coach joining in.

Somehow I managed to fight through it to end up finishing 5th in one event and 9th in another in Nationals--and 7th overall in one event in the Games.  I was, by definition, one of the top gymnasts in the country, part of Team USA, and the thought of going through all that another year made me physically sick.  Surprising both of my parents, I told them during the off season I wanted out.  They asked me to think about it, asked if I wanted to find a new gym, but I told them I had been miserable for months and that I didn't love it anymore.
Reluctantly, they helped me cut all ties with Chad, the gym, and they put up with my senseless drama about not knowing what to be for a while.  My mom convinced me to go through the certification to become a judge--I had to have been one of the youngest judges ever, but they allowed it because of my years of experience.  I hated it.  If I wasn't out there competing, it just felt wrong to be there at all.  Plus, seeing how subjective other judges were and how open they were about it only made me more angry about my years of being on the other side, wondering if I was being purposefully kept off the podium.

So what did I get to take away from all this once it was all said and done?  I avoided any massive, life altering injuries, which I still consider myself lucky for--it was very common to compete hurt and nothing I ever did turned into something serious.  I came away with one of the biggest competitive drives that still influences me greatly today.  I have a "never quit" attitude--which has helped me push through some tough times and made me better, but I've also stayed a part of things far too long, thinking I'm obligated to finish it simply because I started it.  I have yet to be put in a situation that I've felt was more stressful than competing on the world stage--so I'm either in massive denial or I handle stress really well.  There's good and bad that carry forward--same for the memories when I look back.

Now I'm starting to get asked if I'll get my daughter into gymnastics.  I want to let her try because, honestly, she does show some aptitude for it already.  But I'm not sure I want to let her get as involved as I did.  The one simple reason is that I still can't answer that fundamental question, "Was it all worth it?"

Way to Go!

So I started this thing and posted diligently... and almost immediately took a hiatus for a vacation.  That shows true dedication, right?  And now I'm completely distracted each night by the Olympics.  Who doesn't love watching sports you never pay attention to but once every 4 years?  Sure, I may cheer for *insert non US citizen pro athlete here* on a daily basis, but this is my chance to call them dirty foreign scum, beat my chest for no reason, and chant USA! over and over again.  I can almost hear the eagle cries in the background now.

But I digress. 

The point of this post is to get back in the swing of things and not falter so quickly on this whole writing idea.  I need to do a slight reset before I dive back in (sports pun!).  After reading a couple of the ones I posted, and a lot of what I've been writing and not posting is, unfortunately, quite negative and far too angry for what I'm trying to accomplish.  While it's honest, I don't need to let myself become this snide, bitter bitch on wheels with only mean things to say.  I'm much more capable than that, and I need to do a better job of showing it.  Plus, writing angry only makes me more angry and the whole point of writing is to do something I enjoy and escape from the things in life I can't change but irritate me so.

All it took was a week without a computer, a drop of about 20 degrees in average high temperatures, amazing beaches, and watching my daughter play on said beaches to gain a little perspective.  We'll see how long it lasts.  But for now, I'm working on re-editing a few things, coming up with some new material (that hopefully hasn't reached dead horse status yet), and entering my first short story competition (hopefully I get it finished in time).

Fear not, my almost dozen readers!  I shall carry forth into the fray and bring wit, attitude, and quirk back into your reading lives!  And yes, there will probably be an entire post on gymnastics--even though it's been almost 20 years now, it still took up a major part of my life and influenced the person I've become in SO many ways.  I might even throw out a few hot sports opinions on some of the "famous" gymnasts from years past I had various interactions with. 

One More Take on Marissa Mayer

Eve at just over 12 months

As if it hasn't been covered to death already, here's one more view on Yahoo! hiring Marissa Mayer knowing she is 6 months pregnant as their latest CEO. To be honest, I didn't know much about her when she was first announced and I didn't realize she was pregnant until the next day when the news stories flashed EVERYWHERE. It got old fast, but at the same time it is a corporate first and widely unexpected.  It struck a nerve with me personally, as a relatively new mom struggling daily with finding some kind of balance with climbing the corporate ladder and feeling like I'm not missing too much of my daughter's life.

Eve is 21 months old right now.  She's nothing short of awesome.  The worst part of my day is dropping her off at daycare around 6:45 in the morning.  Tears have surfaced on more than one occasion.  And I can't even begin to describe the gut wrenching pain of having to tell your child you have to go when they're crying and holding on to you not wanting you to leave.  The best part of my day is picking her up between 5:30 and 6 depending on traffic.  She's always so happy to see me--flashing a gigantic smile and running over to hug my legs and ask me to pick her up.  We've gotten into a sort of rhythm, but it took a long while to get to this point.  And I'm not exactly thrilled she spends a majority of her waking hours with someone other than me.

I took three months off from work when she was born.  I laid out a detailed plan on how I would work from home, slowly at first, but then ramp up so that by the second month I'd be doing my entire job from home with a few exceptions.  I thought I'd be able to get it down so fast, that while yes it would be an adjustment, it wouldn't completely turn my life upside down, and I wouldn't lose too much ground professionally.

Wow, was I wrong.  I couldn't believe how much I'd underestimated motherhood would impact my professional life.  First off, where I'd been extremely career driven before, I'd found that I preferred spending time with my little baby.  I was so anxious to see what new thing she was going to learn each day, when she'd hit the baby milestones.  Watch all of her firsts.  Suddenly the after work drinks to network didn't appeal to me.  I'd rather be home with her.  I continue to struggle with the guilt of missing so much of her day and only getting to spend a few short hours with her in the evenings before she goes to bed.

Second, I nursed.  For an entire year.  It was extremely important to both me and my husband that we give her the best nutritional start we could.  I'm proud of it, but try scheduling meetings or taking phone calls or even planning to attend an event after work around that schedule.  To keep things flowing (so to speak) you have to pump about the same time your baby would be taking her usual meal.  So three times a day, I shut my door for about 20-25 minutes and focused on answering emails or doing reports and other paperwork.  Yes, I researched how to make my pump "hands free."

Traveling was difficult to say the least.  I managed to make a few day trips and a couple of 2 and 3 night stays at various times, but then that meant pumping 4-6 times a day, making sure I had a refrigerator/freezer to store it in my hotel room, and then transporting everything back and forth on airplanes with freezer packs.  But I also avoided more than one trip because it was complicated and again, I wanted to be home.

Add on top of it, how much more difficult it would have been if my husband hadn't been so understanding and supportive of my career, stepping up to play Mr. Mom while I was gone.  But that also means his career has the potential to suffer as well.  If I'm out of town, and he gets the call that Eve has a fever, he has to drop everything to go pick her up and take her to the doctor.  If she's sick for more than a day, one of us has to stay home with her.  All of that is time away from work when others are there.

Now back to Mrs. Mayer.  She'll be a first time mom--is she also underestimating the insanity that is motherhood?  Obviously, she's in a financial position to have full time help should she want it, but will she grapple with the ever present "mommy guilt" the same way I do?  Will Yahoo! and more importantly its investors and analysts be understanding of a flexible work schedule when it comes to the stock price?  Will the Board continue to support her and how she wants to run the company if they start to feel the frequent pediatrician visits or calls about a sick child are interfering with the company's performance?  She's not exactly taking over the most stable company--and turning a company around is a lot more demanding than keeping one on a smooth sailing course.

Personally, I hope she's some kind of miracle CEO that turns Yahoo! into a relevant player again.  I hope she's able to find that balance where she's comfortable with the sacrifices she makes at home and the ones she makes at work.  Because without question, both will have to happen.  I hope she's fulfilled personally and professionally.  And I hope that she doesn't mind that professionally ambitious moms everywhere are looking at her in hopes that a very public success story will help pave the way for their own success.

The Generational Change Gap

This is a sensitive topic, as I'm voluntarily walking into the bear trap of being that stereotypical, younger whining twit who thinks old people just don't get it, man.  Even more so when I disclose that I work for a company that's run by my family.  But that doesn't make it any less of a real issue.  I've spent more time editing this one than I did writing it, and I hope my attempt to remain objective and not get personal reflects that.  If not, feel free to argue with me and point out where I'm wrong.

There are times when I avoid our almost 79 year old Chairman of the Board.  And those days where I get sucked into something, well, they're often filled with more headaches than solutions.  Unfortunately, he really doesn't understand what I do.  Much of what I'm involved in simply didn't exist in his heyday, and while they're critical now, they weren't for many years and I know he has trouble seeing the value I bring to the bottom liine.  I've been introduced to various people he has tour our office as "my oldest granddaughter... I have no idea what she does on that computer all day, but she sure looks pretty doing it."  I think he means this as a compliment, but there's very little I find more insulting professionally.  So I do what I can to get my job done without his interference.

It's sad, and I'm sure the company as a whole is missing out on some benefits it would otherwise gain if there were a way we could work together more productively.

This dread and swelling urge to roll my eyes is often misconstrued as a general disdain for the older generations. I find myself right in the middle of that over lap between Gen X and Gen Y (I tend to self identify more with the Xers) but neither generation are well known to view the baby boomers or WWII generation with the greatest regard when it comes to business.  However, at least for me, there are two very distinct types of of these "older business types" and while I do often find one group incorrigible, I genuinely feel the other gets a bad rep from their counterparts.  The result is, and I'm just as guilty as the rest, we tend to ignore the wealth of knowledge they could constructively provide.

The first group I'm referring to has the mentality of management by walking around, their ways of doing business are the only ways, and you can't possibly get any work done if you're not in the office. They tend to look at younger generations as soft, spoiled, maybe even a little inept.  They come across not as attempting to impart their years of wisdom (which they do have, I must give credit where it's due) but more as a parent using the "tiger style" approach on an unruly child.  These are the CEOs who, despite several studies and articles that speak to the contrary, will make every attempt to kill social media usage while their workers are on the clock because they think it destroys their precious productivity.  They tend to show too much favor toward one aspect of a business as the critical department that determines a company's success or failure (not a coincidence, it's often the department they came up through to their current prominence).  They force their ideas down the throats of those who report to them instead of granting those people the freedom to make a critical decision.  They scoff at innovation and can be overheard saying something similar to "that's the way we've always done it" or "this has worked for me for 30 years, I don't see how you can't make it work now."

From my perspective, it's very easy to see why I may come across as unwilling to listen to the "olds" overall.  However, some of the business people I look up to most include Warren Buffet, H. Ross Perot, Richard Branson, and Jack Welch. They're not perfect but they have one very critical thing in common.  Here's the simple idea that creates a massive divide between the people I rather harshly described before to make a point and these gentlemen--they embrace and cultivate change. They're intelligent enough to know they don't know everything and look for knowledge and ideas at every possible turn. 

It seems like such a simple concept to me and many among my two generational groups yet it's amazingly difficult to get older generations to use in a business setting. I'm not sure of the motivation behind this behavior but I certainly find myself speculating--are they realizing they're approaching the end of their "useful life" in the business world and they feel a little resentment toward feeling cast aside?  Are they convinced this "new" business model is all wrong and will only result in our impending fall into some sort of zombie apocalypse? There are a myriad of potential explanations, but whatever the truth is (and it's probably different for each of them), they hold to it like the world will end if they let that idea go. 

Yes, change is uncomfortable and sends you out into the world not knowing how it will turn out.  Yes, change may reveal that you're no longer as astute as you once were in business.  Yes, change can be extremely difficult and can make you feel incredibly unsure of your professional future.  But the "ah ha" revelation that should go with those fears is change is no different for someone who is 65 than it is for someone at 25.  It scares all of us.  No matter your age, experience, your knowledge, or even your chosen profession and your rank within it, change means you have to adapt, continue learning, and is essentially a lot more work than going with the status quo.

But even the Greek philosophers (who are literally as old as dirt by now) almost preached that the key to life is to never stop learning.  Plato said, "If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life." There may no valid reason for you to take heed of what I think or say, however, I've always heard this Plato guy was pretty smart. Hopefully you'll at least consider his words and embrace the small difference in your attitude that can literally transform your legacy, your impression you leave with the younger generations you lead today, and create an opportunity to impart the infinite wisdom you do have to share with the world. It's not necessarily what you say but how you say it and how you respond to others, but that cliche is for another story....

Blast From the Past

I came across something that I wrote years ago in high school.  It was based on the early 70s feminist essay, "I Want a Wife" by Judy Brady (you can Google it).  Basically, the assignment was to write your own version of this social commentary, and I really got into it.  So, what better way to make a bold statement than to spit in the face of the high school social structure as I saw it?  I still remember the teacher reading my version of the essay in its entirety for the class and most of them being shocked that I was revealed as the author.  I hadn't quite become the vociferous opinionated person I am today.

So here it is, completely uneditted after15 years:

I WANT A GIRLFRIEND

Since entering high school, I have noticed and have been a part of several relationships. In seeing what could possibly occur and what often does occur, I have come to the conclusion that I, too, would like to have a girlfriend. The reason for this is simple; a girlfriend usually becomes a puppet to control.

My girlfriend would be absolutely perfect. She would be devoted and caring, but never controlling. She would always think I am intelligent and witty, and would never show a difference of opinion. After a long, hard day of school and football practice, my girlfriend would stop what she might be doing to rush over to my house. There she would give me a massage while I complained about my homework and how hard today’s practice was. If my mom was not in the position to prepare my food when I wanted it, she would happily volunteer to prepare whatever I so desired, being extremely careful to cook each item just the way I want it. After I was finished with my meal, my girlfriend would clean up after me, because she would not want me doing anything that might use my remaining energy.

She would be sure to help me with my homework because she knows I cannot fail and still play football. Though I may not feel like doing such a task, she would make sure everything would be done correctly. When I grow tired of her presence, she would go home without asking questions, where she would resume whatever she may have been doing earlier. At school, she would meet me by my locker, and sit with my friends in the mornings. None of her friends would stop and bother mine and my girlfriend would go off with her friends when I so desired. That way I would be left alone to talk with my friends about “guy stuff.”

On the weekends, I would be able to spend plenty of time with my friends, and she would go out with hers. However, if I asked her to go out with me she would, even if it meant canceling plans with her friends. I am her number one priority and she would compromise anything to be with me.

If we ever had a fight, my girlfriend would be the one to apologize and say that I am right. I am allowed to remain angry at her, since she disagreed with me and she would understand completely. If we argued too much for my taste, I would break up with her until she came to her senses. When she realizes that she needs me, I would consider taking her back, but if I did not she would leave me alone. Finally, when I do find someone more suitable for my standards, I could easily break up with my current girlfriend for the better one.

I am regrettably sorry to say that this is not fiction because too many times I have seen males treat their girlfriend in such a manner. If it continues without our knowing it, it will continue until someone figures out that this behavior is wrong. If girls are often like this, then it is no wonder why every male considers them to be the “perfect girlfriend.”