Unlike Any Other

I very much enjoyed reading about your plans for last Friday night and your dream jobs and how you have gone in pursuit of them and/or have learned skills that will be useful if you get married and have children.

What you do leads very much to who you are, and if like Kirstin, you plan and strive and sacrifice to become, say, a zookeeper, that is a real formation of character. I love Gerald Durrell's books although I could never be so brave as to hang out with elephants and lions, so through one eensy comment Kirstin has become a heroine of mine. I feel like grabbing the few British bachelors I know and saying, "How about a ZOOKEEPER!? Wouldn't you like to meet a ZOOKEEPER?"

I am so impressed that there is a zookeeper among my readers. This is not to neglect the doctors and poets and teachers and churchwomen and moms, but come on. ELEPHANTS!

B.A. found a British copy of The Rules & The Rules II together in one volume for 33 pence, and so I am rereading them. Fein & Schneider are marketing geniuses, for there is enough padding in that book to stuff a chair. But as I have said for six years now, they have a lot of solid advice, beginning with "Be a Creature Unlike Any Other."

I have been married for three of those six, and now that I am not searching myself, I am a lot more sharp-witted about other Searching Singles, especially Searching Single men. Searching Single men say stuff to me they would probably not say if I were still Single myself. And I find them interesting for whole new reasons, like a retired hunter who has become a biologist.

The kinds of guys who get chased by crowds of girls strike me as particularly interesting. Why they are being chased does not interest me as much as how they are ever going find Miss Right in a sea of clamouring Miss Wrongs. Will they bother, or will they just float on a sea of flattery until they are forty and panic about having kids?

"I concede that they find me interesting," said one such guy of the girls throwing themselves at him, "but what makes them think that I would find them interesting?"

I think he'd find a zookeeper pretty darn interesting. I hope so, or I will totally lose my faith in Young Men Today.

Admittedly, though, with men it's not primarily what you do but what you look like, so it is always a good idea to look your best in public. That way the sort of men who think your sort of looks are attractive will be attracted long enough to find out what you do. So make sure you do something.

Once you have revealed what it is you do, whether feeding lions or teaching children or studying the thought of Bernard Lonergan, SJ, make sure you don't bore your hearers about it. If your interlocutor seems genuinely interested in what you do, think of what aspect of it you think your listener will find most interesting. And then ask your listener about himself. When you can do so politely, wind up the conversation to talk to somebody else. Always leave 'em wanting more.

This reminds me that poor John Wayne has been the Swashbuckling Protector for weeks now, and I must find another one. Hmm...