Boys, girls, and vampires.

I like to watch Ellen. I'm an Ellen, and I like that another Ellen is famous and fabulous and fine. It's an Ellen thing, I believe. I tape the show and sometimes watch it late at night if I can't sleep. So, there was this very cute little nine-year-old boy Alec Greven talking about a book he wrote called "How to Talk to Girls."
This is how it's advertised, "Are you smart enough to take over a girl's heart? Leave it to a nine-year-old to get down to the basics about how to win victory with a girl. How to talk to girls is for boys of all ages—from eight to eighty—and the girls they like. So read this book and then you're ready. Good luck!"

Like it's that easy. And since when do guys read self-help books? I know a lot of much older guys and many of them don't have much of a clue about talking to girls, so I was curious to hear the wisdom of a child. I raised a daughter and now she has twins, a boy and a girl, and the differences are obvious. The little girl is all diva, wants to be first in line, likes to be noticed, and likes "girlish" things. The boy likes to build things, isn't much on being cuddled because he's busy playing, and usually just reacts without thinking about it. Both wonderful, and both very different.

So little Alec says that the guys have to be careful and behave properly around girls because a girl can like them at the beginning of recess and then, at the end of recess, it's all over. Just like that, fifteen minutes and it's done! He says to learn to "get over it," that "life is hard, move on." His other advice is to "Comb your hair and don't wear sweats. Control your hyperness (cut down on the sugar if you have to)and don't act desperate."

Sounds like good advice. I'm not sure if men my age are still just as clueless as my little grandson or as simple as little Alec, or maybe they're just flailing around out there, trying to make sense of being single in their 50s in a world full of women they'll never understand. And put that together with women who are still trying to find their prince, still looking for that fairy tale romance from the stories they read as little girls. Geez, there's still Lifetime Movies, the sappy stories are strong women who still want romance and, yes, I watch those movies and shed more than a few tears every time.

Not sure what this post is really trying to say. I'm getting over my cold finally. My bosses still think the problems with the healthcare system are somehow my fault. And I'm just trying, myself, to make sense of soon having a big birthday and being single and enjoying my girlfriends and family and wondering if I'll really ever get past the things that shaped my growing up. Think I'll just go read a book. I'm reading the third in the Twilight series, you know the one about the teenage girl who falls in love with that gorgeous twinkly-bodied vampire. Yeah, that's reality. I wish.