Twilight

Saturday Mandy threw a Twilight party at our house with all of her sisters. They all showed up. I had to discontinue a perfectly manly procedure of installing a transmission to go see what all the swooning was about Edward.

Fortunately my brother-in-law was there for moral support as we watched the movie. He had a shirt made for me That says "H.A.T." on the front. Under that it says "Husbands against Twilight" As founder of the HAT club he established some ground rules before starting the movie such as: No singing along to songs. No saying lines along with the actors. No saying "This is my favorit part!". No anouncing to everyone what is coming up next. There were multiple warnings, infractions and requests to leave the room, yet the ground rules went completely unheeded.

I didn't mind the disruptions much other than it interrupted my complete befuddlement of the female persuasion. I have started to write a book and I initially considered tossing in a slight romantic side story to it. Mandy talked me out of it. Probably because she knew I don't have a clue what women think is romantic.

I had been hearing how gorgeous Edward is. I had heard him described as "Hot", "Cute", "sexy" and well, I don't know how to describe what my sister-in-law Katie thinks of him. Needless to say, I was not mentally prepared to witness her roll her eyes back in her head as she thrust several hip bounces around upon seeing Edward. It was these reactions that made me want to observe the character of Edward to see what it was that made these women go crazy.

The first time we see Edward in the show, his reaction to seeing Bella is to cover his mouth and look at her as if he is about to hurl, then dismiss himself and we see him trying to check himself out of the class where he has to sit by Bella. A few days go by and Edward doesn't show up for class. When he does show up he does nothing but stare at Bella like he is resisting the urge to not pop a giant zit on her nose. Then he scoots a microscope to her with the back of his hand like she might suddenly reach out and infect him with cooties. When he does talk to her he scowls and talks slowly like he might be holding back some gas. Finally we see Bella awake at night and she catches a glimpse of him standing at the foot of her bed staring at her.

In high school I was terrified of girls. They reacted to me by "pretending" to be repulsed by me. Silly me, I always assumed that by showing signs of becoming physically ill by the sight of a girl, and then sneaking into her room and watching her sleep always seemed a bit, socially unacceptable, awkward, strange, illegal and would probably end in some sort of restraining order. How was I to know that girls would appreciate this attention?

Thankfully I have been taken off the market almost 10 years ago when I married my sweet, darling wife Mandy. I don't have to worry about the bizarre subtleties of swooning a partner. However, I realize just because I am married it does not mean I stop courting my wife. So I tried these techniques on Mandy. During the movie I looked over at her and pretended to gag in my mouth, then I spent a good 2 or 3 minutes just staring at her like there was a huge pimple on her cheek. She took a few nervous glances at me, laughed nervously and finally told me to stop it. I replied slowly with a scowl like I was holding back the gastric gaseous emissions of a 1 lb. can of chili. She didn't seem to appreciate it. I don't get it. I have come to grips with the fact that I will never make a woman do hip gyrations. I think I am OK with that. REALLY OK with that. I think I get it that women are crazy. They have to be. Or else there is no way on this earth that they could look at a stinky, hairy, sweaty, guy and think "I'd like to kiss that!" I also will stay out of the romantic writing genre, because I will obviously get it wrong. Horribly, disfiguringly wrong.