My best guess is that I was 13 when I bought my mother a wooden plaque with a photo of a sad-looking Cocker Spaniel and a line below saying, “Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed.”
I’ve since done about three minutes worth of sleuthing online and found the image and also learned that it was a Hallmark, framed piece that sold on eBay for less than $8.
Back when I was 13 I thought it was funny, and appropriate for my mother. She found it a little sad, which proved my point.
Brad Stulberg, in his book The Practice of Groundedness, puts the sad dog statement this way, “Studies show that happiness is a function of reality minus expectations.”
In case that isn’t clear enough, Stulberg offers “other words.” “In other words, the key to being happy isn’t to always want and strive for more. Instead, happiness is found in the present moment, in creating a meaningful life and being fully engaged in it, right here and right now.”
Looking back at something personal that happened 42 years ago is likely to be inaccurate in details, especially about how something made us feel. I’m certain the high school girl I asked out (This was addressed two weeks ago. If you haven’t read that piece, go there first. I won’t penalize you for skipping the second chapter, because it’s what we in the business call “a sidebar,” a pretty serious one.) for a date in the fall after I graduated told me she had to babysit and that I saw her that night at a football game. I’m clear on those facts.
What I’m less certain of is how I felt in response. As I wrote before, I was confounded and confused, which is probably redundant. But I don’t remember being all that upset. I hadn’t invested much in what she thought of me. That conversation on the phone with her when she turned me down for a date was probably the most I’d ever spoken to her.
I expected little, so I was only mildly disappointed.
It was easy then to expect little. There was little cost to romantic failure that year, because it was a transition year. I had something big to do and the most important things I did that year were in preparation for that. I always believed I would one day find someone, even when I struggled and stressed with relationships through all of my 20s and early 30s. When I was 18 I knew there was little consequence to failing then, that I was in a life pause.
One morning some weeks later I awoke from a dream involving a girl I’d had occasional flirt sessions with, but nothing more. In real life she was confident, funny and upbeat. In the dream she was pregnant and sarcastic, bitter even.
She was also a junior in high school, which come to think of it is a reason to go back and read the second part of this story.
The morning I woke from the dream I concluded I not only wanted to ask her out, I needed to. I didn’t think there were any solid reasons to trust the future predicted in my dream. I joked about needing to save her from the fate I saw, knowing that I was capable of making someone bitter, but almost certainly not pregnant. So many of the guys I tell this to are just so surprised. I had no idea I was unusual. I was living my religion, and that was that.
The dream did make me recall our earlier encounters. I still knew her as all those positive things. So I called her, and she was eager to hang out.
Let’s not be delicate about why dating was not all it could be the year before. While I wasn’t handy, I often floated in like a vampire for kisses at moments no one would describe as “an opening.” Once I landed, I was terrible at it. Worse for me was that quite a few people knew about my reputation before I did.
A friend I trusted came at me with unsolicited advice. He was among those who knew my reputation long before I did. But he was a friend, and he had proven himself wise in these matters as an 18-year-old can be, and he had helped me before. He told me to, in today’s terms, slow my roll. Stop swooping. Instead, make a gentle gesture and see what happens.
“Put your hand on her knee,” he said. The gesture could open a door. If it doesn’t, it’s a much less intrusive way to find out someone is just not that into you.
My date and I drove to the Griffith Park Observatory for a Laserium performance, essentially a pop music playlist accentuated by a laser light show on the ceiling of the observatory. Sometime during the first song, Pink Floyd’s Is There Anybody Out There, I overcame the thumping in my chest and the burgeoning sweating to move my right hand gently onto her left knee.
There it stayed long enough to make me wonder if I would need to remove it and just accept that all I was going to have that night was a fun night with a nice girl. I felt her move, and my first thought was that she was going to move her knee away or move my hand.
Nope.
She grabbed my hand and held it.
In less than a second I felt a warmth that started in my stomach and moved up through my head and out my hair. It was a message that, unlike the girl who was babysitting her friends at a football game, not everyone that age thought I was a loser. That was nice.
That I was able to feel so much joy in her gesture, though, was because I hadn’t imagined it, let alone expected it. I had hopes, sure, but no expectations.
And in the end I wasn’t just not disappointed, I was elated.
It would be great if the story ended there.
This brought up a lot of memories about some firsts in my life. First hand holding...first kiss...first feeling that a girl liked me, at least one that I liked...there were many Leslie D.s before that. And all of those firsts were post high school.
Good story. I think often we aren't even aware we have certain expectations until they don't materialize. I never thought a child would cut me off once married. Once it happened I was, am devistated! Hence my undergone expectation was we'd have family get togethers and enjoy our grandchildren. Not.