I didn’t know her at all. She was just the girl with the locker next to mine until the one lunch break she approached me and asked if I’d be her boyfriend. It seemed like a fine enough thing to get involved with as a seventh grader so I agreed. I spent the next two weeks in a fairly consistent state of fear. #lockergirl
I was afraid of a lot of things but probably my parents most of all. In the culture that I grew up in, boys aren’t supposed to date exclusively until they’re 21. What I’m saying is that If my parents found out about Shelby, I would definitely not be going to Jake’s birthday party at Nicklecade the next month. I was afraid of my friends. What would they think? What if they liked her too? Is that good or bad? I was afraid of the girl. I had never been a boyfriend before so I didn’t really know how to do it. Who does what? What is it that we do? We’re going out now? Where are we going? Oh it’s not a place you go? Okay. It’s all very confusing as it should be. I didn't get it but she made the whole thing very easy by never talking to me. I don’t think we said a word to each other through our entire fourteen day courtship. When compared to future attempts, Shelby was a fantastic success. #success
Dating was usually pretty terrible for the next decade. That’s a dramatic way to describe it but I just wasn’t very good at it. Were any of us? It could have been for lack of guidance. My dad was screening female phone calls until I was 18 so fatherly advice outside of him grounding me for breaking the no-dating rule was hard to come by. Maybe it was because Boy Meets World and The Wonder Years set unrealistic expectations for us 90’s kids. How did those two brothers (in-real-life) Ben and Fred Savage end up with their own shows and my childhood dreamgirls? It’s that kind of nepotism that led me to believe I would one day marry Mary-Kate and my brother would marry Ashley Olsen. #lies
Truly though, the most likely culprit for my ten years of shitty dating was youth. Inexperience. Not knowing what the hell I was doing and then taking advice from other kids who also didn’t know what they were doing. After my first set of heartbreaks a close friend told me I was being too nice. I needed to play the game with a little more intention. If I cared less, they would care more. It was so backward to me but I tried the care-less technique and was surprised when it actually worked. I italicized the last word of the last sentence to represent sarcasm. It didn’t really work. Sure, caring less protected me in a way but it was really just a fearful wall that kept me from growing. In our song Red Lipstick I described these years of caring less as an “ apathetic decade walking bulletproof”. Have you ever done the “care-less” thing? It’s sucky, right? I became philophobic (I googled for that one). A love cynic. Have you heard our song Ms. Badblood? I’m not a psychologist but, I think she might be me. #projection
So, Time passed. The nice thing about time passing is that it does a pretty good job at providing experience. While friends suggested my love struggles stemmed from things like incompatible astrological signs and poor taste, I’m (almost) certain I just needed some extra time to figure out how to be a boyfriend. #experience
Okay, I must admit. I didn’t mean to keep you here this long. I wanted to write something short that would give you some back story to New Girl but I’m already a page into this Word document and if I keep going like this I’ll turn this into a five pager and lets not do that. Please allow me three more paragraphs and a PS section. Thank you. #thankyou
If you were ordering a marriage… from the marriage store... in Utah, and you ordered “The Usual” you would probably get 6-8 months of dating, 2 months engagement, and for believers, married forever. When you’re 6-8 years past The Usual, you wonder if maybe you’ll just stay alone forever. Full disclosure: I’ve never been alone forever so I don’t know that it’s the worst thing ever but I like not being alone A LOT so please don’t mind me assuming that I’d prefer an alternative. That’s where Ali comes in. #theusual
You develop modest expectations in dating once you’ve been doing it for a while. To be honest, I didn’t expect the first date let alone the second, third, and fourth. That phrase they tell you, the one about just knowing when it’s right, like we’re born with some kind of soulmate spidey sense, finally clicked for me. She made me feel normal. Without context that might seem a weak compliment but one I’ve dreamed of giving. She gets me. She does a million other things for me but making me feel uncrazy is one of my favorites. I hope I make her feel normal. #normal
-Garret
PS - You know that scene in The Wedding Singer when Adam Sandler plays his bi-polar-The Cure-influenced song “Somebody Kill Me Please” for Drew Barrymore? Out of nowhere his calm love song goes to hell after his girlfriend leaves him? New Girl can relate in way. Twelve months after Ali and I started dating she was deployed to Afghanistan for a year. I couldn’t believe it. Things were finally right and now they were taking her away? New Girl was going to be an easy love song but reality put a little wrinkle in it. Fortunately for the team, she will be home for good in three months. #praise
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