Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.

After braving the stores, working feverishly to meet deadlines at work that never seem to end, and going on an unplanned roadtrip to Virginia *shudder*, I chilled out at Liz’s place and watched some movies, during which, she told me something that really grabbed my attention. She told me that I have a tendancy to read too much into things.
Now I can already hear all of you who know me yell a collective “DUUUUH”, so I’ll just stop a bit and let you get it out of your systems.



Done yet? Good.


ANYway, Liz’s revelation made me think… she’s right… I do tend to read too much into situations. I’ve learned through bitter experience that people either (A) Don’t really mean what they say or (B) they mean a lot more than what they are saying. This is particularly true, in my own personal experience with women.
I’ve forgotten how many times I’ve been left scratching my head when a woman does the exact opposite or what she told me. Each time I’ve confronted them, they more or less tell me the same thing: “you should have listened” or “you should have known”.

That’s when it slowly dawned on me. There’s more to listening than just hearing what they have to say, you have to “see” what they say. Subtle gestures like breathing, eye movement, tone of voice, cadence of their speech, etc. The slightest mannerisms can speak volumes if you know what to look for and it has saved me from a lot of headaches in the past. In other words, I could tell when they were full of shit.
Not all these women are evil deceitful bitches from hell. A lot of them simply don’t know how to articulate their feelings at the time which is why they tend to change their minds weeks or months later. If you’re a man, who likes the ladies, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

A funny thing happened during my newfound “ability”. I got the reputation of being a “good listener” by being able to “understand” where not only women, but people in general were coming from which is funny, because I developed this ability to preserve my own sanity and nothing more. Oh well, happy accident I suppose and I take pride in being someone my friends and family can talk to.


However, despite how well my insight has served me over the years, there have been some downsides. Since I’ve been so conditioned to “look” for the truth, I often don’t recognize it when it’s right in my face. I learned that some people are WYSIWYGs (What You See Is What You Get) like me and have no problems articulating what they are feeling, but I don’t see this right away and assume they aren’t being 100 percent with me, which understandably causes some tension.
One rather painful realization of this fact came when Tacoma Home Girl punched me in the gut and told me to knock it off. Another recent and less painful realization was when Liz said she’s a simple kind of girl…. Oh and she told me to knock it off as well.
My deductive skills have far more benefited me than detracted, but I realize that I have to find a balance between finding the truth and seeing it for what it is.

Though a lot of times what a person initially says is just a thin veil covering the vast unconscious mind of an individual’s psyche and who knows…perhaps their very souls, but then again, sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.