The Single Rider

The Kind Heart Will Triumph:
An Open Letter To A Young Girl I Know

It’s suckage when you believe that there is no one you can trust to truly have your back and never fuck with you. I think that’s what all of us want from our families, friends and lovers – the one person we can depend on not to INTENTIONALLY hurt us. I am emphasizing “intentionally” because sometimes, shit just happens. Perhaps the person does not have the necessary skills to put themselves in your place and feel what you feel. Perhaps it does not even occur to them to do so. Maybe they are not mature enough to have empathy and compassion, or maybe it was never taught to them. Maybe they are all tied up in the competition for status, for a position among the “cool” people. Maybe they are really desperate for it, they really, REALLY need it. Maybe it’s so important to their own feelings of self-worth, they cannot afford to worry about your feelings or anyone else’s. Maybe they are trying their best, but it’s YOU who isn’t being clear about what you want, what you will accept and what you will simply not tolerate insofar as their behavior toward you is concerned.

Or maybe – just maybe, they are incapable of empathy and compassion, regardless of their age or maturity level. Maybe some people really ARE just that shallow. Maybe some of them do not see anything beyond the clothes, the hair, the makeup, the number of friends they have, the things they own or the number of boys who are salivating after their insubstantial, plastic little selves. Maybe they are just mean girls; there are some kids who don’t want friends, they want worshippers. They don’t value love, they value notches on their belts (or worse, on their bedposts). They don’t hesitate to hurt someone if they stand to gain something from it – inflated sense of self-worth, status among peers, whatever else they might want in a moment of malice.

At your age, the power of that status-among-peers thing is not to be underestimated. It is so very craved, it turns even nice young people, people who were brought up to behave “better than that”, into glory junkies. It’s a rough time, the teen-into-mid-twenties years. Insecurity drives more friendships to ruin during this time than any other. It drives people to behave with unspeakable cruelty toward one another. It drives them to behave with unspeakable cruelty toward THEMSELVES. It drives kids to do things that are dangerous to their bodies as well as to their psyches, just so that others will stand in awe of them and think they are cool. It drives them to cut, to have sex before they are ready and it drives them to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol and do drugs. Worst of all, the craving for status among peers can drive kids to end up, at their own hands, dangling from the end of a rope or floating in a pool of their own blood.

I don’t know how any of us manage to escape the teen/young adult years with our lives. We’re all just so fucked up and so disoriented during this time, it’s a wonder we can see straight once it’s over. Certainly we all bear the scars when we emerge. We’ve learned some hard lessons about people. We’ve maybe learned to be a little more cautious about whose opinion we value, because placing a lot of stock in the wrong person’s esteem for you can turn you into someone you never had any intention of becoming, and it can make you feel like a worthless fool when they capriciously flat-leave your ass for some insignificant supposed infraction. Or maybe just because they ceased to think you were cool. They don’t really have to have a reason, do they? They just do what they want with your emotions.

Hopefully, what we learn from all this is how to measure a person’s value, how to measure your OWN. We learn that what gives a person value is this and only this – your value is measured by how you behave toward others, particularly toward those who are less fortunate than you are. I don’t mean that just materially. I mean it emotionally too. If someone is more unhappy than you are, then they are less fortunate. When you throw that person some pixie dust, it will make their day and they will always remember you for that. They will remember that you were kind to them when they needed it the most.

Those who matter, the people who you really want on your side through thick and thin, will measure your value by HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL. Not by what lip gloss or shoes you wore. Not by your cool phone or your car or your status as an brainiac, athlete, whatever. They will measure you by how you behaved toward them.

I’m not saying that you should eschew material things. If it makes you happy to wear cute clothes and have cool toys , then have at it. You know that I’ve never denied myself anything I really wanted. But you also know, if you’ve taken the trouble to observe, that I have a shitload of friends; people who come running to wish me a Happy Birthday, people who clamor to be the ones I come to see when I’m home on Long Island, people who sorrow with me, hold me up when I’m down, rejoice with me when I’m happy. I would one million times a million rather have them in my life than anything else. Yeah, I’d flush my smartphone for them. I would. And they know it. That’s why they’re my friends.

You will get past this time when transient, meaningless things seem to be defining you and your relationships. It will happen sooner than later, if you let it. It will, if you can muster the courage to start choosing friends from the people who maybe aren’t so “cool” by school standards but who are smart, funny, compassionate people. Kind people. People who have a heart, like you do. You will attract these people to yourself by your own behavior. If you aren’t ready to do this yet, it’s ok. It’s a lot to ask of a person in your position, and it takes practice.

Start small. I remember one time being in an amusement park with a little person, many years ago. We looked across the street and I observed that some little kid’s stuffed animal had fallen out of the stroller and was just lying there in the street. Well the little person I was with, she saw this and she rushed across the street, picked up the stuffed animal, and lovingly tucked it into the stroller to await the return of it’s young owner.

That single random act of kindness and compassion is what I remember most about who you REALLY are underneath all this horrible but apparently necessary teen angst you’ve got to go through. I have faith that sometime very soon, you will start to collect friends who will always love you, who will always have your back and never fuck with you. I have faith that your kind heart will rise up and beat back all this meaningless bullshit, and that you will grow into the kind of woman everyone wants for a friend – smart, funny, gracious toward others.

And with really cool toys, cause that’s just how we roll

I dare you not to smile at this. I found it on the “Life Is Good” page on Facebook.

I have to remember to focus outward, cause too much inward makes me grouchy sometimes.

It’s not really such a bad world, is it?

Bad Bad World from Guster on Vimeo.

YouTube – Huey Lewis And The News – Do You Believe In Love.

This evening, someone on a forum was talking about Huey Lewis. Naturally, the conversation propelled me toward YouTube, one of the most time-sucking applications known to the interwebz. I looked up my favorite Huey Lewis and the News Song “Do You Believe In Love” – I don’t think I’ve seen this video in at least two decades! Anyhow, she doesn’t hear him. He’s right there in front of her, singing to her, loving her and she thinks she’s alone. How sad is that? But it’s such a happy, upbeat song! The contrast is really disturbing to me. Oblivion like that isn’t really upsetting to the oblivious – that is, until they figure out how clueless they’ve been and what they’ve been missing. I guess that would be a bit depressing, to realize that you’ve missed Huey Lewis wanting to “love you all over”.

Autumn, 1977

There’s a parade coming down the main drag that connects the hamlet where I live to the village by the bay. Down here in the village, the main drag has long since dwindled to one lane in each direction. This morning, it’s brisk with traffic, each vehicle racing to avoid getting caught behind the barricade that’s going up at any moment.

We need to be on the other side. My practiced eye looks briefly in either direction, assessing the traffic for relative distance and speed. This is going to be cake. Taking off at a sprint, I easily cover the two lanes well before the oncoming traffic arrives. I look around. I see my two friends still huddled where I’d left them on the curb at the other side, faces drawn taught with thinly-disguised anxiety. Finally, they feel it’s safe, and they hurry across.

“OMG, I thought you’d be killed!” one of them exclaims.

“What?” comes my bewildered response. “There was plenty of time. Don’t you people know how to cross a street?”

I’d grown up in the city, where you take your crossing opportunities as they come, even on wide boulevards of four and six lanes of heavy, New York driver traffic. If you aren’t bold, then you’re destined to stand a good, long time waiting to cross at that uncontrolled intersection. Waiting, wating… who has time for that?

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It’s a few years later, and I am on my way to see a friend perform in concert with his quartet. I am traveling from Long Island with the only other person I’m aware of who also has a ticket, but I don’t know him terribly well. He’s funny and nice company for the mass transit journey into the city. His eyes are fringed with those impossibly long guy-lashes that make every woman sigh and wonder, “Why can’t *I* have lashes like that?”

(A few years into the future, I would focus on those lashes while standing under the chupah, having random thoughts about anything and everything, just to keep myself from thinking about the reason we were standing there…)

He pulls the cord overhead to signal the driver. We de-bus near Lincoln Center and prepare to cross Broadway. My practiced eye looks briefly in either direction… my muscles are tensing in preparation for the sprint. Although we are not physically touching, I feel him hesitate beside me, drawn taught… Before he has a chance to balk, I grab his hand and give it an encouraging tug. We have ignition, we have liftoff, running hand in hand until we reach the opposite curb. His hand immediately releases mine, but for a while after, I can still feel the shape and the weight of it in mine. How odd…

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

This had happened to me only one other time, the very first time I’d ever held hands with a boy. He was funny and his eyes were an impossible shade of blue; not even a color found in nature, I don’t think, and certainly not one I’d ever seen before or since. The first time our hands touched (accidentally-on-purpose), I’d gone directly for the interlaced fingers position, but he was having none of that and quickly shifted us instead to the palm-to-palm position. I was satisfied, pleased that he hadn’t rejected the idea of hand-holding altogether, but at random times for days after, I would suddenly experience the pleasantly terrifying sensation of his fingers filling the spaces between mine.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I wanted to be pleasantly terrified. I wanted to be gifted with the experience of someone filling in all the places where I am blank. I’m not sure how, but somewhere along the way “pleasantly” and “terrified” became uncoupled; unchecked, terror fills the blank spaces with something that’s drawn taught, something that drives me to flinch from the sprint, to wait at the corner until the signal changes.

Oh, for my days of the practiced eye, the ability to assess, the exhilarated sprint, fully confident that I would reach the curb unscathed. Oh, for the days!

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Now playing – The Fray: Never Say Never

Love me some OneRepublic music, but this video is a bit on the disappointing side. I don’t think it accurately reflects what the poet really means by this song.

When I first heard “Secrets”, I immediately thought that Ryan Tedder was responding to criticism that his lyrics are not the usual “oh woe is me, relationships suck, my heart is broken” pop radio fare. The way I perceive a lot of what he writes is that his songs are often a reflection of what’s going on with him and the band on a professional level. I figured that perhaps he may have been criticized for not revealing himself emotionally enough, so this time around he’s “gonna give all my secrets away”.

Only, I don’t think he means it. I’m not sure it sincerely bothers him to the extent that he’d abandon what moves him to write in favor of what the critics want. Counting this one, there are at least 3 songs on the latest album that are about the career, the amazing experience of touring, being vaulted into the next level – or being afraid that they won’t be vaulted into the next level due to poor timing and/or connections.

No, I think “Secrets” is an indication that he acknowledges the criticism but he’s only kidding when he says he’s going to give it away. I think this is a man who knows where the line is. He’s not really moved to write about interpersonal relationships all that often. He’s very into his work, into his career.

It may shock some of you to know that there are people in this world who are NOT focused 24/7 on relationships – finding them, maintaining them, destroying them, ad nauseum. I should know – I’m one of them! I get the impression that Ryan Tedder is similar – many of his songs relate to his experiences as a musician, writer, producer, to his professional experiences, not his personal ones. Does that invalidate his poetry? Nope. I “get” him. There have to be others out there who “get” and appreciate what he writes, too.

It doesn’t have to be all about the emo, all about interpersonal drama, to be interesting. Really, it doesn’t.

Whatever happened to Harry? is a series written as a follow up to My “cougar” days, part one

I hope you will all excuse me for taking a little breather. I needed some processing time. I’m going to interrupt my intended “cougar” series to tell you all about it. After you read what I’m about to tell you, I think you will forgive me; it was a little difficult to wrap my brain around it.

I ended my last post by recounting whatever became of the “engagement” ring and the tiny, perfect, silver cross. Not long after posting, I started to wonder whatever became of Harry. And so, I took my madd googling skillz to the interwebz and launched a quest to locate Harry, long-lost bestower of first kisses.

I started in the logical place – Facebook. It’s like the village green of the entire planet, or maybe more like Tevye’s dream in Fiddler On The Roof – eventually, everyone you ever knew is going to pass through there. Unfortunately, a search for “Harry M*** “ came up nil; likewise “Harold M***”. I googled around a bit but kept coming back to Facebook, looking for people we’d hung out with back then, to see if they knew how to contact him.

And then one morning over coffee, I remembered Harry’s sister Jennie. She and my older brother were in the same graduating class, and we’d had an elective together – History of the Occult, where the only thing I remember learning is that Dracula’s real name was Vlad the Impaler. I found her profile easily, and cruised through her friends list in search of her brother. The only “Harry” I found on her friend list was a “Harold A*****”. Disappointed, I abandoned the search and started my work day.

But something kept nibbling at my brain about this. It was not improbable that he just wasn’t on Facebook – after all, none of my own brothers had signed up. Still, something nagged at me about it. I could not get it off my mind, and then halfway through the work day, it dawned on me. I remembered teasing Harry about his initials, but being a theater geek, he was quite proud that they spelled H.A.M. …..

Before I knew it, I found myself wading through Jennie’s friend list again, clicking on Harold A*****, whereupon I was faced with the typical “Harold only shares certain information with everyone. To learn more about Harold, add him as a friend.” Well, I wasn’t about to do that until I was sure. His profile picture was no help. It was not actually a picture, but the logo of some dot com. I plugged the address into the URL bar, and…

Oh.

My.

GAWD

I hit the “back” button on the browser, fast.

TO BE CONTINUED…

What a ridiculous term by the way – “cougar”. Where the hell did that come from? I’ve been googling around to find out how a woman who pursues relationships with younger men has come to be known as a “cougar”, but no one seems to know. I even looked up some facts about the actual feline known as “cougar”, also known as puma, panther, or mountain lion, depending on if you live in Texas, Florida or Wyoming. I found no evidence that the female cougar prefers younger male cougars for mates, but did find reference to adults being more or less solitary and meeting for one reason and one reason only – mating. Perhaps this is the basis for the terminology – hunting for a mate, then going home alone. I know, it’s a stretch, but aside from that I got nuttin’ !!!

A survey conducted by AARP asserts that 34% of women surveyed responded indicating that they were dating younger men, thereby fitting the definition of “cougar”. The survey is 6 years old at the time of this writing. Spurred on by high-profile romances such as that of Ashton Kutscher and Demi Moore, I imagine that statistic has only grown in the intervening years.

Guess what? There was a time when I fit the “cougar” definition, too. Yes, ladies and gentlemen – I was cougar before cougar was cool I once calculated it and came up with a startling statistic – I am older than 80-something percent of all the guys I’ve ever been involved with. Age differences have ranged from 3 months all the way up to 8 years.

(As an aside, I also calculated that 80-something percent of all the guys I’ve ever dated and/or married were also Jewish. Yes, we detect a pattern here. No, I haven’t really tried to analyze it. I grew up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Queens, so I’m not shocked that I’ve got an affinity for Jewish guys).

I began my auspicious career as a cougar circa 1975-76. Harry was in 9th grade and I was in 10th. He was exactly my height, sandy brown hair, blue eyes, with freckles. A class-clown type, Harry really knew how to make me laugh, and he was just adorable. Soon after we met, he got his braces removed, a fact which relieved him no end. I’d privately thought that they only added to his adorableness factor.

We were both in the high school chorus, and both had 5th period free, during which time we ran errands for the people working in the guidance office. One day, the student body decided to stage a “walk out” during 5th period over some (no doubt) burning, socially relevant issue, and Harry and I decided to walk up to McDonald’s instead of hanging out in the guidance office. I guess that was our first “date”.

Soon after that, he proposed to me amidst the melee that occurs periodically each day at every high school across America – otherwise known as the break between classes. We were passing on the staircase. I was trapped in the throngs heading up, while he was heading down. There’s no stopping when you’re in the crush of humanity on the staircase in an over-crowded New York City public school. He was looking for me; he saw me and thrust something rather sharp and pointy into my hand. As the crowd swept him away, he hollered over his shoulder, “Marry me!”. I opened my hand to find a copper-colored paper clip, bent pretzel-style into the likeness of a ring. Despite the fact that the ring eventually left a greenish tattoo on my finger, I was da shit for the duration of the school year. A boy, a CUTE, nice Jewish boy (all my friends were Jewish – I was the token shiksa) had proposed. With witnesses! It seems like half the school was on that staircase during the first (but not last) proposal of my life. This is how I came to be the sensation of the 10th grade that year.

I received my first-ever kiss – with tongue! – from Harry. I suspect it was his first as well. We were riding in the back of a car driven by the senior boyfriend of one of my pals, on our way to a party. The sun was shining on a fine spring day, and the Beatles crooned All My Lovin’ as we practiced our exploratory maneuvers, entirely neck-up, on each other. Thereafter, just walking down the halls or ambling hand-in-hand down the street, one or the other of us would spontaneously burst into All My Lovin’, while the other harmonized. To this day, when I hear that song all I can think of is Harry and soft, first kisses in the warm sunshine.

When my friends threw me a girls-only Sweet 16 party, Harry and some of the guys from our crowd crashed. The hostess was my friend Denise, God rest her soul. She was rather put out, but I was delighted. They came bearing gifts. One of the boys gave me Wings At The Speed Of Sound and another Endless Summer. Only, they were LPs! You actually needed a record player to play them! These remain staples of my music collection. Harry, however, chose to come bearing jewelry. He’d petitioned his grandmother for funding and presented me with a tiny, perfect sterling silver cross. This was a grand gesture coming from a nice Jewish boy and his bubbie! I treasured it and wore it always, even after we moved away, which ended our relationship.

Fast-forward one year, which can seem like a thousand at that age. I was a junior at my new high school and a senior asked me to accompany him to his prom. The day after the prom, we went to see a show on Broadway in NYC, and who should we bump into outside the theater but Harry. It seems a senior had asked him to the prom too, at our old high school. We were ecstatic to see one another, but that made our dates antsy, so we had to be brief. A year had made a huge difference – I could tell he was now officially WAY taller than I was, and he was even cuter, if that was possible. His parents had relocated him, too – to California. We wrote to one another a few times, but as often happens with young love, one or the other of us stopped writing and that was the end of that.

I don’t know what became of the “engagement ring”. It probably disintegrated and went to paper clip heaven. But I do know what happened to the silver cross. Fast forward another year, to the magically golden summer of 1978. Our town sponsored an outdoor summer theater workshop, and during rehearsals for a dance number, the chain I wore the cross on somehow got caught on someone else. The chain snapped and it all went flying into the night. Several people helped me look for it. We found the chain, but the cross was lost forever. I probably would have been inconsolable, had it not been the magically golden summer of 1978 and That Boy.

Oh, and the show we were doing? Fiddler On The Roof – OY!

NEXT TIME: His name was Jeremy…

Further reading: Here’s the article that inspired me to explore my inner cougar

Click to read The Cougar: Progressive or Exploitative? on BlogHer

I was browsing the merchandise at Walt Disney World a couple of weeks ago when this mug crossed my path. I took a photo and sent it to Facebook, with some crack about wishing that “you have a knack for getting your own way” was true. I put it back on the shelf and walked away.

You’ll notice, it’s now sitting on my kitchen counter, awaiting it’s opportunity to become the vessel from which I drink the Elixir of Life. I figured, if I don’t believe it, then it definitely won’t be true. And if I DO believe, then I’d better start acting like I do. So I marched myself right back there and bought it.

After all, what exactly is wrong with having a knack for getting one’s own way? Nothing! As with all things, if the ability to get what one wants is exercised within a balanced and loving context, then sin cannot live there.

I’m sure that my initial rejection of this concept had elements of socialized (false) “nice girl” modesty lurking beneath. It was also influenced by past experiences, disappointments where I didn’t get anywhere close to my “own way”, my heart’s desire, what I’d been dreaming of.

Well, a dream is just a dream, a thought is just a thought, and neither can venture any further into reality without me driving it. I can drive manifestation either actively or passively. I have lots of experience driving things actively – that’s what has made me successful with most things in life. Notice I said “most” But driving the manifestation of my dreams passively – well, I have very little experience “letting go and letting God”, mostly because I’m too scared to relinquish control to something I cannot quantify.

I’m going to try something new. I’m going to try driving a wish to come true, to manifest it into the physical world, by getting the hell out of the way and letting it happen. First step – believe that I have a knack for getting my own way.

I’ve now got a physical reminder from which to sip the Elixir of Life (coffee) Let the manifestation of dreams begin!

PS – a grateful shout-out to a certain fairy godmother for her encouragement *~*~*~*~*~*~*

Posted by Wordmobi

We ended yesterday’s post with:

My first installment of insight from K is advice designed to enable me to judge a person’s character. I should first observe how a person treats service people like drivers and waiters, even if they are not nice to him. Two, I should observe what the person says about people who are not present. Third, and I need to quote this because he put it so succinctly – “money or time, which is more important? Would you rather have the gift of company, or just a gift?”

Now, the first two things are just common sense things that I already do. I am all about observing behavior to determine what makes someone tick. But number three, this gives a girl pause. With number three, we not only observe, but we measure too. Number three is all about the scientific method, all about believing in that which is observable and measurable.

Women are socialized to value the showering of gifts. We learn this from other women – our mothers, sisters, friends – and we start doing it basically from the moment we start dating. It becomes important to us because it is important to them; that is to say, I don’t think we’re born this way, I think we’re socialized this way. Everyone is judged by the value of the gifts. We judge the man by the gifts he gives us for our birthdays, Valentine’s Day, or “just because”. We judge each other by how good the gifts from men are. Remember the girls in HS who wore ankle bracelets on chains around their necks? Remember how much the other girls envied them? There were also girls who had “his ring” on a chain around their necks (I was one of those briefly, but not in high school). Or the girls who wore the guy’s letter jacket, how about those? Oh, I have another good one, from later in life – the parade of flowers in the office on Valentine’s Day. The women who don’t get any are envious and curse the sight of all those 1-800-FLOWERS vans parked outside the building.

So, the jewelry, the flowers, the branding of her with his letterman jacket – these are all outward signs of his esteem for her, which in turn contributes to her own self-esteem. It also elevates her status among her peers, which is another boost to her self-esteem. Later on it’s engagement rings, cars, houses, vacations… things, always things.

You know what, I think this is a throwback to the times of dowries. A dowry is money, goods/property that a woman’s father would provide so she could establish her marriage household with her new husband. The more “stuff” that was associated with her, the more valuable it was to marry her. See, it wasn’t the woman herself that was valued – it was the stuff. No stuff, no value!

In some cultures, there was even a tradition of the groom settling a monetary gift on the bride the morning after the wedding night. This gift would help to ensure her future should something happen to him, and it was also an indication that she’d proven satisfactory and that he intended to keep her.

A woman’s worth to herself and to others has probably been all tied up in the tangible, the material, basically since the invention of patriarchy. Some man – either her lover or her father – was always either giving or receiving STUFF in connection with her. To this day,we women still seem to be measuring ourselves and each other by the baubles he brings. I want to make it clear that, although I think without a doubt that patriarchy was initially responsible for this, it’s we women today in 2009 that are perpetuating it, foisting it upon ourselves and each other. We need to cut this shit out, and start walking the talk of self-worth.

For many women, having a man – ANY man – is the ultimate proof of their own worth. It’s proof to themselves as well as to the world at large. On a certain level, I get how seductive this is. I’ve been single a long time, and I know that there have been situations whereby my lack of a man – ANY man – has made me seem “less than” in the eyes of those around me. It’s worth so much to some women, they have actually expressed sympathy for my “plight”. Some of those times, I’ve wished fleetingly that I had a man – ANY man – to make me seem “more than” in their eyes, to wipe that smug, pseudo-sympathetic look off their faces. I get over this feeling pretty quickly. It gets replaced with the desire to kick their asses for making me feel that way – even fleetingly.

Well, it IS lonely sometimes. But you know, lonliness is not THEIR reason for not wanting to be manless. Many women, some of the very ones who have pitied me – these women are sometimes the ones that see a man as a means to an end, not as the end itself. They want the THINGS, the candy and flowers and jewelry, so they can feel like they are worth something, and they believe this is the ONLY way they can feel like they are worth something. Stuff, things – these are tangible proof of his esteem for her, and therefore of her worth.

I make a good living and I can buy STUFF for myself. Those who have known me for a while know that this is true – I deny myself basically nothing. Veni, Vidi, Visa I don’t need a man to give me things. His gifts will, of course, make me feel good, but my self-worth comes from different places. It comes from accomplishments. It comes from going back to school and getting another degree while in my 40s, and from having a successful career on Wall Street. It grew from all those operas I memorized and performed in foreign languages, and all the applause and praise that resulted. My self-esteem comes from knowing that my friends and family think the world of me, and from knowing when I’ve done the right thing.

Now mind you, I would not turn down the gifts; I would appreciate him a lot for gifting me with them, but really, that’s not what I would need him for. ‘Way back then, when I was a teenager, and even into my thirties – yes, I wanted the ankle bracelet and the esteem that went with it. But now? Yeah, it’s the gift of company. Here and now, in 2009, that’s what I want. And it can’t be just ANY man, either – but I think this is long enough, and that’s a post for another day.