Ushgarak and his slow journey into the social world...
Hello people
When I first joined this place, long before I care to remember... ok, I joined it properly at the start of 2001, I was still really only at the starting point of recovery from my illness, and while I saw friends the only form of outside social interaction I had with the world was this place. Oddly enough I DID meet the girl of my dreams there, but that's the weirdness of life for you.
And many were the times I heard of my friend's mad social exploits out on the town, like Damian successfully chatting up a girl with the line "Are you 16?", a line which should NOT lead to dating in the real world but seemed to. Oh, and there was the odd fight and occasional arrest of a friend and all I could really do is hear about things afterwards.
Of course, once I started to recover rather more my feeble protests of "but I'm ill!" no longer would shield me from having to go out into the real world some time. A completely disastrous and failed attempt some time back set me back a bit but lately I have been making far more of an effort to get out there, have fun and, of course, meet girls.
Some of you may remember my report of my first night out a couple of months back, the one where I somehow seemed to spend the evening attracting girls without effort, met one nice girl that I talked for a while with, completely failed to get the number of, and then lost track of. Arse.
Well, there have been a few more nights out since then, many of which have invovled my friends trying to use me as some sort of lucky-charm girl attracting talisman, which is somewhat pressuring... and muggings here is trying to get used to just what exactly the social scene of life is actually LIKE. And I thought I would kind of chronicle my struggle here.
The current craze is The Great Nurse Hunt. To explain, my friend Nigel is a recently-qualified Doctor who managed to get a job at the local hospital. He's getting on ok there, and the important bit is that he knows (and fancies) a lot of the nurses there. Every so often these nurses have a social night on town, many of them young and attractive and muchly available, and Nigel would be very happy to take advantage of that. Of course, running into their socials on his own makes him look a bit desperate, so he likes to have friends with him. Trouble is, he often only has a vague idea of where the nurses are; hence the fact that we have to Hunt for them.
The first time was a small affair which was pretty miserable and ended with only a couple of nurses being spotted at the end of the evening- both accompanied by men.
The second time was disaster central. Word of the great nurse hunt spread round our friends, and then our friends friends, and before long there was a pretty large group of us all struggling to find these nurses that Nigel had promised- no quite his plan. Worse in that not one single nurse was spotted at any point in the entire evening, leading to a lot of desperate and unhappy men. There were some VERY attractive girls around who provocatively wiggled their bottoms at us- or maybe they just walked past us; hard to tell- but Nigel's attempt to make contact with them was shot down in flames.
Nigel and myself managed to break away from the group eventually, and later on got in good proximity to some other bice girls, which Nigel attributed to my girl attracting skill, and after about five seconds of quick thinking we decided to move in, five seconds in which someone else moved in first. Three men... more gorillas than men, actually. And they refused to believe that I didn't smoke and got very upset when I wouldn't give them a cigarette.
Actually approaching and speaking to girls myself is still rather beyond me, as is things like dancing and so on and so forth, but I am still willing to give things a go, and tonight was Great Nurse Hunt the third.
This time Nigel could guarantee the location of nurses. We picked up Orpheus and headed off. On the way he revealed that, in fact, the attractive ward of nurses was not out tonight and it was only the older and unattractive and/or married ones out. So, nurses were found, but not much good. Some of the social venues we went to were of little interest to Orph, who dropped out (which did, at least, mean he can still hear things, which is more than I can). However, his Doctor friend Ming (inevitably nicknamed The Merciless) joined us for some hardcore woman searching, and Nigel got agaonosingly close to getting us all happily bunked up with some pretty girls for the night...
...instead of which I am back here alone again with ringing ears. Never mind, plenty more attempts to go! What fun things wait me soon?
Well, next thursday seems good. Some of the girls we were after that night were dancing together in a very... attractive fashion. Next thursday the 'attractive' nurse ward is out socialising and a new interception shall be made. Ming has bet Nigel that he can get those nurses to dance for us in such an interesting fashion; if he fails he has to buy us all drunks for the evening, otherwise we all buy for him.
Sounds fun but will inevitably go wrong, I am sure...
And meanwhile in this coming month I also have this plan to meet board members in London, which is supposed to be a rather social occasion, certainly looking at where Corran wishes to go (I would post the link, but young and innocent minds may see...)
So, I have no idea if I am going to find great social success in the near future, or potter around like some idiot forever, but I'm going to keep trying...