Math and science have never interested me much.  I always did well in them throughout school, but I grew up in Appalachia, which doesn’t say much about my aptitude in those subjects.  They’re still debating evolution in that part of the country, after all…

The areas within math and science that I did gravitate towards, however, were always the disciplines with visual components.  I liked geometry because it involved drawing shapes and resolving spatial problems.  It was like a little interior design project with mechanical pencils!  Physics suited me well for similar reasons.  I could picture those two cars colliding, which helped in calculating the outcome of the impact (not to mention that I secretly imagined specific enemies sitting in the front seats of those cars, which helped sustain my interest).  If I can imagine it, there’s no reason why I can’t resolve it, right?

Fast forwarding ten years or so, I’m finding that the lessons I learned in math and science are, in fact, relevant to everyday life.  But not in ways I ever expected.  No one told us way back then that dating and physics are one and the same.  Gravity, inertia, and waiting two days before calling—laws of both science and seduction.

In particular, my recent dating endeavors have recalled one of physics’ most famous laws.  It’s Newton’s third law of motion: 

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.* 

[*For the record, I had to google this.  I knew it was one of Newton’s laws, but again, I plead Appalachia.  I’m sure those damn kids on NYC Prep could have told you which law it was without blinking those strangely spaced, crossed eyes of theirs.  And I’m the one from Appalachia…]

At any rate, Newton’s law doesn’t apply to just any object in motion; it applies to all of them, my singlehood included.  Experience dictates that every action in dating does, indeed, have a reaction both equal and opposite.  The reaction’s trajectory, however, is usually an unexpected, unpredictable, and unwelcomed element. 

As we get older, attempting to date someone involves so much more than the two parties involved.  Friends, family, careers, schedules, priorities—they are all subjected to the impact of bringing another entity into your life.  When things are good, any or all of these aspects can benefit.  But things can’t always be good.  On the flip side, when things go wrong, fizzle, or fade, an equal and opposite reaction ricochets through those around us.  When the dynamic that once brought two people together disperses, it morphs and moves on.  Like energy, that dynamic can be neither created nor destroyed; it can, however, change form.  Unfortunately, that form is often awkwardness and complication. 

High school teachers could not have explained such everyday applications of science to 18 year olds.  When we’re young, relationships are laughable, friends are interchangeable, and “careers” involve drive-throughs and swimming pools.  Contrary to what we believed at the time, life was neither complicated nor real at that age.  I suppose that’s why reckless abandon thrives when we’re young.

The same doesn’t go for now.  Good friends are hard to come by, careers are a coveted commodity, and finding an enduring dynamic is harder and harder.  Funneling energy into another person has become a risky endeavor, as unsuccessful attempts can easily result in ugly mutations of what was once positive energy.  Even more, the unknowable impact of the energy’s equal and opposite reaction—on friends, on family, on ourselves—can debilitate our possibilities in the future.  Realizing this, it’s difficult to rationalize the risk considering its hazards. 

Math class may have taught statistics and probability and physics class the undiscriminating effects of gravity in a vacuum, but no one ever taught me the irony behind Newton’s third law of motion.  It can cause (relationship) paralysis.

I’m plagued by menu choice regret.  You know when you’re at a restaurant and you simply cannot decide what to eat?  Finally, you make a decision—usually prompted by the server returning to take an order and, as the only person at the table that has yet to decide, you hastily spurt out the first thing you see in that sweaty-palmed moment.  Story of my dining life…

Then, when everyone else’s Pad Khee Mao and Pad See Ewe arrives, my eyes tear up when my Golden Noodles pale in comparison.  No matter how hard I try, I more-often-than-not regret whatever I order.  Other people’s food looks like it just tastes so much better.  Common sense dictates that I simply ask what everyone else is going to order and copy one of them.  Given my track record, though, it seems pretty unfair to drag down others with my bad entrée luck.  I suppose I’m a menu martyr in that sense.

In thinking about what this says about me (besides my over-thinking the difference between rice and egg noodles), I believe it speaks to topics beyond dining out.  A restaurant menu is microcosm of one’s life.  From unlimited iced tea refills signifying that “gotta go” feeling you see on commercials for Flomax to the $1 cost to substitute a salad for fries paralleling a retirement fund, it’s all represented and it all represents something.  If I only really knew what those representations were…

My diagnostic for this state of my food-based union can be pared down to one of the two truths to the restaurant that is my life.  Either a. I am famished but nothing looks good, or b. the menu looks incredible, but I am simply not hungry. 

Jobs, relationships, geography—you name it, it applies. 

As easy as it would be to blame the pressure to make decisions on the over-zealous restaurant server, it is ultimately my own multiple choice test to complete.  Certain tips, like sticking to the first three or four entrees listed on the menu, tend to help in decision making.  Such strategies are generalizations, however, and only band-aid the larger problem of not knowing myself well enough to know whether it’s hunger or boredom. 

Until I evolve enough to make that distinction, I will abide by one simple rule:  Eat to live, don’t live to eat.

If I were to ever become a criminal, I would totally be a peeping tom.  I guess you could call it my crime of choice.  I’m not interested in people nearly as much as I am their environments, though.  Illuminated apartments line residential streets at night and I am more-than-happy to critique the interior design of each and every one.  In my estimation, so long as my feet are firmly planted on the sidewalk, it’s not my fault that some of my neighbors choose not to close their blinds…and it’s not my fault that my dog takes her time when doing her nighttime “business.”  Yep, some city dwellers are pretty much asking to be observed. 

Voyeurism has changed a great deal in a short amount of time, however.  In the technological age, it’s no longer just neighbors.  In fact, physical proximity couldn’t have less to do with our ability to spy on others’ lives.  If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, then we’re thinking about facebook.  It’s internet stalking at its finest.  Or is it?  People join facebook, after all.  They accept and deny friend requests.  They post pictures of their lives.  It is literally getting what you sign up for.  While facebook peepers may not have their fingertips planted on your window sill, those same fingertips are firmly grasping their mouse while observing the aspects of life you’ve chosen to share. 

With this in mind, I am extremely cautious with what elements of my life I offer the online world.  I’ve seen those segments on the last hour of the Today Show, after all, where girls-gone-wild style spring break photos ended up on myspace and ultimately caused a college senior to lose her job offer at Ernst & Young.  With my sweet pea of an English Bulldog to support in this world, I can’t risk such consequences.   There will be no wet t-shirt contests for me, thank you very much. 

But not everyone is so protective of their inner-most world in regards to social networking. 

After multiple facebook friend requests from a girl that I went to junior high and high school with, I finally clicked ‘accept.’  Fully admitted, it was the beginning of me lowering my bar for facebook friends from ‘true friends only’ to ‘okay…I sort of know you and I want to spy on your life.’  While I had/have no beef whatsoever with this girl, I spoke (at most) two dozen words to her in the six years that we were classmates.  At this point, I would struggle to even call her an acquaintance, but I will. 

Over the months that followed our bonafied facebook friendship, I began to learn about her life from her status updates:  she is married, has three children, is a military wife, etc.  A few weeks in, the tone of her statuses began to change, though.  They said things like:

“Alice Aquaintance woke up with a pit in her stomach.” 

A few days later she wrote, “Alice Aquaintance is NOT excited about her new life.”

These phrases were far more serious than the commentaries about public transportation, bowel movements, and fashion faux pas that I am used to on facebook.  Suspicious and bored, I investigated.  It took all of fourteen seconds to discover that Alice’s husband had asked for a divorce, leaving her and her three kids on their own.  And I think that I have problems…

Over the days that followed, Alice’s status updates charted the steps of her new life. 

“Alice Aquaintance is in her new apartment and now needs to find a job.”    

What had been a superficial and entertaining glimpse into 228 of my closest friends’ lives had become way too real for me.  I was witnessing the very personal struggles of someone I barely know.  It felt wrong, as though I had gone too far.  Or she had gone too far.  Someone had gone too far.

It’s been a week or two since Alice has updated her facebook status, a fact that I attribute to her job hunt.  I find myself wondering if she and her children are okay.  I wonder if she knows that someone like me, someone who cannot even recall a specific conversation I have ever had with her, knows that she is struggling.  I wonder if she would mind that I know. 

As someone who has difficulty letting anyone—even my nearest and dearest—truly into my life, Alice Aquaintance is a source of great curiosity for me.  I’m unsure whether I envy her openness or question her judgment for sharing so much of her life online.  In either case, I can attribute one lesson to Alice:  Whether from the sidewalk or on your laptop, voyeurism isn’t always like facebook—you don’t necessarily get what you sign up for.

Having a number of years of drinking under my belt (a portion of them legally so), I have a good sense of when to say when, when to switch to water, and when to hunt down that invaluable 3am burrito.  If you’re laughing to yourself when reading the previous sentence, you either know me well or know how impossible it is to always identify any of those scenarios.  But I try and that’s all anyone can ask, right?

This weekend past, I chose to exercise option number three.  Burrito me, por favor.  It wasn’t absurdly late by any means.  By “not late” I mean that I didn’t close down the bar.  En route to the Chicago culinary landmark known as Taco Burrito Palace, I ran into a guy that I had met months ago, on St. Patrick’s Day.  I stopped after passing him, standing stationary on the sidewalk.  He seemed lost.  Not lost in a soul-searching way, but lost in a literal, “where am I?” way. 

I re-introduced myself.  He said he remembered me and shared a few somewhat creepy, somewhat flattering comments along the lines of “I know more about you than you think.”  As I’m not on any sex offender registry, I take such comments as compliments. 

Being a much kinder drunk than I am a sober citizen, I snapped into care-taker mode and invited the Lost Boy of Lakeview to get a burrito because—let’s be honest—when isn’t a burrito the answer to life’s problems? 

On our short walk to the Palace, I asked him, “What are you doing?”  I meant this in a “Where have you been?”  ”Where are your friends?” kind of way. 

His answer was nothing short of shocking. 

“I want to keep you company tonight.” 

First of all, that response didn’t necessarily answer my question.  Well, maybe it sort of did, but not in any expected way.  Secondly and more importantly, the only people who keep others “company” are of the…uhhh…compensated variety.  We all remember Eliot Spitzer (aka Client #9), after all. 

While I may have had a few to drink, I was no dummy.  Not wanting to hastily jump to the conclusion that I was, in fact, propositioned by a professional, I remained calm and focused on my burrito-to-be (at the time only three store fronts away).  The Lost Boy of Lakeview joined.  Unsure how to free myself from the situation I had found myself in, I resorted to my mantra:  When isn’t a burrito the answer to life’s problems?  Whether or not I had inadvertently contracted myself some “company” for the night, it was time to cut and run.  My distraction of choice?  Chorizo. 

Calmly, confidently and coolly, I ordered two burritos to go.  When they were ready, so was I.  I grabbed mine from the top of the bag, gave the other to the Lost Boy and bid him farewell without pause or hesitation. 

Though I felt lucky to avert what could have been a total disaster, I realized that I wasn’t off the hook scot-free:  two Taco Burrito Palace burritos set me back $9.  Fork over $9 not to become the next Client #9?  I’d call that a bargain.

Holidays, for the most part, are anniversaries.  I suppose there are exceptions like Arbor Day (there can’t exactly be an anniversary for the invention of trees, after all), but for the most part holidays commemorate the beginning of something—births of nations, births of religious figures, births of political figures, etc.

For many, though, time attaches new meanings to holidays. Anniversaries of quill pens signing historic documents are trumped by our personal memories attached to those dates (such as vomiting off excessive amounts of Boone’s Farm on country roads).  I remember the saying “there’s a reason for the season” during Christmastime…it was a religious argument against the secularization (and subsequently the subjectivization) of the holidays.  It’s an optimistic sentiment at best.

There’s no doubt that we understand the world through our own, unique experience within it.  The same goes for those dates that society holds sacred.  It only takes one traumatic New Year’s Eve to never again ditch out on your two closest homeboys, Ben & Jerry, on December 31st.

Among the hardest parts of personally detrimental dates aligning with holidays is their inescapability.  Burying yourself in work isn’t easy when the entire country is off of work that day.  It’s as though the world is punishing you by forever dedicating time and attention to dates you’d rather forget.  The irony of all ironies comes when holidays (again, usually symbolizing ‘birth’ in some capacity) remind of endings.

I once boasted the Fourth of July as my favorite holiday.  I appreciated its non-religiousness (and, thereby, inclusiveness), its summertime weather, and its emphasis on food-and-drink.  The fireworks and proximity to my birthday never hurt either.  As time has worked its black magic on me, however, I don’t know if I can still claim the Fourth as such.

While appreciated for its non-religiousness, I nevertheless see its biblical relevancies:  The Fourth giveth, and the Fourth taketh away.