When I was in junior high, one of the boys in the school said to me at a band concert, “why don’t you sit on my lap and see what pops up”. I was mortified, but not because I had any clue what he meant by that statement, but rather the implication that it must be vulgar in some way. My girlfriends and I never talked to each other in one line banter, so it was dismissed as disgusting and I proceeded to avoid this guy. Which of course being in junior high my running away from him only made him chase me more, ah the clueless of youth. Now to this day, I wish this clueless mentality had worn off, and yet men are still using pickup lines on me and I am still confused by them.
Last weekend, I had a guy approach me to ask where the washroom was, then proceed to try and chat me up in a number of different ways. None of which worked including “you look like the type of girl who enjoys football” (no I was not wearing a jersey or anything of the sort). Did I react with some witty banter, or tell him to get lost as years of “practice” should have taught me? Oh no, I sat there just hoping the guy would get the hint with one word answers, and when that failed I pulled out my phone and completely ignored him until he went away. I could not muster up the words to say flatly that I was not interested, or that he was creeping me out. Oh no, I did the passive aggressive pretend he wasn’t there, my modern day version of just running away.
Is this a direct result of woman being cultured to be far too polite for their own goods? When I re-iterated this story to some male friends, they naturally asked why I did not just say screw off. And of course that is what I should have done, but the guy was in no way rude or abrasive so I just could not bring myself to be outright rude to him. But as with every pickup line, the guys have a motive behind them whether vulgar, or sweet. They are opening you up to a conversation, and for some damn reason I still feel uncomfortable after all these years speaking my mind to a complete stranger who means absolutely nothing to me.
I guess my inability to react in a rational way to pickup lines is just one of the reasons that guys still try and use them. And I am sorry to all my female friends out there, that I have done absolutely nothing to call out the douche, who uses them in a creepy way. I will try in future if for nothing else than to prevent somebody else feeling that uncomfortable skin crawling feeling when some stranger uses an unwelcome one liner.