2003-09-26 - 6:02 p.m.
August 26, 2003
---- said that when a guy talks about the girl he likes the only reason he can give for liking her is, “I don’t know, I just really like her.” A few minutes later, “Oh, man, I just like her.” When ---- enacts this scene he can be very funny. Meanwhile, says ----, girls will sit around for the same three hours and recount all the adorable things their guy does. The effect is pretty much the same: no one really understands why they like one person and not a thousand others. All those adorable things--which the rest of the world thinks are annoying--say nothing about why you think the person is wonderful.
Sorry to take the wind out of your sail, but women also sit around unable to say anything specific about the love of their life. I have always been stumped by the question and after one friend pinned me down with that question in the ninth grade I have done everything to avoid it since. When Theresa fell in love, all she could tell her family, over and over and over and over again was, “He is awesome!” Kateri finally turned to me for an explanation: why was Doug so awesome? I shrugged and told her what little I had gleaned from living with Theresa, which was nothing substantial.
Later in our conversation I told her about the two model families (not by any means perfect, but models all the same) I encountered in the last year, including the Whalen family I had the pleasure of knowing for a few days. I want to ask him (Dr. Whalen) what his wife does that makes him want to love and serve her the way he does nine children later. What does she do that is so inspiring so I can do it too? We sipped our coffee with that question hanging in the air, when I looked at her with a grin: “You know what would be funny, is if he told me, ‘I don’t know, I just like her!’”. An answer at once uncharacteristic of Dr. Whalen, very unhelpful, and chock-full with mirth.
