Date A Girl Who Reads “Date A Girl Who…” Essays

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As I’m sure you’ve heard, you should date a girl who reads, who travels, who doesn’t read, and who has never been out of her hometown.

You should date a girl you know, and date a girl you’ve never met. Date a girl who is so sure of herself it is frightening, as if even her thoughts could be as alive as she is. Date a girl with confidence like sunbeams shining out of her face or however that quote goes, and date a girl who is sensational. Date a girl that lights up the whole room and who is unforgettably smiley and charismatic. That could be exciting.

On the other hand, maybe you should date a girl with no self-worth. Date a girl who cannot look in the mirror at her naked self without brutal, hateful criticism. Date a girl who is overweight, who is underweight, who has a fat-in-another-lifetime-but-now-I’m-skinny mindset. Date a girl with an eating disorder or date a girl who has overcome an eating disorder and who has fought her demons. Date a girl without demons, date a girl with many demons, date a girl who believes in demons, and date a girl who is literally possessed by a demon. Seriously.

Also, it’s been said that you should date a girl who can navigate the roads or the trains or the subway. Date a girl who can read a map, but has fun getting lost. Date a girl who enjoys the accent on her GPS and has named it and even cultivated a relationship with it. You may never get where you want to go, but this girl has a friend in her electronics so I guess there’s that.

If none of those other girls work out, date a girl who can listen, and date a girl who knows that listen and silent are spelled with the same letters because that means she experienced a top notch education. Date a girl who is a student of a school, or a student of life. Love her for her degrees and her mind but if she has none, love her for that too.

Date a girl who likes to drink. Date a girl who can throw back more of your favorite beer than you. Date a girl who only likes colorful, sugary drinks. Date a girl who likes both, and even a girl who likes neither. Date a girl who knows her limits or date a girl who has none. Date a girl who will tipsily walk back home with you when you tell her she’s had enough. Date a girl who will make you feel like you can’t get enough.

But, actually, put simply: you should date any girl who draws you in with just one peculiarity. Date this kind of boy too, if you want. Date them for a short time, or date them for a long time. Don’t date this person because of the quality of their quirk, but instead date them because they have one at all.

Get out there and woo those girls and boys with these one liner personalities, and then become very pleasantly surprised when you fall deeply in love. Take a giant leap of faith on this girl with the epithet.

Learn everything there is to know about the one characteristic that has defined them for years, but more importantly learn everything else — all the weird things, the unknown things, the shameful things and the things they love. And then learn even more. Learn about all their sides and their moods and their dreams. Memorize everything about them for fun.

You should date someone that has 4,000 words worth of nuances about this one single detail because can you even imagine the breadth and depth of all their other pieces that don’t get projected to the world? You should date this person and grow beside them, with them and for them. Grow so much together that with all your shared and adopted details you could write an actual 80 thousand word novel of all your nuances.

Along with all the other kinds of growing that my detailed instructions involve, don’t forget to grow old and grow wise. Grow old and watch your children, grandchildren and great great-grandchildren date their own girls who whatever. Nod sagely because you know what it all means. Grow old and happy and smile adoringly at your own aging, radiant labyrinth of a lover.

Remember meeting her for the first time, thinking wow I’ve always wanted to date a girl like this. Remember her hand holding a coffee cup or was is it a pen, or in that moment was it actually a book because you wanted to date a girl who likes to read? Or was it a girl who likes to write? You can’t remember exactly, it was so long ago. You vaguely remember learning about her favorite books (or was it her favorite brand of notebook?) because that’s how she minimized herself for the sake of simplicity, but now those insignificant details have blurred and instead of small, obscure preferences, you know every true part of her without bounds or limits.

You know how your hand fits in hers exactly, where all the grooves and years of handholding have perfectly imprinted a spot just for you. You can remember the night she got that scar on her pointer finger, and you can remember all the things these hands have made over the years. Think of all the diverse and random things you love about even just her hands, and then try to reduce her in your mind once again. Desperately try and remember her as she was when she just A Girl Who Whatever.

Realize there’s no such thing.

featured image – Eric May