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Chuck E's In Love - So I Made A List!

After ending a particularly grueling and painful relationship, and then crawling home to mother where I licked my wounds, I thought I'd never see the light of love in a man's eyes again.

Not that I'd recognize it, mind you. All along I must have been looking at cataracts or something. Who knows?

Besides, you would have thought that I was through with relationships, through with men, through with love.

But no!

Sometimes I think of myself as that ant in Frank Sinatra's version of High Hopes "you can't move that rubber tree plant." Or maybe it's just good old plain Aries stubbornness (why go around that mountain when you can just ram it down?).

Ever seen a couple of male Bighorn sheep go at it? Yeah, that's me. I learn the hard way.

Well, here's something I learned that was actually kind of easy. At least after I decided to get *smart* about it.

After crawling home to momma, rearranging my bedroom a million times and finally remembering why I left home in the first place - I tried my hand at dating.

First, a dear friend of mine, Timothy, who everybody calls Mitch (go figure), set me up with a Lieutenant in the Navy (someone we met in a bar). I thought, ok, I can do this, my dad was in the Navy, my grandpa was in the Navy, and. . .

It didn't work. After driving 50 miles to hike halfway up a mountain at a pace only a member of the armed forces would enjoy, I said sayonara, not my kind of guy.

Oh, he was nice enough, but not for me.

My second sojourn into this dating thing was a little more disastrous. Another old friend and her husband (I won't mention names here) set me up with a guy that was always the fifth leg to their party of two. (I think that maybe this was really the husband's idea).

I even went to an old high school reunion of a high school I didn't graduate from but attended in my formative learn-my-body-is-female years. I must've been nuts for that one - is it perseverance or what?

Mind you, this was the place I experienced the most humiliation growing up. You know the place, you've been there I'm sure.

Anyway, as it turns out, the wife really, really liked the guy I dated and wouldn't speak to me when we arrived late at the reunion. All night I got the cold shoulder. Sheesh. I was damned coming and going (which is what she thought we were doing I bet). And as fate would have it, I ended up driving home with the husband and she the fifth leg. Oh well. I drove so fast outta there I got a speeding ticket.

My second in six months. Not a nice man. And not for me.

Onto to my third and final disaster. I went with Timothy to a party at Fran's house. There I met someone I liked. Not too old, yet not too young. Not too skinny, not too fat. The guy had a great laugh, a company car and a paying job! I had hit pay dirt.

And yep, we hit it off. Immediately. I was on cloud nine. 'Til Monday anyway when he told his EX girlfriend that he'd found someone else.

You know what happened.

Even though SHE kicked him out SHE wanted him back. It seems some people always want what they can't have anymore - even if they don't really want it. He called me and apologized, but said he still loved his ex-girlfriend.

A very nice man. But not for me.

By this time I was devastated. A year had almost passed and everyone around me, the people I hung out with, all had somebody. Even our friend Chuck, who - most of us believed - would be practicing safe sex with a vinyl glove for the rest of his life.

Timothy told me one night at the desert, as we sat in our lawn chairs along the irrigation canal and above the rest of the members of our camping trip -"look Laurie - look at Chuck - he's got someone - there's hope for you yet!"

Sure enough I looked down at our campsite where Chuck, practically naked in nothing but a pair of shorts and his chest hair - walked across the campsite to his new love Fran. Someone loved Chuck.

Timothy's laugh boomed from his belly while he gave me that look that said we both knew if there was hope for Chuck, there was hope for me. (At least I didn't have to worry about an overgrown, needs-to-be-clipped chest - at least not too much!).

I agreed. If there was hope for Chuck there was hope for me. And I laughed. I think it was then that something broke free.

Chuck, God love him, is a weird duck. He's one of those people who won't eat their baloney with anything but white bread and nothing else. NOTHING ELSE! Imagine!

Or how about the time in the early 80's when we had him over for dinner. As he heartily ate the food we'd prepared, obviously enjoying it, he asked what he was eating (not knowing it was Eggplant Parmesan). Upon hearing what it was, the food in his mouth suddenly appeared on his plate in a small mound, just like a kid.

Next he asked for baloney. With plain white bread.

Then there's the bit after a few beers where he lights the hair on his chest on fire. And puts it out. The smell is enough to gag you. When you look at his chest for the burned patch, you won't find the chest for the hairs.

But enough of Chuck. And on to the point of this written missal.

I'd decided I'd had enough. So I made a list.

Makes sense? Right? Right!

When you're going to the grocery store and you need to remember the items you need - you make a list. When you have tasks to prioritize - you make a list. When you have a project to complete - well, you get the point.

So I thought why wouldn't this work with a man? You see - I live in a place where the universe is a great big cosmic creative Playdo. And most anything is ours if we really want it. But you gotta know how to ask. And you gotta be real clear in your asking. You know the old saying: "Be Careful What You Wish For - You May Just Get It."

After having a few disasters in the arena of "Creating My Own Reality," I learned to be real specific. My list I mean. What I learned was this: it's not about asking for the good things, the positive things. You gotta ask for both. It's a little bit like reverse psychology.

Let's admit it - when it really comes down to it - it's not the good stuff that's hard to live with - that's easy. It's the bad stuff you need to think about. You have to be as clear about what you don't want - as you are about what you want. Get that?

No? Ok, I'll repeat it.

You have to be as clear about what you don't want - as you are about what you do want.

One more time for good measure: be clear about what you want - but be just as clear about what you don't want.

In the past, I always had ideals of what I wanted in a man, a relationship, but I wasn't real clear about what I didn't want. And, I feel quite frankly, that's why I drew situations to me that were not ideal. I'm not bemoaning my past. I'm grateful that it's over, that's all.

So I drew a line down the middle of the page so-to-speak. In one column I wrote positive characteristics of my ideal man. In the other column I wrote the negative characteristics. The positive ones were easy. It was the negative ones that were hard.

It's a lot like creating a 3-D sculpture. It's the negative space that defines the positive space and makes it three-dimensional. You have to define it.

In the negative column I wrote down the negative traits I would not accept. Literally. These were things that I didn't want to live with - at all.

I went back and forth for a while, defining this list and finally wrote up the entire list as one thing. For instance:

My List

Likes Movies
Likes Outdoors
Is Not Prejudice - is Open Minded
An old friend
Is spiritual
Loves music - but not country (sorry to you country-loving types!)

I stacked the cards. Big time. I looked at my completed list, and basically sent it back into the universe - which really means I promptly forgot about it. (Don't you just love how this New Age stuff works?)

About a month later I stopped off at Timothy's house for my after-work beer and conversation. As I walked up the steps to the front door, Timothy's voice burst across the distance. He was talking to someone on the phone. And by the conversation, I knew it was someone I knew.

I walked in the house and he promptly handed me the phone. I got on the line and just started talking not knowing who or (what?) I was speaking too. The person said I bet you don't remember me - and I didn't. It turned out to be another old friend of ours that I hadn't seen in 20 plus years.

As an old friend, he extended an invitation to me to come up to the Bay Area (I was in San Diego and everybody knows that North is Up) for a few days of R and R. He said we could go sailing. Maybe have a beer or two. Take in a movie - whatever.

Of course, you know this invitation was issued in the sincerest of friendship. There was really no thought in my mind at the time of anything coming of this - I'd had it. Gordon was really a good old friend.

Well - the rest is history. Four years later and a year and a half after our marriage, where yes, Timothy attended, you will find me to be the happiest woman on earth. Really. I swear.

And the list? Does it work? You bet.

Out of the 43 qualities of what I wanted and didn't want, how many do you think he met? Go ahead - guess.

I'm sure you're gonna say 100%. But no, you're wrong.

I'll settle for point 9302325581395. Or how about just plain old 93%.

I don't know 'bout you - but in my book 93% is an A!

And the list? I suggest you try it.

As for me - I make lists for EVERYTHING now.

©2000-2007 - All rights reserved - you may download and use this article please provide a link back to my website or show my resource box on your site. (Originally published in 2000)

Article Source: http://www.newagelivingarticles.com

Laurie Brenner, former managing editor of California's oldest continuously published weekly, now writes for the sheer *joy* of it, her ezine, The View From The Western Slope and for New Age Living Articles to share with you tools and insights for living in this new "quantum age."

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