Rock-tober 22, 2015

Gents, name one thing you've done in an attempt to impress a girl.

In college, Corey, one of my buds asked for my help in baking some cookies. I scratched my head and cocked an eyebrow. "Dude, you realize baking is not a standard bro activity, right?" He then professed his infatuation with a girl he'd just met, and in his mind, baked goods were the way to her heart. So now we're in his trailer working off a recipe he found somewhere scrawled in his chicken scratch.

"Hey, Corey, we need the baking powder."
"Umm."
"You don't have baking powder."
"Umm. I've got baking soda."
"Dude. Not the same."
"You sure?"

We commenced to bake a very large cookie shaped in the girl's initials. Of course, it didn't set or even bake properly, and I told him as much. He gets the bright idea to make another batch, again sans baking powder, and deliver raw cookie dough to the subject of his infatuation. I had to go along because, you know, I'm a good wing man, and I just had to watch the end of this tale. God bless her, she was very gracious. Corey was pretty excited as we left her dorm.

"Hey, man, what do you think? I think she dug it."
"Yeeaaahh...I don't know man."
"...but we even made it in the shape of her initials again."

Turnabout is fair play, and for my own story, I'm back in high school. We're on some band trip, parked at some random McDonald's grabbing some lunch. By this time, Top Gun had been playing in theaters for a while.

*sigh*

You know where I'm going with this, right? I turned to one of the guys sitting near me and uttered those fateful words, "Hey, watch this."

I strode over to this cute French horn player's table where she was surrounded by her friends, stood in front of her, and said to the guy standing next to me, "You know, I think she's lost that loving feeling." I then launched into my rendition of that Righteous Brothers hit. Unbeknownst to me, a group of guys had gathered behind me. When the chorus rolled around, they all joined in. I'm not sure who was more surprised, me or the cute French horn player. She turned several shades of red, but she let us finish. God bless her, she was very gracious.

Shortly after the famous raw cookie dough incident I was over at Corey's. His roommate left a tape in the VCR after a date with his girlfriend. We didn't have anything else going on so we hit Play. It turns out the movie was Say Anything. When the iconic scene of Lloyd serenading Diane with a boombox cranking Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" played, Corey jumped up and yelled, "That! That's what I was picturing in my head!" Remembering my own attempt to impress a girl, I told him, "Yeeaaahh...I don't think we were that smooth."