Ripe bananas and pick-ups

A friend was telling a story about something that happened in her life. She said she was looking over the bananas in a grocery store and a man asked her if she was looking for the ripe ones. Then he helped her pick some. There’s a lot more to the story, but that’s the part that’s important for what I want to write about.

Another friend replied that "are you looking for the ripe ones" is probably a pick up line. Then, after another exchange, she jokingly asked, “Didn't your parents teach you anything?”

I’ll admit that my parents didn’t teach me anything about connecting with women and dating – at least anything worth knowing. I’m sure they didn’t know all that much of value. I have no idea how they got together – how they met or started their first conversation. About all I know is that they liked to dance together and that they pushed that as THE way for me to connect with women. I, of course, being as resistant to my parents as I was, refused to learn to dance. Maybe it’s best that they didn’t try to teach me anything really valuable. I probably would have resisted that, too. As it was, I was free to learn anything that might be really helpful to me without it being contaminated by shoulds from my parents.

So I’ve spent much of my adult life learning about relationships. I’ve learned quite a bit, and I’ve developed some ideas about what works for people like me and what doesn’t. For quite a few years in Seattle I taught a class I called New Ways to Meet New People. It wasn’t, as I emphasized to the participants, about the RIGHT ways to meet new people. It was just ways to meet people that were different than what I saw most people doing, ways that had different results, ways that worked better for, as I said, people like me.

But, that’s all really just introduction to what I want to say.

I don’t understand the whole idea of pick-up lines. He says to her, “Are you looking for the ripe ones?” Then she’s supposed to say, “Yes, I’ll go out with you” because she gets that he’s trying to pick her up? Does that actually happen in real life?

And how is he supposed to know from just seeing her in the produce aisle trying to choose bananas that they have anything in common other than an affinity for long yellow fruit? Or maybe all he cares about is that he finds her physically attractive. That seems to be all it takes for a lot of people to want to begin dating. People like me want to know what kind of person she is in addition to whether we like her body.

What I do understand is conversation starters. He says, “Are you looking for the ripe ones?” and then they begin to talk and get to know a few things about each other. Eventually (maybe only 5 or 10 minutes there in the produce aisle, but after learning something interesting about her), he says (or she says, because, yes, women can initiate dates with men), “Would you be interested in continuing getting to know each other? How about if we go to lunch?” (or something like that).

She doesn’t have to guess what he means by “Are you looking for the ripe ones?” All he was doing was starting a conversation (and being helpful). If they talk more and think they’d like to keep talking, then either of them can say so openly. No pick up lines, just conversation leading to a clear request. I understand that. That’s what works for people like me.

It occurs to me that I could well have missed the subtle implications of what women have said to me any number of times in life. I know I did one time when I was in my mid-20s and recently out of my first marriage. She asked me, “Where do you live?” I told her. It didn’t occur to me until weeks later that she might have been asking me to take her home with me. I freely admit that I’m slow about picking up on things like that. That’s why people like me prefer clear communication and explicit requests.

And furthermore, it takes me (and people like me) longer to decide I want to date someone than it does the “usual” person. Maybe I’ve missed out on some great times by being so incredibly slow to initiate dates. But I tend to wait until I know women and really know we have something of interest to explore before I ask for a date. I’m sure that’s the reason a fairly large number of women have asked me out. They probably got tired of waiting for me to take the initiative. I’ll consider that possibility.

Anyway, I’m with Jillianne. I wouldn’t have taken “Are you looking for the ripe ones?” as a pick-up line. I would have just taken it as an offer of help with bananas. If he (or she, in my case) wanted more than that, she would have had to say more. And, if I wanted more than that, I would have taken it as my responsibility to say more than that. I wouldn’t have expected her to guess what I really meant.

And if you, like some people, think I’m taking all the romance out of it by wanting clear and explicit communication, then that means that we wouldn’t get along with each other anyway. Neither of us is wrong. We’re just different, and we both have the right and the privilege to have it our way in our relationships – just not with each other.

Namaste,
Michael