Man Speech

I don’t actually have a Man Speech, but I wish I would have written one long ago. Normally, when I meet a girl and I want to impress on her that I would be an ideal mate / boyfriend / lover / husband, I try to be witty by saying something like, “You’ll love me. I’m housebroken. I put the toilet seat down!” Well, I’ve reached the age when I realize that I should plan ahead and start with preventive maintainence right from the beginning of a relationship. I should have done this all along. It’s never too soon to start serious relationship damage control. The next time I meet a girl, she will get my Man Speech in which I detail all my faults and defects. If she is foolish enough to continue associating with me, she will have no one to blame but herself. I haven’t exactly worked out all the details of this Man Speech of mine, but I feel that I should tell her absolutely every one of my faults, if she’ll listen to me talk long enough to make a fool of myself. I think my Man Speech should go something like this:

Are you sure you want to date me? I’m too emotionally needy. I’m too clingy. I bite my nails. Are you ready for that? I have a lot of emotional baggage, too. So much, that I won’t be able to lug around your emotional baggage, too. And, I also have a few faults. I’m selfish. I demand a lot of attention. I’m a loner. And I bite my nails. I don’t take orders well. Eventually, I’ll take you for granted. Can you deal with that? I will forget your birthday, your ring size, and your anniversary of when we met. I will forget everything important about you. You will be annoyed when I become obsessed by cleaning the lint from my belly button while I’m supposed to be listening to you. You will yell and scream at me, and justifiably so, and it won’t even faze me, which will make you angrier, which in turn will alienate me from you. I will forget to buy you flowers, but I will remember to make up some lame excuse as to why I forgot. And, by the way, I bite my nails.

What do you think of my Man Speech? Sure it needs a little more polishing, but I’ll keep working on improving it. When the day comes that she is so angry at me that she wants to strangle me, I can tell her that I warned her right from the moment we met. Surely, the moment will come when she absolutely hates me absolutely, for reasons unbeknownst to me, and she tells me how evil I am, even more evil than (insert your most hated person here). But I will be able to tell her, “I warned you! I told you that I bite my nails! And just how exactly does biting my nails make me evil and a a world terrorizer?” That’s the beauty of my Man Speech! I’ve anticipated many of the potential problems that would destroy our relationship. This Man Speech will solve many of my future relationship problems because if I actually deliver this Man Speech to a prospective prospect, I will never have another romantic relationship. But, hey, I can daydream!