Saturday, March 23, 2013

Single Takes

This one's more of a reflective journal entry.

There's a concept in attraction called "the double-take." Most of us know what this means. In the event that you don't, here's the explanation: when you look at something to perceive it, it can be said that you are "taking it in." This is usually said of beautiful landscapes, but applies equally well to beautiful things of any nature. When a person looks at someone, looks away, and feels compelled to look back at them a second time to get a better look, that's called a "double take." It usually is accompanied by funny facial gestures (if you happen to catch a person doing this) and a sudden snap of the neck, as the head swivels back in the direction of the person of interest.

Generally, the double-take happens because the impression you get of a person is ambiguous; you can't make up their mind if what you saw indicated that they are very attractive or very unattractive (and the irony is, consequently, that they're usually one or the other, not anything in between), and so, being naturally curious, you try to catch a better glimpse. This leaves you either unimpressed or pleasantly surprised, depending on which it was.

I've never noticed anyone 'do a double-take' while looking at me, however. But I've noticed something different, and that's what I call the "single take." Let me try to explain it to you:

Since the double take involves a person looking at (in the vernacular, one might say "checking out") another person once, and then doing it again after a pause, doing a single take would consist of only looking at a person once. So what makes it distinct from just your regular ol' garden-variety "looking?" 

It is my belief that girls have caught a glimpse of me out of the corner of their eye, causing them to wonder whether the shape moving about in the periphery of their vision is something worth seeing, and so they look to get a better view. But when they look away, they never look back. Whether this is because they determined I was attractive or repulsive is something that I toss around in my mind nearly every time it happens, and I think it will remain unresolved for the rest of my life, or at least until I'm engaged, when I won't care about what people in public think about me, and when I'll have no doubt what my beloved thinks of me.

So there you have it. Single takes are when someone sees you out of the corner of their eye and feels compelled to turn their head to get a better look at you. 

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Pardon me if this entry comes off as self-indulgent! That's not my intention at all. I simply figured that, since the purpose of this blog is to give insights into what your early-20-something male thinks about, that would naturally include mundane thoughts about women, romance and flirting, since these are things that I actually do think about. Now, I won't toot my own horn, because I recognize the pervasive nature of pride, but for the benefit of my readers, it might help you to know that I'm moderately attractive. (I know this empirically, having been told by a number of females in my age group.) This makes life more interesting and confusing for me, in my opinion, than it would if I was hideously repulsive or outrageously handsome, since there would be less confusion about what girls who make various facial gestures while looking at me might be thinking about. In fact, that's a great topic for another entry.

For older readers, this might be boring and I understand if you skip posts where I spill my naive musings about relationships. But I figured I would post it, all the same, for people to choose to read what interests them.



~ Rak Chazak

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