MGF Best: If They Told Us to Jump Off a Bridge…

Seriously...I REALLY wanted to write tonight. But I am so out of it right now (thanks to my dinner experience you'll probably hear about tomorrow), I can't even sit straight. However, you know me...good old Type-A Lily. Can't leave it alone even if I was dying. So...here's a little treat from the not so distant past. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to run a couple miles or something. - Lily

I snorted and laughed as Lenny read from the article. Somehow he had stumbled upon a Netscape article entitled “Her Top Apres-Sex Requests” (A fancy way of saying: What She Wants to Do After Sex). Now, when he first clicked the article, about four guesses came to mind. I figured that those were “gimmes” so, being a girl who was brought up on Cosmo and Glamour’s love/sex advice, I wondered what new and exciting things the article would say.

What Lily Guessed: Cuddling, a nap, to talk, and/or take another “spin around the block.”

What the Article Was About: (directly quoted) She Wants to Cuddle; She Wants to Chat; She Wants to Do It Again; and She Wants a Nap.

I kid you not! Except for the order, I called exactly what the article was about. I sat there flabbergasted and frustrated. I wanted to stand up and scream “No shit, Sherlock!”

With the speed of light, my mind started working. Lenny took one look at me and said, “You’re going to write about this aren’t you?” My answer? Please refer to the previous paragraph.

My frustration comes to this: When did we stop listening to the point where we had to be told simple things? The Netscape article is really a great simple example. How far did they have to dig for those answers? If you are even halfway awake, its common sense to know that your chances of landing her in bed again are GREATLY diminished when you simply roll over and go to sleep. And come on guys…since when has a woman NOT told you what they want in some way, shape, or form about what they’re looking for after hitting the sheets? We are a bit more vocal these days.

We’ve stopped thinking and listening for ourselves and depend way too much on what other people tell us. The loss of independent thinking is greatly disturbing to me. Humans are willing to be led around by media or groups of people we have placed blind faith in. Think about the last time you went to a doctor. How much of that information did you really digest on your own? Probably not a lot of it. Because there was a degree on the wall of the office, you probably figured the doctor knew what they were talking about. They spent 8 years going to medical school – they should know best about your body, right?

But, taking second and third hand information and accepting it as fact is just not a gamble I’m willing to take. Doctors are human. They have been known to make mistakes (like the emergency doctor who sent me home with gall stones).

Parents – you wouldn’t even think of sending your child to a school nowadays without doing some research on it, right? I know parents who visit the potential high schools or colleges with their kids. Their decisions are not based on what their next door neighbor said. Most of time, it’s a combination of many resources and bases of research. In some cases, I’ve seen parents comb the internet for message boards, interview teachers, and even had their kids shadow students for a day.

But these are the same parents, who after all that research, time, and effort – don’t bother to see why their children are failing in school. Oh no, the kids tell them it’s because the teacher sucks. And we all know that kids wouldn’t stoop to tell a lie to get out of trouble, right? Unfortunately, some parents fall for it every single time instead of talking to – oh, I don’t know – the ADULT in the classroom?

Take control of your knowledge, people. Research more than one source. Listen and go with your gut feeling. That more than anything will help you come to a reasonable conclusion. And we need more reasonable conclusion in this world! Far too often, we just sit back and take what’s given to us…and it’s usually news we could have found on our own.

Want to lose weight? Eat less junk food. Want to have a happy marriage? Be honest with each other. Bored with your job? Find a new one that excites you. Want to get good grades? Study more. Want to get a second date? Don’t be a dickhead on the first one.

These aren’t great discoveries. They’re actual things we’ve been doing our entire lives. But because it’s in a glossy magazine or slick website, we think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

We have all the answers. We just have to believe we’re smart enough to use them.