18 Questions and Weekend Chill with Skip!
We all know Skip, right? Our reader, who i suspect might be a secret writer in his spare time, who sends me letters at will and on the most interesting topics. When i read his first letter, i must have spent about 2 weeks, trying to figure out a reply. He sent me this recently; this fun, easy read with more rhetorical questions than a grumpy grandpa could have! I don't suppose i'll reply and attempt to turn this into a battle of wits. I loved it and wouldn't stop laughing! To the Yes/No questions, i think my answer was 'Yes, probably!' to all. Lol. Which is your favorite question? Thanks, Skip! Enjoy your weekend, Everybody!
Dear Lix,
What do you do when somebody wants to kiss you but you don’t want to kiss them back?
Have you wanted to kiss someone so bad but they didn’t want to kiss you at all?
Were you ever busy kissing someone and they wanted you to stop because all of a sudden they don’t want to kiss you anymore because now they want to kiss someone else?
Did you ever get tired and didn’t want to kiss anymore, but the person you’re kissing is still keen on kissing but you want to kiss someone else?
Have you ever been in the process of kissing someone in what you thought was an extremely passionate moment, and you kind of slightly open your eyes and they are wide-eyed staring at you like ‘waris dis one doing?'
Why did you kind of slightly open your eyes?
How do you handle being left high and dry mid-kiss?
What if you were kissing someone and you like it, so you promise to keep on kissing, just them forever and ever, but you’re a promise and fail and you change your mind, not necessarily because you found someone else to kiss, but you just don’t want to kiss them anymore, is that wrong?
Sometimes after they promise forever and ever, they just stop kissing you without any explanation, now you don’t know what to do with all this shimmer on your lips, how do you deal?
Have you ever found yourself wanting to kiss this certain person, but not anymore, but sometimes and at other times, but not all the time, and then you want to, but then you don’t want to, so you stop, and you start, and they don’t do it right but you like their face?
How do you tell someone you’re currently kissing that you’ve found someone else you like kissing better, so you’d like permission to start kissing that someone else full time?
Is it really important to ask someone if you can kiss them before you start kissing them?
If you kiss them without asking, and they don’t push you, but then they’re not actively, really kissing you back, but you’re fine with it because you’re kissing them anyway, is that ok?
What if you didn’t ask if you could kiss them, and when you start to kiss them, they start to scream at you and push you and try really hard to get your mouth off their face, what does this really mean?
Why do some people want to be kissing more than one person at the same time?
Why is it that some people are never satisfied even when they say they are? You kiss them all they want and "every-how" but they still want to kiss someone else?
.....So this person starts to kiss you and it’s oh soooo good, then you see pre-wedding pictures, and they’re getting married next month, what the hell?
On your sofa.
Skip
Letters to my Greatgrand daughter: I found the One and she's a "She"
Dear Charly,
I found the One!
No, not your Greatgrand father. I found the one, years before I met him. Surprisingly, she was a girl. She had short, curly lashes and a huge mass of brown hair that never fell. She bit her lip when she was nervous and doodled like her life depended on it. She couldn't hold a 15-second gaze without breaking it and then shifting her weight on her feet while saying something completely inappropriate.
She had an easy laugh and bounced around when we were alone. You could see her heart in her eyes and it beamed a yellowish hue of gold. She had long, gangling arms and sometimes she joked about cutting them off because she said it made her feel like a furry primate.
She took long, deep breaths after every rainfall and never avoided rain puddles. When we were together, the world stopped just because she smiled, we blushed at each other incessantly and my world never remained the same. But whenever others came around, she closed up fast and all they could see was me. She was so self-conscious and uncertain, all I wanted to do was hold her shoulders all the time- i think that was when I fell in love with her- the day I held her shoulders. In those shoulders, I felt all her strength, all her resilience and all her fragility.
I saw her this morning, right after I kissed your great grandfather as he left for work. She's still beautiful, very much so. She still bursts with mirth when we are alone, she still has gangling arms but she no longer doodles, she writes now, she says. Her gaze is a lot steadier, she even made it to 20 seconds, but nothing more.
Her smile broadened as she smiled back at me from the mirror- she was amused because she knew you'd never guess who it was.
Charly, I fell in love with myself ages before I met your Greatgrand dad.
I can't remember what prompted this decision but I decided to love myself anyway; and not just regular self love that is preceded by a hashtag but an intense astounding love that makes me blush in the mirror. I'd wink at myself (still do), i'd tell me how pretty I am, even when I wasn't feeling that way. I accepted me for who I was, I embraced my loud laugh, my large nose, my long arms, my complexion, my age, my hair, my skin, my body, my skills, my likes, my flaws, my inadequacies, my spirit, my abilities -everything I was destined to be. I realized consciously that every single part of me was designed intentionally for a purpose by God, even the random fact that I love only the red skittles and the red Pringles.
Once I accepted who I was, I decided to do the work of becoming the best version of me. I discovered this beautiful, fun, playful and sometimes quiet person, who I spent time getting to know and I discovered - hey, I could spend forever with this person!
I placed more value on myself and on my time and would not let anyone regard me with less than that value. In doing this, I was becoming more conscious of valuing others and respecting their time and the things they stood for and loved.
Dear Charly, love yourself and don't wait around for someone to love you until you realize how wonderful you are; don't look for love in sub-standard places, scraping around for it and eating leftovers.
Spend time with yourself and make yourself blush in the mirror. When you love yourself, you are able to love others, in the right measure and in the right quality.
It's in that journey of self-love that you can enjoy and place value on others; it's in that journey that you can foster growth in the lives of people around you and watch them flourish endlessly.
You are perfect when you realize the value of your uniqueness and spend your time improving those awesome qualities that make you, you.
Love,
Greatgran x
Ps Your Greatgrand dad almost passed out reading the first three paragraphs too. Hehe!
To Skip- How I Found "X"
Weeks ago, a PGI reader sent me this letter about his experience on Dating Boulevard, in search of "X", the ever-elusive Ms. Right. At the end, he asked me how i found my "X" and here is my response to Skip's letter. Hope this helps, Skip!
'There are many ways to find X', the teacher said,'Keep trying.'
He would make me sit and strive to find this mysterious value. On some days, I'd make up a number; I'd make an educated guess and being the terribly assertive person I am, I would argue, that the true value of "X" was equal to my made-up answer.
'X=Dimeji', I'd chirp at the teacher and walk out of the class with that self-righteous look you so rightly described in your letter, Chip.
But in 7 months or less, X would have morphed into this grotesque sum known as "Ex". I'd come back into the class, a little burnt out but still willing to find this X. How dare it prove so elusive? Did it not know I was growing old?
Sometimes, I'd get a real value just like you, Skip! A real value! I would be so certain this was it. This was X! Then it would turn out not to be.
A fond memory was when I found X, for the umpteenth time and oh, how I loved X; how he made my heart skip and turned my mind to mush, how his lashes intrigued me in all its black, curly glory; then I found out that X was finding the square root of Y. Y was some hot girl with huge breasts who I believe lived in Oregun at the time.
The real X is ever so elusive, sometimes and other times right beneath our noses or the noses of others.
So how did I find X?
I'll be honest, I found X because I asked the teacher; no not that teacher, not the one I mentioned in the first part of this letter. No, not Life; Life is a crazy teacher, the one who tells me to keep trying; the one who knocked me on the head with the revelation of big-breasted Y; the one who mocked me every year I got older and still couldn't find X. Life loads you with so much drama and trauma that the chances of finding X in the first place is equal to zero! He almost provides no help at all, just innumerable chances to keep trying to find x, over and over.
The teacher I asked, was the head teacher, teacher of life itself, the creator of X.
I asked Him plainly. "Where is X?"
He stared back at me and knew I was serious this time. I was done with the guessing and the Enny Meeny Miny's- the Dimeji's and the ones who found square roots were now in the past. He looked me straight in the eyes and that day, I knew he heard.
In less than 6 months, X found me.
And after 7 years, the summation of X and I was solved and now, we are equal to 1.
Must Read: Finding "X"!
Three weeks ago I received a letter from a reader nicknamed Skip. I've traveled, slept, stared into space, chewed Rice Krispies absentmindedly, mulling over this letter, over the questions he asked me. It took me quite a while to figure out what the right response would be. Eventually, I told him the truth.
With Skip's permission here's his letter. Feel very free to respond in the comments section below! (Lix is the nickname dubbed me by this equally aliased person)
Dear Lix,
Any assumption you make about how miserably poor I was at basic arithmetic is right! Actually, only the absolute worst assumption would be right. It was that bad! Solving the supposedly simple sums almost ruined my greatness, but I graduated primary school, eventually. So you can imagine what happened to my super-hero-life in secondary school when simultaneous equations got into the mix. But what’s a super hero without a nemesis?
………. find x
Arrrrgh! This damn question or instruction or whatever.
The frustration it brought me was almost spiritual, I was hopeless, like I was born without the requisite skills to find "x". And come to think of it, it could have been a medical condition. I bet there’s medical research going on right now somewhere; I bet there’s a support group somewhere for folks living with this condition.
Anywhoz, I just didn’t gerrit, I could never find x.
What’s your story? How did it make you feel? Did it bother you too or were you better than me? I bet you were better than me and you found "x" all the time. I can feel your self-righteousness from here sef; mtchewwwww! Lol!
And my imagination Lix, sometimes I would just drift during tests and stare at the ceiling; who was this being asking me to find x? I used to picture Gandalf. Sometimes it was my old primary school math teacher. He was mean and probably a wizard too.
Sometimes they were together, Gandalf and my old primary school math teacher.
They would sit and laugh, share stories about my previous tests and mock me.
The fun they had during my London GCSE Math exam! And I ended up with a ‘U’ grade too. Lix, there’s the A* and the A grade, then B and C, then D, then E, and then there’s F for Fail, followed by ‘Absent’ and finally U for ‘unclassified’. You can imagine the kind of intense nonsense I must have written to be graded lower that someone who was absent.
Are you still proud of me? Are you close to buying the ‘medical condition’ theory yet?
The ultimate humor is how confident and sure I always was about "x". I always thought I found "x" until the teacher said I didn’t, until I got my test score.
I’ve always wondered why anyone needed "x" anyway, why so necessary? Why so frequently? Like why is it so important and what is it supposed to do? What happens when you find x? The right x.
One time, after all was said and done, I found x and I was certain. There was no confusion; her smile, the way she looked at me and how she made me feel, this was it. If there ever was an x, this was the most confident I had ever been.
She was vivacious. She looked like I like, walked like I like, thought like I like and prayed like I like. What more could I ask for? And what she saw in me, when she spoke about me; the best medicine.
She always built me up.
Whatever went wrong?
My best answer has always been timing. Timing not because she was older, timing not because she was ready to settle waaay ahead of time and I wasn’t. Maybe her fault was being right at the wrong time.
There was no doubt she was right, there is no doubt. She was definitely x, the right x. Errrr okay Lix, I know. I know I shouldn’t be taken seriously as to what x is, isn’t or what it should be, but she felt so right, the only heart I ever broke.
How the hell then do you find x? Not just any x though, but the right x? Is there an x for every phase? Is there really an absolute right x that works out the theory of everything or do you just find any x and make it right? Did every couple find the right x or are they just getting by?
..one x to rule them all, one x to find them,
one x to bring them all and in the darkness bind them..
…hehehe… straightface.
You’ve found x Lix. Tell me.
I always thought I found x until the teacher said I didn’t, until I got my test score.
On your sofa,
Skip.