The Chronicles

Volume 16- The Case of the Regular People

Forget about your problems for just one moment and come with me. Where to? I’m attempting to take you to a place where many reside but few are happy. It’s called the U.S.R.P. or the United States of Regular People. The President? I’m not really sure who their leader is, as regular people are about as forgettable as Bill Cosby in Leonard Part VI (I mean seriously, how did a jello-pudding eating, 97-year old man really save the world?) I digress…

But enough about bad movies, as there’s something even more repugnant to me. It’s witnessing someone wave the regular person banner. It sickens me, and provides an added sense of urgency to this trip. You need to see this regular person world that I’m speaking of, so you’ll never want to go back there again. Regular people don’t find happiness…they find my email address, and write the Fly Guy about their genuine displeasure in the dating world. Is there a solution? Sure, it’s the Official Fly Guy Anti-Regular Person Guide. I’ve dissected every aspect of the “regular” person, detailing why they can’t be successful in the dating world. After reading this, you’ll look at being regular in the same light as Britney Spears does wearing underwear in public…you’ll want no parts of it.

1. Your Self-Perception
When you look in the mirror, exactly what do you see? Is it a confident person in control of their own fate? Or is it someone as plain and as dry as Shaq volunteering to read children’s books at an after school program. Here’s some food for thought. People who are incapable of standing out and distinguishing themselves never get the promotion at work, and more importantly almost never get a second date. Viewing yourself as an Average Joe or a Plain Jane gets you a first class ticket to watching VH1 alone as New York and her father set new standards for reality show ignorance.

2. The Perception of Others
This is directly related to point number one. People have a tendency to feed off of the energy you exude. Why would you expect someone to give you a Batman-type of respect when you only see yourself as being Robin…or to a lower degree Alfred the Butler? And truth be told, the other person can always tell how you view yourself. That’s why the bad boys and bad girls of the world always seem so initially appealing. It’s because of the confidence they give off (But that eventually wears off, like the public’s fear of threat level orange.) So grab on to something that you’re good at…something that you’re confident in, and allow your confidence in that one area to spill over into the rest of your life.

3. The Wrong Place
Many times the “regular” person becomes disheartened by their inability to meet new people. The story always sounds the same. “I just came back from the club, and all of those people wanted the same thing.” “They’re only interested in the ballers and models.”

And my response is usually this…

“If you want someone as ‘regular’ as you, why do you keep looking for them in the club?”

The odds are severely stacked against you in this setting, as the main priority for most club-hoppers is just to have a good time. You’ve got a better chance at finding someone mentally stable at the Jackson family reunion than finding someone in the club who’s focused on meeting a potential soulmate (Wait…now that I think about it, Rebbie was pretty normal. But then again she did make Centipede…)

So learn from a common strategy used by many defense attorneys when they foresee a grim outcome…they request a change of venue.

4. The Wrong Approach
“Regular” men and women are both guilty of incorrectly approaching dating. Allow me to provide you with two such scenarios.

a. Men: You’ve become so disheartened by past dating failures that you begin to act unlike yourself, often overdoing it on dates as if you were Randy Jackson from American Idol. But just like Randy, your date will see right through that act like an Oprah-David Letterman Superbowl commercial. So just be yourself, give off that “fly guy cool” and the rest will fall into place.

b. Women: Regular women often suffer from what I call relationship touretts. This is where you unconsciously shout out things like you’re quarterbacking the big game.

“Down…Set…I have a degree…I have a good job….I’m a professional…I don’t have kids…There’s not much to me….What you see is what you get…Why can’t men handle a down-to-earth woman like me…hut hut.”

Wrong approach. Do you remember back in kindergarten when we used to have show and tell? The key to that game was to show first then tell…it’s not the other way around. So stop trying to prove upfront how “normal” and put together you are by running down your resume. Do you want to know what the guy is thinking when you do that?

“If she is so normal, then why is she single? She’s probably crazier than Forest Whitaker’s Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland (that was a shameless Oscar plug…he deserves to win.)”

5. A New Attitude: Don’t expect any jokes in this section. I’m staying away from them, as it’s crunch time for me. It’s imperative that I get you to adjust some things when it comes to; the way you carry yourself, where you look for dates, and how you approach them. All of this is directly tied to casting aside the “regular person” persona. I’ve always felt that when people say that they’re regular or that they’re just average, what they’re really promoting is being a “C” student. And growing up, my mother never accepted C’s. In her eyes that was just like failing. Little did I know how right she was until I began to see so many people fail in their love lives by bringing their “C” game to the table. Such behavior has to stop today.

The Fly Guy Moral: Maybe you’ll get what I’m saying one of these days. Or you may just continue to approach your dating life with a sense of hopelessness, rivaled only by Flavor Flav’s dentist (God bless that man.) Ultimately, I hope you realize that there’s nothing regular about you. You’re just as special as the next man or woman, so stop selling yourself short. Once you do that, you’ll begin to see a difference in the types of people you attract. Before you know it, quality dates will start flocking to you like African children to Angelina Jolie.