The lies we are told

When I was in elementary school we were taught that smoking was bad, really bad. Drinking was even worse. If you drank alcohol it was only a matter of time before you started doing marihuana and after that you are pretty much hooked on crack. When that happens you would get HIV and die.

Then I started upper elementary school (it’s difficult to find the correct terms because school is structured differently here than in the US, anyway grade 7-9). There it was basically the same thing; don’t smoke, you’ll get cancer, don’t drink, you’ll become a crack addict and die. In hindsight it was a ridiculous notion but you know what was even more ridiculous? That I actually believed it.

Then came what the Yanks would call high school and all of a sudden the pipe was playing a different tune. Now it was: ”sure you can drink but be sure you do it in moderation!”, with extreme emphasis on moderation. I actually couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After nine freaking years of being told the same thing over and over it turns out that it was all a lie.

Then sometime around the age of 19 I had my very first drink. In the years to come I had a few more. I didn’t become addicted to crack and I didn’t die. Later on I came to the conclusion that alcohol wasn’t for me but I had amazingly survived (note the extreme sarcasm).

Reverse the tape again, back to upper elementary school. Me and my best friend were basically nobodys. We were very uncool, in fact, we were the uncool that uncool scrapes off itself so it will be more cool. As every other teenage boy I wished for a girlfriend. Actually, a girlfriend seemed so god damned far off and incredible that I just wished for some kind of recognition from the opposite sex. I didn’t get much of that either but I actually believed that it would get a lot better.

You see, all the movies and television shows I watched basically all had the same theme; nice guy meets girl, girl doesn’t like nice guy, nice guy continues being nice and does not give up, girl realises she is madly in love with nice guy, they live happily ever after. Everywhere I turned i was told: just be yourself, it’ll happen when you least expect it, the nice guy will get the girl in the end. So I continued doing what I was doing and continued getting diddly squat.

”Just be yourself” , for me, ranks right up there in the top of the ”all time biggest lies”-list and is the absolute worst piece of advice you can give a guy who wants a girlfriend. I bet some will disagree. I also bet 99% of those are women. in theory it seems like a good idea but in practice it’s a completely different matter. When I was 15 I didn’t go out, I was shy as hell and probably took myself a bit too seriously. My idea of a funsaturday night was to sit at home and play videogames with my friends. I was just ”being myself”. The number of girls I met: nada, zilch, zero.
Then, when I was 18, I was fed up with it and decided to change. The rest, as they say, is history.