I think as a kid, I was brainwashed into thinking that I needed to be romantically attracted to someone. My classmates would be like, "hey Dom, who do you like?" "Uh, why?" "I'll tell you who I like if you tell me who you like!" And I'm thinking, I don't necessarily like anyone in particular but for this transaction to go through, I guess I needed to name someone. And as a kid most of us haven't really had much time to know a lot of people, so my choices were limited to pretty much whoever was in my school, more specifically in my classrooms. "Uh, I, I don't know. Sarah?" "Ooooh! [giggling] I'm telling!" "Wait, what, who do you like? Oh, I got baited." So as a kid, I thought it was mandatory to just have someone in mind to admire. Obviously when you're young, you don't exactly know yet of what your personal criteria is of why you like someone. Growing up you develop these things based on experiences, and over time you tend to narrow your tastes down to certain traits that the person must have in order for you to be interested. Do they have a sense of humor, do they like animals, do they play video games, are they as weeaboo as you, do they have a self-esteem issue that forces them to undermine others in order to validate themselves under self-worth? It's up to you to determine these things, so that if you were to pursue someone with those traits then it's safe to assume that you'd probably get along. But when we were kids, let's be honest. We were shallow assholes. "Why do you like Victoria?" "I don't know. She's pretty and nice." "Why do you like Jerry?" "I don't know. He's funny and nice." "Why do you like Steve?" "I don't." Yeah same... When I was a kid, I tended to like the popular girls. Not like the bratty cliché "everyone is trash beneath my feet" mean girls, but the girls that most guys also had a crush on. Melody was the intelligent beauty. I didn't really have a reason to talk to her, so I pretty much admired her from afar. I remember one time, the teacher had us read from the textbook out loud to the class, and once it was Melody's turn I gave her, like, 200% of my attention. As she was reading I was following along and came across a word that I've never seen, but once she got to the word, "Fahrenheit" she read it with no hesitance and I was so surprised and impressed that it further emphasized my attraction to intelligence. "Dom how could you not know the word 'Fahrenheit'?" Okay, first of all I was like, nine, and second of all the rest of the world uses Celsius, all right? Get out of here. Eventually after realizing that I had zero chance with Melody I eventually developed a crush on another girl... that I also had zero chance with. Rachel. Rachel was the sporty girl in my class. She was the fastest girl in all the running activities in PE and was actually faster than most of the guys. During recess she usually played sports and other games with guys, because a lot of the girls weren't into the games we played. I had more interactions with her because we were all kind of in the same group of friends who played during recess. Later on we all find out she had a crush on Liam who was also one of my friends. And you'd think I'd be upset or jealous of Liam, but looking back Liam was a pretty good-looking guy and also not a douchebag, so, yeah, yeah good choice, not, not bad, no big deal. I got over it pretty quick. And then there was Stephanie. She was a bit different from the girls I've liked. She wasn't part of the popular group. She wasn't the most intelligent. She wasn't outstandingly athletic. She was more or less kind of average, but I had a crush on her. I was surprised at the fact that not many other guys liked her, considering I was so used to being in competition with pretty much the whole class population. But with Stephanie it seemed like I was the only guy running. It eventually became public news that I liked Stephanie because of the numerous school dances that occurred, and every time I asked her and only her to dance. I felt like that's pretty much what dances essentially were in elementary school: confession opportunities. If two people were dancing, they were instantly shipped together. "Albert and Kaitlyn are dancing, oooh!" "Ryan and Zoe are dancing, oooh!" "Steve is still alone, oooh!" "Hey man, I feel like you're using the video to project your inner hate on a personal matter. Why are you hating on Steve so much?" [WHISPERING] "What?" "What the heck, really?" "Man, f#%k you Steve!" Anyway, I'm pretty sure Stephanie knew I liked her. I don't remember properly confessing it because I was a little bitch at the time, and I didn't really have the conf- "At the time? Hah!" I, yeah, I set myself up for that, but despite knowing, nothing really progressed between us and for good reason, too. We didn't really have that much in common, or [have] any familiar things to talk about. At the beginning of grade six I had to move to a new school and left behind a lot of close friends. Near the end of the school year, I decided to visit my old school again and see my friends and teachers. By that time I went through puberty and although I didn't get a major growth spurt, I did develop this sexy voice that you'll hear today, heh heh. Although school was still happening, it was the end of the year, so not many activities were happening in class. I spent the day at the school and when it came time for recess, I decided to look for Stephanie, whom I didn't see in the class I stayed in because she was in a different homeroom. My friends were egging me on to talk to her and make some moves and I was actually feeling more confident to do so. Moving to the new school helped me build some interpersonal skills so I was like "yeah, I'll talk to Stephanie, let's go!" And I don't know what happened with Stephanie over the months, or if it was just the heat of the moment, but she...kinda flirted back with me, whoo-hoo-hoo! I can't remember exactly what we talked about but it ended with a kiss on the cheek, a phone number in my head, and a crowd of classmates cheering as if we just got engaged. "Oh shiiit!" And I repeat, I don't know what happened with her or why things went so smoothly that day. But when I got home that night, I decided to call her. Ugh. TL;DR she blew me off. Even though we went to different schools, which was honestly just like a 15-minute drive away, she said she didn't feel comfortable pursuing anything with me It didn't even really sound like she wanted to stay friends either by how the conversation went. So why even give me your number? I had a hunch that maybe your friends just told her to play along or something, I don't know. I was pretty confused but not exactly disappointed. I was always crushing on girls out of my league, so rejection wasn't really anything new to me. The real problem, though was when girls didn't reject me and I got into relationships that neither I nor they were probably ready for. And thus a shitstorm saga of breakups began! Whoo! You suck, Steve. Man, girls sure are hard to understand, huh Mob. My opinion—get over Tsubomi, she seems kind of basic. Oh, you guys don't know my homie Mob? Well, if you want to get to know him, you can do so by watching Mob Psycho 100 on Crunchyroll. Don't have premium membership yet? Well, if you go to crunchyroll.com/domics or by clicking on the link in the description, you can try it out for free for 30 days. I mostly just use it for anime but you can also find manga and dramas there as well. Airing new episodes as soon as an hour after Japan, having professionally subbed episodes, ad-free and in 1080p and available on most devices, it's my go-to place for anime. Especially now that they're partnered with Funimation, ooh, we can't wait to see what they'll make available. But hold up, if you guys want to wait till next month you can watch along the first episode of Mob Psycho with me and Jacksfilms. If you remember, we did this before with RE0 and had a lot of fun doing so. If you head over to watchalong.club it'll show you how you can join us on October the 6th at 7 p.m. PST. Hope you guys can come hang out. See ya!
