Happy Birthday!

Don't you hate it when a perfectly good joke goes awry? Especially when the person does not get the joke or fails to connect the dots?

I came across a page while cleaning out one of my boxes Sunday night in preparing to move. I spent 20 minutes trying to come up with the right thing to say on a birthday card I got someone once and the final copy was what I came across on this paper the other night.

~ A few years earlier ~

A few years ago, I was working with this woman and I asked her out. She was a nice, friendly person. I liked her. She seemed friendly enough to me.

She declined, saying she had just gotten out of a really bad relationship and she was not ready to get into a new one. I'm not saying it's not a legitimate reason, but I really didn't care either way. She said no, so I did not ask her again.

As it was, I knew when her birthday was about four months later. I got her a birthday card and after much deliberation, I wrote the following note in it:

I thought giving you a card might be a little risky. For all I know you may have just read a really bad birthday card and you may not be ready to try reading a really great card that you might enjoy, but you wouldn't know it until you read it.

I thought it was hilarious.

She never spoke to me again, but that was not a huge loss.

I distinctly remember Scott S. thought it was extremely hilarious, but then again, he and I think alike on some things. I remember his reaction as I read the first few words and he already knew where I was going with it. "The word 'genius,'" he said, "is so often overused..."

I am the first to say Scott may not be the best to judge. It might've been a little obnoxious, but I got a huge laugh out of it.

A lot of women, but not all, seemed to think it sounded creepy or stalkerish. Must be a gender thing, I guess. How can they not see the humor in it?