The reason, perhaps

(For MIT)
I’m afraid of many things, some more embarrassing than others. I squeal at the sight of spiders, my heart goes into overdrive when I look down from a high elevation, and I still have occasional nightmares of getting kidnapped.

But nothing can compare to my fear of asking out girls.

Last April, when I told my mom I was going to ask someone to junior prom, I must have been broadcasting brainwaves of fright, because she abruptly exclaimed that she had no idea there was so much pressure on boys to ask. And I quote her word for word, “I thought it was really easy for guys to ask.”

My, is my mother mistaken.

I had it all planned out – my Spanish teacher would run us through the seemingly routine activity where she would say a few statements (for example, “I would run away from home for love”), and after each one, we would split into two sides of the classroom, one side in agreement and the other in disagreement. Except this time, her statement would be “(the girl’s name) will go to junior prom with Ryan.” If all went well, I would then jump up with a rose and ask her to prom.

Judgment Day arrived, and surprisingly, everything went pretty smoothly.

That is, until she changed her mind two days later.

But contrary to all common sense, that experience actually helped ameliorate my fear of asking out girls. All along, I guess the thing I was most afraid of was rejection. Now that I got a taste of it, I realized that hey, rejection isn’t so scary after all.