Instinct

Dear Annie,

I have a strong suspicion that Dahlia will not grow up to marry an engineer. She more likely will become one...albeit a girly one. Who else would be confident and sophisticated enough to show up at work in a trendy pink lab coat with matching baby barrettes?

Engineers certainly are more practical than their theoretical counterparts. If you are a man who wants my attention, don't sit around explaining Kepler's conjecture to me, go change the oil in my car!

My cousin Jason is an engineer. Growing up, my sister Laurie and I were so jealous of him. We secretly wanted to do all the cool things he and his brother got do do. By age 12 he'd built his own miniature playhouse in the back yard with electricity and running water. He was always playing with fire, sharp objects, and heavy machinery. One day he came into the kitchen, sat down, and asked his mom to fix him a sandwich. She did, and he sat there at that table for 20+ minutes politely visiting, eating his lunch. Upon finishing, he stood up, revealing to my aunt a gaping wound on his leg, spurting blood. “Mom, I think you'd better take me to the hospital now," he said. Screaming, my aunt grabbed him and rushed him to the ER. Later, when asked why he had delayed in revealing the sorry state of his dangling limb, he simply told his mother “Well, I was hungry.” Now this is a man.

Laurie is convinced that I should marry a farmer or a mechanic. Every time I call home raving about my latest computer nerd boyfriend, she groans. "Why do you keep choosing these guys who are too much like you? You need to date your opposite." While my animal instincts agree with her on this in theory, in practice, I intimidate these baser types of men. We'll have a few wonderful dates together, those pheromones are raging, but then I'll accidentally slip up and inform him that insects are more nutritious than beef, or just exactly why E=MC2. Comments such as these inevitably shatter all hopes of a future date. Is there any man confident enough in himself to date a woman more intelligent than he is?

Seeing that I am compelled to date an ultra conservative Christian, and that he must be super smart on top of that, my dating pool is essentially reduced to one percent of one percent! No wonder I'm still single.

Love,

Taintedsky