Nice Guys Finish Last
By Aaron Goodwin
I am not the most attractive person on the face of the earth by far, but I
have been a friend to many beautiful young ladies. Why have these gorgeous
goddesses deemed someone as homely as me to befriend? Why, all through high
school, did I have to put up with the endless barrage of comments like
“Dude, hook me up with your friend, she’s hot!” and “Yeah right, dude, you
don’t know her!” Why would they constantly come to me asking why they
couldn’t find a guy like me? It was because I was a nice guy, doomed from
the beginning to be lonely.
As a child I was home schooled up until the eighth grade. My freshman year
would be my first year at high school and in public school altogether. I
can’t say that I fit in at all either. I hardly knew anyone and when it came
time for lunch I sat alone eating the peanut butter and jelly sandwich that
my mom had packed for me. So this was high school?
It seemed like I was
doomed to suffer through a year of loneliness and boredom until this older
blonde girl wearing tight washed out blue jeans and a small pink top sat
down next to me and asked me “Why are all guys such jerks?”
From then on I
was forever branded the “nice guy” the one every girl wants as a friend.
In those first two years of high school I learned a lot about people, I
gained friends and enemies and I learned a lot about love. I learned why
girls and guys do the things they do. I had it down; high school romances
were all the same. I could give you help on any romantic problem and I was
known for it. I didn’t make any of the mistakes that my friends did because I knew exactly what they were doing. I knew
exactly how it all worked and this made everything incredibly un-suspenseful
and boring. I saw the greedy nature of people and stupid mistakes made in
the name of “love”. My friends of the female persuasion would keep coming to
me with their problems because they knew that I was smart and safe. In
effect I was like their sensitive “gay best friend”. This situation followed
me from each year to the next and even to a new high school.
The beginning of my senior year didn’t seem any different from the others.
Take the same problems as the rest of my time in high school, add more
people and you’d have my senior year. I didn’t even want to be at school, I
already knew everything there possibly was to know and I was sick of all the
brainless people making the same brainless mistakes. I was by no means
perfect, but compared to everyone else I was virtually faultless. The worst
part is I knew exactly why I had been allergic to love. I was doomed to
loneliness because I was a nice guy.
In high school and sadly throughout life as far as I have come an anomaly
exists which is the major bane in the life of nice guys everywhere: Girls
will almost always seek out jerks. Why do they do this? There are many
reasons, but the explanation would take an essay in and of itself. It was
just simply a fact that my female friends would date slime balls that would
treat them like dirt. Then once they had been totally degraded, the girls
came back to me for a shoulder to cry on. I kept watching this trend and
decided that in my infinite wisdom I should conduct an experiment, an
experiment to find out just how catawampus the ideals of high school girls
truly were. Little did I know the situation was far worse than I thought it
was.
I decided that I would start my experiment with a girl named Jamie. Jamie
was a short, blonde, sophomore girl and quite gullible. Jamie was what
people would refer to as “big chested” and used it to her full advantage.
She would always ask questions like “What does a guy think about when he
sees a girl eating a banana?” to which I would respond: “Wow, there’s a girl
eating a banana.” Yes, Jamie was the perfect girl for my little experiment.
I was going to see if even a hideous looking person like myself could become
the object of someone’s affections by simply mistreating them.
It was a Monday morning and I saw Jamie walking down the hall in front of
me. “Hi Aaron!” she called “Hi Boobs… I mean, Breasts… I mean Jamie” I
called back. Jamie just punched me in the arm with a smile on her face.
Obviously I would have to try harder. I made it a point to always say mean
things when she was within ear’s distance. I took the chance to comment on
her every flaw. She would ask me “Do you like my shirt?” and I’d say, “It’s
a few sizes to big and it hides your body.” “You really think so?” she
would say. “Yes, but it’s not like it’s a bad thing because no one wants to
see you anyways!” I would respond. I just kept getting meaner and meaner but
oddly enough this only made her more persistent.
Eventually Jamie became the first girl to actually follow me around
everywhere. I couldn’t get her off of me at homecoming and she begged me to
dance with her constantly. I started to second-guess what I had done but it
seemed too late. If I was nice to her she thought I liked her, and if I was
mean to her she wanted me even more. It was a horrible web that I wove
myself and I only had me to blame. She told me how she felt and I had to give her the truth. I could see the pain in her eyes before she
turned around and left the dance crying.
I didn’t know that I’d prove myself right. I thought hopefully I would be
wrong, but sadly I wasn’t. I did the wrong thing and it got me places. I
tore down a girl’s tender self-esteem for my own selfish reasons. Needless
to say, I learned my lesson and I’ve never done anything like that again.
I’d rather be a nice guy who never finds love than an awful person who gets
what he wants. I don’t ever again want to feel like I felt that day, like I
ripped out someone’s heart and threw it to the floor. I’d rather be a nice
guy and finish last in this absurd race than become the scum of the earth
and take first.
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