What I Learned When I Totally Didn't Realize a Girl Was Flirting With Me

As a writer, I'm obsessed with the way people talk. The length. The cadence. The figures of speech. But recently I became fascinated with the rate of acceleration.

Some people can launch pretty quickly into deep discussions. Others require a little warming up first.

For instance, my conversations accelerate at the speed of my 200,000+-mile Nissan Maxima--embarrassingly slow, and you've barely reached the desired speed by the time you reach the destination.

If you say, "Tell me about your life," I will sputter out and lurch awkwardly from topic to topic. No one will have a good time, least of all me.

By contrast, if we play a few video games or watch a TV show, that takes off the pressure. We're doing something. And then before I know what's happening, I suddenly can't shut up and I'm sharing everything you ever wanted to know about my life. (This tendency can sometimes irritate friends and loved ones, who might easily describe me as running "hot" and "cold.")

My friend Carson is a Ferrari. That guy can fly from zero to near-warp speed faster than anyone in the world. He will hear your entire life story before he ever learns your name. He's a fabulous guy.

But dang if it isn't disarming the first time he approaches you.

He dropped one of those bombs a few years ago, during a Christian retreat we were attending. Carson met this new girl, Lily, and the two were talking in the corner. They seemed to be hitting it off OK. I was a bit overstimulated by the crowd of people, spotted Carson, and decided I would hole away from the crowd with he and Lily.

Lily moved over from the middle of the couch and made a little room for me. Carson sat backwards in a folding chair, leaning over the backrest, intensely staring at Lily.

"Hey, guys. How's it going?" I asked.

"Great!" Carson beamed.

"What were you guys talking about?" I said.

"Carson asked me what God has been trying to tell me about my life recently," Lily said.

Of course he did.

"Yeah, your turn now," Carson said.

"Oh," I said. "Well, OK."

And I proceeded to tell them a little about my weird faith journey over sophomore year of college. (Someday I will tell you that story, but it is far too vast and huge for this blog post. Again--and this cannot be emphasized enough--this was literally the first thing Carson asked Lily. He had never met her before in his life.)

And as I told my life story, other people sat down and joined our little circle of camaraderie. Lily asked me a bunch of questions about my career goals ("You're a film major? So am I!") and my family's history ("That is so sad how your family had to leave the church") and even my taste in pop culture ("How is it even possible you've never seen Saving Private Ryan?").

As I emerged from a haze of questions and enthusiastic attention, I realized Carson had completely walked away from the conversation. In his place were two other friends: Derek and Lee. Derek was not what you would call a conventional Christian, and I was honestly surprised he even came to the retreat. He was into partying, old film noir and the Milwaukee Brewers.

But he was buddies with Lee, who almost religiously attended every event. Lee started attending our college ministry because he was in love with another girl who attended. They never became a thing, but he was a hopeless romantic and a good friend. He was a quiet but plain-spoken gaming nerd, with an uncanny ability to see right through obfuscation.

"Oh, finally, you're done," Derek said. Lily and I looked sheepishly at each other. How long had we talked? I checked the clock. Three hours. Dang.

Derek piped up again. "You know what time it is?" He held up a game box. "Apples to Apples!"

"Did someone say Apples to Apples?!" Some dude yelled from across the room. "I'm in!"

Never doubt the power of Apples to Apples to bring people together. (This was probably the last year before Cards Against Humanity supplanted its role as "go-to collegiate party game.")

The guy, Kevin, scooted in on the far left side of the couch. Lily moved to the middle, and I hung out on the right side. (Couch proxemics are fascinating, I know, but trust me this is actually important for later.) Derek and Lee just chilled in easy chairs across from us on the couch. At this point, I had literally no idea where Carson went; now I'm pretty sure he went for an 11pm nature walk alone in the woods. Which is just very Carson.

As we play Apples to Apples, I find that I am winning way more than usual, which is awesome. Lily seems to have this knack for picking my card as the winner every time. I am definitely pretty high on my sense of humor at this point as well, since Lily is laughing at all my jokes.

In that moment, I knew I was amazing.

In this present moment, I know I was an idiot.

At about 2 in the morning, Kevin got tired with this game and went to sleep. I noticed Lily was still sitting really close to me. And she didn't really have to be. Weird, huh? She must like me. And all the lightbulbs go off in my head.

No, actually, that's not what happened at all.

Instead, I saw that she was sitting very close to me, and I offered, politely, "You know, there's all this extra couch space over there. You don't have to sit so close."

"Oh," she said. "Okay."

And obliviously I went about judging my submitted red cards for Apples to Apples. Derek and Lee exchanged disbelieving gapes, which of course went unnoticed.

#LadiesMan

(At this point, it seems only fair to mention that I discovered much of this information after the fact--roughly THREE MONTHS after the fact--from my friends Derek and Lee during a Bible study. At which point, I died of shame and then called Carson to prove them wrong. Carson responded, and I quote, "I left because she wasn't paying any attention to me anyhow. You were the only person she noticed." So, again, I am an idiot.)

After such a display of idiocy, Lee felt he needed to step in and wingman me himself. I yawn and say I'm about ready to leave, but Lee insists that NO ONE can leave the game without meeting certain win conditions, which involves getting rid of your entire hand of red Apples to Apples cards. So we stop replenishing our red cards.

But then, as I play my last red card and decide, "OK, I really need to go to bed, it's 3 am and I have to wake up at 7 tomorrow"... Lee creates a new rule! You have to win with that last card in your hand that you submitted.

This is basically impossible and a total crapshoot, since you only have that one card to choose from and submit, but the category could be anything.

Lee adds too that if you don't win that final card hand, you have to go draw five new red cards and keep playing. I get super annoyed at Lee for dragging this out. I look to Lily to back me up on this (implicitly). She seems very supportive of these new extended play rules. And not wanting to be the only one who wimps out, I go along with this.

This continues for just over an hour. At one point, Lily wins out with her last card... but says that, since I'm still playing, she'll grab some new red cards "just so I'm not abandoned."

Finally, somewhere around 4:30am, Lee and Derek give up themselves and head out. At that moment, I was tempted to get salty and remind them that they're breaking their own rules, but I was so tired and delirious that I didn't really care. (Which is impressive for a pedant like me.)

So then it was just Lily and I. (I swear, in hindsight, Lee left with this cheeky little grin on his face.)

Lily said, "It was really fun hanging out tonight."

"Yeah," I say. Pause. And then, "Well, goodnight."

And I turned and left to go to my cabin. 100% oblivious.

I still, to this day, cannot believe this is a true story. I never even remotely considered the idea that she liked me or was interested. There was no possible way she could've made it more obvious without making subtext into text, but even then, I doubt it.

"I like you, Taylor."

"That's cool of you."

"Do you want to go out?"

"Nah, I'm pretty tired. I think I just have to head in for bed."

"Do you like me?"

"Yeah, you're such a cool person. We should play more Apples to Apples tomorrow. As long as you stay on your half of the couch, of course."

Artist's approximation of Lily in her room.

I can only imagine Lily was tempted to think I was a jerk. She probably thought I didn't reciprocate, was friend-zoning her, or even was toying with her emotions for my own entertainment. Maybe she thought me and my friends were playing some cruel joke on her.

I hope not.

But it would be easy for her to say, "No one could be that stupid. Of course he knew."

I can be that stupid. I can be oblivious and totally miss what's going on right in front of my own eyes. I sat in front of a bright purple wall in my college cafeteria for years and didn't realize the wall was purple until someone pointed it out senior year.

What that taught me was twofold.

First of all, I learned that I need to pay attention to people around me. If I only focus on what brings me immediate joy or satisfaction, I might miss hints (subtle or not-so-subtle). I might miss seeing that someone is clearly sad and needs help. I might miss out on a potentially awesome relationship. I might even miss a chance to share Jesus with someone. Don't get sucked into your own black hole of ego.

But second, and maybe most important, I learned that not everything is personal. Not everything is intentional. People can be that stupid. I was. People can be that shallow. They can be that naive or ignorant.

That awful time they ratted out what you did to your boss, all just to screw with you? Maybe that was an accident. It doesn't have to be malice.

That time your friend forgot to come to your party? The one he had helped you plan? Maybe he just forgot about it. It doesn't have to be a slight or an act against you.

People are that stupid. They're usually not that malicious.

Stupid people--like me, like you--can be annoying. But they deserve the benefit of the doubt.

This week, you are going to screw something up. Maybe it's little, maybe it's big. And there is going to be someone who can't even believe you did something like that on accident. You will feel awful. Or better yet, you won't feel a thing, because you never knew it happened.

And you know why? Because you're focused on what someone else unbelievably, inexplicably did to you. The nerve! The outrage!

So get frustrated.

Beat your head against a wall.

Do whatever you have to do.

But then, give them the same benefit of the doubt you hope they would give you.

And also, ladies...

You should probably just straight up tell me if you're interested.

What I Learned When I Tried to Time Travel My Problems Away

“I really don’t think my life would be better with time travel,” said no one ever.

Granted, I may have more of an interest-bordering-on-obsession with time travel than most people, given that I’ve written a short film and a television series on the topic, but that’s only because I believe in giving the people what they want. And I’m of the mind that everyone wants time travel. That’s not to say there are no downsides to it; there is always the chance that time travel will destroy me, the universe, and absolutely everything inside of it. But contrasted against the convenience and just plain coolness of it, I’d say the pros of time travel clearly outweigh the cons.

Just think about it. Someone, probably a government Man-in-Black in a nice suit and dark shades, steps forward and offers you the chance to go back in time and change something about your life. You wouldn’t take him up on that? I know I would, and I know precisely where I’d go. It’s nothing obvious. I don’t have to save my family from dying because my family’s all alive. Same goes for immediate friends. And I’m not killing Hitler. That’s cliché. Why would I spend a trip to the past killing Hitler? Plenty of people want to kill Hitler. I’m sure he’s got a veritable line of assassins waiting at his hospital bassinet. No, even if they offered me a million trips, there’s only one place I ever need to go. I’d go back to the 2011 NCFCA Regional Championship in Indianapolis, Indiana.

I write, resolved, that my life would be significantly improved if I had time travel. But of course, before I can get too deep into the real meat of my argument, I should go over some early definitions. Make sure we’re all on the same page here.

NCFCA: the National Christian Forensics and Communications Association, a speech and debate organization for Christian homeschoolers. Seems pretty niche, I know, but it’s more cutthroat than you’d anticipate a gathering of thousands of Christian homeschoolers to be. Picture nerdy high schoolers, dressed to the T in business-formal suits, ties, and shoes, debating the intricacies of Russian foreign policy before a panel of judges. Picture Cross-Examination, a three minute lightning round wherein one competitor gets to step up to the podium and drill the just-finished speaker with as many questions as he can muster: any fact without written evidence, any fact without a credible author, any fact older than 2008 – all invalid. And of course if you couldn’t answer the question, that just meant you ceded the argument to the other team. League legend had it that a particularly skilled interrogator devolved his sweat-drenched victims to sobs and surrender in those mere three minutes. But of course, remember to keep a smile and shake your competitor’s hand, just like Jesus would! This was my universe, and I was the heir apparent, the King of divine right, the wielder of words more powerful than Excalibur.

Franz: Good friend. Better partner. Debate’s a two-man team sport, so as good as I was, I needed a partner. Franz was a three-year debater, a big-boned, buzz cut freshman who could rock a suit like none other while using his Bill Clinton “aw, shucks” personality to win judge sympathy.

Microloans: Every team needed a case (a policy you’d try to argue into existence, while the other team tried to stop the idea from ever being born). Franz came up with ours: a touchy-feely plan to give microloans for impoverished Russians to start a small business. Just the right mixture of feed-the-poor Christian ethics and conservative economics to make the other team look like monsters for arguing against us. It was a work of staggering evil genius, to be honest.

Milwaukee Qualifying Tournament: The third of five qualifying tournaments in our region; winning teams went on to the exclusive Regional Competition. Franz and I had been dark horses for awhile, but at this tournament we became the very first team in our club to ever win a tournament. Suffice it to say, we were kind of a big deal.

IFR: The cause of all of our misery. Well, that’s not fair. Accurate, but not fair. After Milwaukee, teams around the league were starting to collaborate and find evidence to bring down our case. They started pointing out that Russia’s economy was different than our case studies, that our funding was insufficient, or that our plan was only a bandage on the larger wound. When we walked into rounds, our competitors were waiting with a bulging binder of anti-microloans evidence. When we lost, we lost hard. When we won, we won by the skin of our teeth. After getting knocked out in the first round of Octafinals at the fifth qualifying tournament, I was getting nervous and Franz had had enough. It was about a month before the Regional Tournament, and the top four teams of the Regional Tournament would go on from there to Nationals. Everyone else was going to be eliminated from contention. Based on our past performance, Franz proposed changing our plan and supplying science grants to the Russian government for alternative nuclear power; it was an experimental technology known as IFR. “Trust me. No one’s going to be ready for this case,” he told me. I was hesitant; familiarity with your case is everything. But I was also passive, and Franz seemed confident. So we switched.

And that brings us to the Indianapolis Regional Tournament, the site of my future time traveling expedition to the past. Why would I need to time travel? Because everything went wrong here. In debate, cases are only proposed because the status quo is utterly flawed. “Utterly flawed” seems like a pretty good representation of my Regionals experience. The problems with the status quo timeline, in order:

Harm 1: We were not prepared. Everyone else was.

I should qualify this by saying that no one was prepared for the first few rounds. Franz and I barely knew what we were talking about, but the other teams were even more confused. We picked up three wins in three rounds – one more win, and we were basically guaranteed a spot in the tournament outrounds. The hubris was starting to kick in. Then Round Four happened.

We knew Round 4 was going to be difficult. Of course it was, it was against ourselves. Josh and Alec were our parallel universe, evil doppelgangers (although Franz was the one with a goatee, so maybe we were their evil doppelgangers). They were a young, fresh team also composed of a charming future politician and a polite facts-based journalist. Outside of tournaments, Josh and Alec were our best friends; in a debate round, they were our arch nemeses. By sheer random happenstance, we’d fought each other in-round so many times that our rivalry became more heated than some NFL divisional rivalries. But Franz and I had a secret weapon: our brand-new IFR case. After my speech, Josh walked up to the podium with a folder of papers and stood beside me for Cross-Examination.

“Are the judge and timer ready?” Josh asked. A typical formality. Nods. “Then let’s begin.” To me: “You’re proposing IFR?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never heard of it before.”

“It’s new.”

“So no one’s done it before?”

“I mean, I’m sure scientists have tested it out. It’s experimental is all I’m saying.”

“So it’s never been commercially implemented?”

“That’s not… yeah, sure.”

“It has or it hasn’t?”

“It hasn’t.”

“So how do you know it’ll work?”

“I… There’s tests.”

“How many tests?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I’m sure it will work.”

“Well, I’d love to take you on your word, but I’m afraid the evidence contradicts you.” He withdrew a sheet from his folder. “I have a piece of evidence here that says IFR does not work in the real world.”

“If you say so.”

“And the technology is largely untested.”

“Is that a question?” I asked pointedly, struggling to keep a smile on my face for the judge and Jesus.

“Were you aware that such evidence existed?”

“No…”

If I had a time machine then, and had time traveled back to the last Regional Tournament in 2010, I would have learned that there was an IFR case back then too. It was environmental science year and someone thought a new, vaguely nuclear power system would make a great policy. When I asked, Franz assured me that that was a completely different case. He knew, because it had been his old case, devised by his old partner. So the case was different in the way that siblings are different: no one’s going to think they’re identical, but it’s hard to not see the family resemblance. And all the other debaters had been lying in wait for this family reunion for a long time. With wins in their eyes, they started downloading their old files and evidence, more prepared for their match-up with us than we ever were.

Afterward, I told Franz I was worried, and “we should switch cases.”

Franz sighed impatiently, set a thick hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Hey, calm down. Breathe. Okay? Okay? We’re gonna be fine.”

Harm 2: We lost every round after that at Regionals.

I think this harm speaks for itself.

Harm 3: Our region was poorly represented at Nationals.

Because we weren’t there. Duh. Clearly the best team didn’t win.

Harm 4: Wasted potential and uncertainty.

The worst part about being a successful perfectionist is that even when you qualify to Nationals in four other speech categories, you still feel like a failure for not qualifying in debate. Maybe it was around that tournament that I first started thinking about time travel. After all, I gambled when I shouldn’t have. I made one bad choice, and if that one bad choice was changed, then maybe everything would be different. Natural talent wasn’t enough to make up for poor decisions. Me being the best me I could be? Not enough. What is enough: time travel.

So this is the part of the case where I set forward my plan, complete with point-by-point mandates. I propose:

Mandate 1: Give me a time machine. Please. If it’s not invented yet, invent one and then give it to me.

Mandate 2: Once I have the time machine, I would go back in time to the exact moment when Franz convinced me that IFR was how we were going to save ourselves. It wasn’t, and I sort of knew it then, but I had no reason to know that. I certainly didn’t have evidence printouts to prove it. But if I could time travel, then I’d walk right up to Franz, put my hand on his shoulder, and tell him “IFR’s not going to work. Stop living in the past,” and then without blinking I’d turn to my past self and say “You can win this tournament with microloans. I’m counting on you.”

And then I’d disappear in a cool flash of color or something. Because, really, the exit is the most important thing. If you just walk out of a room after time traveling, then no one’s going to believe you actually time traveled. They’ll find a more mundane explanation, waving away my appearance as just a long-lost twin brother with psychic future-seeing powers. But if I can spontaneously dematerialize, or turn the sun black and vanish into the darkness, or take off in a fiery, speeding DeLorean, then there’s no doubt what just happened: time travel. And when a time traveler tells you to do something, you do it.

Mandate 3: Everything is awesome because time travel solved all of our problems.

See? That’s a pretty simple three-step plan to fix problems. I believe very strongly that everything should have a three-step plan because, as we just saw, they always work.

Right about now is when I show you why everything is so “awesome” once I fix time. These are the Advantages and – spoiler alert – they’re pretty fantastic.

Advantage 1: We win. Obviously.

Microloans were a fantastic case topic. Franz and I would stick with those and then we’d win Regionals, simple as that. I can see it now, before me as if I really had changed my past with a time machine: Franz and I, hair coiffed, contacts in, and suits fitted, having gleaming gold medals draped around our necks. The LED flash of a million homeschool moms’ digital cameras, memories living forever through innumerable Facebook tags. Shaking the hand of the league president and our coach, both “so incredibly proud” of us. The acknowledgement that we were truthfully the best. That we had never needed to change our case: no matter how much other teams prepared, we were better.

I know we were. I just need a time machine to prove it.

Advantage 2: A better life for me.

I would be a better person because I won Regionals. This is a complicated logical argument, so I’ll break down the chain reaction here:

Winning Regionals means I’ll go to Nationals.

Going to Nationals means I’ll win. Clearly.

Winning Nationals makes me the best.

Being the best makes me perfect.

Being perfect makes me a better person.

It’s pretty simple when you think about it that way.

(Also, it’s worth noting this has additional impact benefits of other people acknowledging my perfection. They would all think I’m perfect – because I just won Nationals – and they would be right.)

Advantage 3: A better life for everyone else.

One of the most common arguments against time travel is that it could rip apart space-time and all of reality. After all, even the slightest thing has dramatic ripple effects. In effect, you’d be destroying the world, because you’d be replacing it with a new world. But that ignores the fact that the new world would be better, because I would be better and I’m an important part of that new world

It’s like me untypng this sentence because it has a typo.

And then I would replace it with this grammatically-correct sentence.

That’s a lot better, if you ask me.

Advantage 4: Untapped time travel potential.

Think about it. If I have a time travel machine, I don’t have to just stop at fixing debate issues. Debate is pretty important, don’t get me wrong, but there’s a ton of smaller, other things that I could solve. Maybe I could just straighten up loose ends at home. Get all my chores done in advance so that I never had to waste time on anything pointless. Or I could be in multiple places at once, like Hermione with her Time Twister: carrying on a social life while also having time to research while also having enough time to pray and give God my whole attention. I could warn myself that taking Introduction to Political Science over Winterim was going to be the course to break my three-semester straight-A streak, not to mention being terrible in and of itself. I could tell myself in May 2012 that I had an undiagnosed grass allergy and needed medication, so that I wouldn’t have to lay on my bed feeling like I was dying on the first beautiful day of spring. I could stop the barreling freight train of awkwardness that was middle school me by just warning myself that she didn’t like me the way I liked her. I could change the scheduling of a film shoot so that it wouldn’t fall on a day where all of my friends would bail on me without notice. I could stop my best friends from breaking up with each other; better, I could stop them from ever getting together in the first place. And I could even stop that one guy from drinking, so that he wouldn’t smash into my family’s car and send my sister to the hospital with twelve staples in her skull and a concussion.

And who knows? Maybe I’d kill Hitler too. I’ve got enough time.

Of course, this is all secondary to making sure Franz and I win Regionals. A man’s gotta have his priorities straight. And priority one is perfection, at all costs.

I’m sure there’s some sort of downside to all of this somewhere, but I can’t think of what it would be. Furthermore, I’m sure it can’t even compare to the upside. Think about that upside for a moment: with time travel, I could finally give myself the perfect life that I’ve always been striving for all these years. It could be whitewashed. Painless. Perfect.

Isn’t that a significant improvement over the status quo?

What I Learned When I Binge-Watched Korean Reality Shows

I’m bad at watching TV.

I’m that guy who can’t stop checking his phone while he watches a movie or a TV show. I watch Netflix as I go to bed at night, slowly losing focus and attention as I drift to sleep. And if I really like a show, I might watch it in split-screen next to a live Twitter feed or Reddit discussion; then half of me will be watching the show live and half of me will be reading what other people think about this show.

I didn’t realize how compulsive this behavior was until I tried watching a Korean TV series called “The Genius.” Since I don’t speak Korean, I have to watch a subtitled version. The only problem is that I can’t follow along with the subtitles on-screen unless I’m actually watching the episode directly and with my full attention. I can’t read something else or distractedly listen to it while I do dishes, because if I don’t read it, I don’t know what’s going on.

When I tried to watch it with full attention, I was amazed at how much I fidgeted. How much I paused the episode to go do something else. How a 60-minute episode could last an entire afternoon when only full attention allowed progress.

I do the same thing with God.

I pray as I go to bed at night, barely awake long enough to ask for things I want–and never awake long enough to hear what He wants from me. I skim the Bible while listening to a podcast in the morning. My mind wanders in worship, unable to stay focused and dialed-in for the length of a single song.

I heard from a mentor that nobody is actually good at multitasking; they just excel at doing multiple things poorly. I finally grok that wisdom. I’ve seen my failings.

Now my question becomes, “How do I give my full attention?”

In How to Read a Book, Mortimer J. Adler gives advice for reading fictional works: “Read it quickly and with total immersion. … Otherwise you will forget what happened, the unity of the plot will escape you, and you will be lost. … Unless you read intensely, you will fail to see the details.”

He is describing fictional literature, but I can’t help but imagine it applies to life in general. How many details do I miss in a movie because I don’t give it my full attention? What emotional nuances or needs do I neglect among my friends and family because half of my brain has moved on to the next topic? How many God-given opportunities went unfulfilled because I didn’t hear His voice calling me to them?

Colossians 3:23 says, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord.” I know it won’t be an easy path, but moving forward, I endeavor to serve the Lord, experience life and, yes, even watch TV with my whole heart, my whole mind and my whole attention.