Guide To Vague Relationships

Psychology lesson

A hamster is the subject of an experiment about reinforcement. When the hamster is hungry, it can press a button to receive a food pellet. If the hamster is rewarded a food pellet every time it presses the button, it will know to press the button when it is hungry. If the hamster is never rewarded, it will feel hungry all of the time and learn that the button is not associated with food pellets. If a food pellet is only sometimes rewarded to the hamster, it will press the button all of the time, never sure of when its hunger will end.

• Average lifespan of a cat: 12-15 years
• Average lifespan of a horse: 25-30 years

F.A.Q. #2:

“Is it okay to daydream about camping together and maybe getting trapped in a cave and needing to subsist on crickets and dirt until we find this really pretty, bio-luminescent ‘cave pool’ filled with good-tasting fish and the water is warm enough to swim in and I accidentally get pregnant and when he delivers my baby he has the same look on his face as Clive Owen in Children of Men when he delivers the baby?”

No.

Bad Thing to Overhear

“No, I’m not seeing anyone.”

Dinner Date

If you do have to break down and have a conversation with him about this “thing it is that you’re doing,” know that you have approached the end of your vague relationship, because you will be attempting to define it. A good place to have this conversation is your living room. A bad place to have this conversation is the parking lot outside of P.F. Chang’s, before you’ve even sat down to dinner. When you get out of the car, the least appropriate-seeming thing to see is a faux-marble, grimacing Chinese lion.

Your Solo Cirque du Soleil Act

Try to hold yourself from behind

• Average lifespan of a human: 80 years

Petsmart

This is a convenient and affordable one-stop shop for all of your small pet’s needs, but try to avoid walking near the “Adopt a Cat” room with floor to ceiling glass. This room should especially be avoided when there are no other people around, so it’s easy to stare at the neon stickers that advertise, “I’m a Snuggler!” and “Loves to Play!” Try not to think about the one fluorescent light that stays on all night after the employees go home.

F.A.Q. #3

“Is the meaning of life to get excited about someone, genuinely feel interested in what he says, try to make him feel interested in what you say, make your bodies touch a lot, then ‘mess up’ somehow, have a long discussion where you ‘talk about a lot’ but don’t actually talk about anything although you tell yourselves you’ve reached some kind of ‘resolution,’ see him less at parties, write things to him and regret it, cycle through desire and hatred towards him but sort of feel unjustified for feeling anything towards him at all, try to get interested in other things or people, have long stretches of time of just sitting in your bed, looking out the window and wondering how it got to be so late, crave physical contact, crave someone validating your existence by showing interest in you, maybe get drunk by yourself a few nights and fall asleep in the bathtub, wake up, and go to work the next day?”

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