Dating Daze

If I’m not mistaken, I do believe that I just got “Hey YOU”ed while walking through my office. And I’m not talking about a friendly “Hey You!!!” or an I-forgot-your-name “Hey… You” either. This was a soft, gentle, penny-for-your-thoughts “heyyy YOUuuu”. By someone who has NOT been commissioned for such talk. Needless to say, I didn’t like it. Not one bit.

Because ‘Hey YOU’, well, that’s pretty personal. It’s significant other talk, that’s what it is. It’s a SSS (special someone saying) that only your other half should be allowed to use. And hopefully he won’t, if you’re like me and cringe at the mere mention of the phrase. Definitely not a fan. It’s impersonal, cheesy, surfacey face talk.

Now it’s entirely possible that I may just be overly sensitive to the subject, seeing as I have a very embarassing ‘Hey YOU’ experience in my not-too-distant past. There’s this guy at work whose name is spelled Huy Nguyen. A pretty tough one as far as pronunciation is concerned, wouldn’t you agree? My personal take was “You Na-goy-en”. So every time I passed him in the hall, I would say “Hey, You.” For months.

Turns out “We Win” is the correct way to say his name. He probably thought I was trying to be flirtatious the whole time too. The only reason I realized my mistake was that I saw him while walking with a co-worker. I used my usual salutation, and once we passed, my co-worker goes, “Wow, I didn’t know you and WE were such good friends.” What followed was a short ‘Who’s on First’ exchange until my little faux pas was exposed.

Me: Who’s such good friends? Me & YOU?

Co-worker: No, Cherie. You and WE.

Me: Huh? Are you talking about YOU?

Co-worker: No! You and WE.

Needless to say, I’m not a name person. I honestly don’t even think I hear it upon first introduction. In one ear and out the other.

Psychologists say that words constitute only 10% of how we communicate to one another. The other 90% is interpretation of body language, tone & inflection, facial expressions, and what not. I’m distracted, for crying out loud. I shouldn’t be expected to remember a minute, inconsequential little detail like your name right off the bat. That comes later. Right now I’m busy. I need to look at your hand (ring?), your body language (sleazy? shy?), your clothes (still influenced by mom? color-blind?), etc. I AM listening, just to the other 90%.

One of my worst nightmares is having to introduce people too. Once that acceptable window has passed where it’s okay to re-ask the name, you’re pretty much screwed. One of my non-boyfriend boy friends went out with a girl for a month and never knew her name. Not a boyfriend, just a boy friend. (I added that space to form a two-word phrase that’s less common, and that has made all the difference.) He’s just a boy with whom I’m friendly. Anyway, he got by with “Hey YOU”s and “Hi Honey!”s the whole time. Quite a little racket he had going on. She never wised up either. It was pretty impressive, I’ll give him that.

I shan’t cast the first stone here though, since I’m kind of what you would call a ‘name inventor’ myself. See Mom, you always knew I’d amount to something! If you were to go through my phonebook, you’d find a smorgasbord of creative names like ‘The Cute Israeli’, ‘Alejandro- El Salsero’ (not to be confused with Alejandro-DO NOT ANSWER), and my personal favorite, ‘The Viceroy’. The Viceroy didn’t even get a real nickname. He’ll just forever be known as the place where we met. “Oh, hold on Janelle. My other line’s ringing, and I have to take this. It’s The Viceroy.”

Ha! I just made a funny right now at the office. Here I am, conscientiously ‘working’ (on this post, but that’ll be our little secret), and over the sectional my co-worker Natasha said, “Hey Cherie?” I responded with “Hey Youuuuuuu”, since I have it on the brain. We had a good little laugh over that one. A nice, professional chuckle.

I like to call them ’sectionals’ rather than ‘cubicles’ because that would be kind of like giving up and admitting I live a life I didn’t plan for where I go to an office every day and sit around for nine hours in a cubicle working for someone other than myself under flourescent lights and go to the kitchen way too much out of boredom. ‘Sectionals’ is more of a temporary term. A term I can deal with. Unlike a term like ‘Hey YOU.’ Now that’s another story altogether.

This entry was posted Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 3:29 pm and is filed under L.A. Dating, The Dating Game. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.