Today I want to talk about dating. This subject was raised in a letter to me from a young person named Eric Knott, who writes:

“I have got a big problem. There’s this girl in my English class who is really good-looking. However, I don’t think she knows I exist. I want to ask her out, but I’m afraid she will say no, and I will be the freak of the week. What should I do?”

Eric, you have sent your question to the right mature adult, because as a young person, I spent a lot of time thinking about this very problem. Starting in about eighth grade, my time was divided as follows:

The most sensible way to ask a girl out is to walk directly up to her on foot and say, “So you want to go out or what?” I never did this. I knew, as Eric Knott knows, that there was always the possibility that the girl would say no, thereby leaving me with no viable option but to leave Harold G. Crittenden Junior High School forever and go into the woods and become a bark-eating hermit whose only companions would be the gentle and understanding woodland creatures.

“Hey, Clueless!” the woodland creatures would shriek in their cute little Chip ‘n’ Dale voices while raining acorns down upon my head. “You wanna date? Hahahahahaha.”

So the first rule of dating is, Never risk direct contact with the girl in question. Your role model should be the nuclear submarine, gliding silently beneath the ocean surface, tracking an enemy target that does not even begin to suspect that the submarine would like to date it. I spent the vast majority of 1960 keeping a girl named Judy under surveillance, maintaining a minimum distance of fifty lockers to avoid the danger that I might somehow get into a conversation with her, which could have led to disaster.

Judy: Hi.
Me: Hi.
Judy: Just in case you have ever thought about having a date with me, the answer is no.
Woodland Creatures: Hahahahahaha.

The only problem with the nuclear-submarine technique is that it’s difficult to get a date with a girl who has never, technically, been asked. This is why you need Phil Grant. Phil was a friend of mine who had the ability to talk to girls. It was a mysterious superhuman power he had, comparable to X-ray vision. So, after several thousand hours of intense discussion and planning with me, Phil approached a girl he knew named Nancy, who approached a girl named Sandy, who was a direct personal friend of Judy’s, and who passed the word back to Phil via Nancy that Judy would be willing to go on a date with me. This procedure protected me from direct humiliation, similar to the way President Reagan¹ was protected from direct involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal² by complex White House chain of command that at one point, investigators now believe, included his horse.

Thus it was that, finally, Judy and I went on an actual date, to see a movie in White Plains, New York. If I were to sum up the romantic ambience³ of this date in four words, those words would be, “My mother was driving.” This made for an extremely quiet drive, because my mother, realizing that her presence was hideously embarrassing, had to pretend she wasn’t there. If it had been legal, I think she would have got out and sprinted alongside the car, steering through the window. Judy and I, sitting in the back seat about seventy-five feet apart, were also silent, unable to communicate without the assistance of Phil, Nancy, and Sandy. After what seemed like several years, we got to the movie theater, where my mother went off to sit in the Parents and Lepers Section. The movie was called North to Alaska, but I can tell you nothing else about it because I spent the whole time wondering whether it would be necessary to amputate my right arm, which was not getting blood flow as a result of being perched for two hours like a petrified snake on the back of Judy’s seat exactly one molecule away from physical contact. So it was definitely a fun first date, featuring all the relaxed spontaneity of a real-estate closing,⁴ and in later years I did regain some feeling in my arm. My point, Eric Knott, is that the key to successful dating is self-confidence. I bet that good-looking girl in your English class would love to go out with you. But you have to make the first move. So just do it! Pick up that phone! Call Phil Grant.

¹President Reagan: Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1911-; U.S. president 1981-89.
²Iran-Contra scandal: a case in which US government officials were suspected of improperly selling weapons to Iran to raise funds for Nicaraguan rebel forces.
³Ambience: an atmosphere or environment.
⁴Real-estate closing: a meeting at which the rights to land or a building are officially transferred from seller to buyer.