New York City is a great place to find yourself flirting with a guy, who try really hard to impress you with his unique approach. So, yea, of course, “what music do you listen to?” is kind of a boring question, no one want to hear, but what the one should do with “what’s your story?”
I met this guy at the birthday party of a friend of a friend. He was kind of cute, and right away it seemed we are going to be a party fling. We have done the whole introduction part, and the next question he asked me was “what’s your story?” line. I thought, this is sort of creative, but right after I realized there is no good answer to it. I mean, there are many reasons for which this question should not be your go-to flirty question.
Let’s begin with the fact that you are starting off with an intention of going to the past. What do you actually want to hear? My daddy issues story? My ex-lovers stories? My how I got my job story, or how I got my first period story? Because those all are my stories. Firstly, do you really want to start with those? Secondly, do I really want to tell you those? We have just met, so you are putting me in an uncomfortable position right off the bat.
Next problem with “what’s your story” strategy, is the fact that you are pushing the responsibility for finding a good topic on me. Depending on what story I am going to pick, this is going to become our topic, and that’s an easy way out from the time you don’t know what to talk about. But now you made me think of what should we talk about, so that is not a gentleman move, my dear Story Listener.
Another problem with that question is that if you are lucky (or unlucky) enough to come across a storyteller type like me, you are going to make my brain crash from the overload of stories I could tell.
This is what happened – I looked at this guy with my dumbest look and asked him, “what type of story?” quickly scanning through all my way too controversial stories, way too embarrassing stories, way too long stories and my way too personal stories. My brain was so overloaded, I could give him just a dumb look and repeat like a broken machine “what story, what story?”
He insisted on me choosing, by saying – “tell me what is Your story.”
And I am thinking – “Man, do you have 30 years to listen or something? Pick a subject, or you are going to regret that.”
He refused to pick the subject so the words just rolled out of my mouth in something like – “Once upon a time, not so far away…I had a husband, a boyfriend and a girlfriend. The end”. The guy looked at me like, perhaps, he went through a minor shock, because now his brain was crashing, not being able to process, where to go further with that.
“You asked for it, now you take it from there. You asked me to tell you My story, and well, the lottery machine just picked relationship status category, over childhood traumas one.” The guy could not work anything out of that, so he just returned to less pretentious, much safer waters, and politely asked – “well, anyways, what music do you listen to?”
So, I’ve met myself today feeling relieved to have a shallow conversation about music, over telling “my story” to a complete stranger. Sometimes even a storyteller prefers to start off with the basics.
😅👍🏼