How to Win Friends--or Dates: part 1

This is the preface to the date. This is a series of events that happened before I even met the boy, but which play an important role in understanding the events of the date. So.

When I was living in the Philippines (as a missionary), my brother read "How to Win Friends and Influence People." He wrote to me about what a great book it was, etc etc and gave me a few suggestions. He said that the key to making people like you is to make them think you're interested in them, and the best way to show interest is to ask people lots of questions about themselves. Then my brother told me that the next time I go to dinner at a Filipino home, I should talk to the father about his work and the mother about her cooking; if they didn't have much to say at first, I should just keep asking questions until they started talking more. He assured me that everyone has something interesting to say.

This sounded like pretty good advice, especially since I'm not a very good conversationalist. And it just so happened that we had been invited to dinner that week by a family I didn't know well.

When we got to the family's home for dinner, I decided to try my brother's suggestions and asked the father what he did for work. I expected him to be a farmer or a taxi driver like everyone else I knew and figured I could discuss those occupations at length. But he was not a farmer or a taxi driver. He delivered chickens.

"You deliver chickens?" I said.

"Yes. I deliver chickens?"

"What do mean, you 'deliver chickens'?" I asked.

"I deliver chickens."

I searched and struggled to find a follow-up question to his response, but this was totally out of my league of question-asking skills.

"Are they live chickens? Or dead?"

"Dead."

"Are they fresh? Or frozen?"

"Frozen. Why are you asking these questions?"

"I just want to get to know you better. So do people pre-order these chickens, or do you sell the chickens door-to-door?" I asked. I kept hoping he would start really talking at some point instead of just answering the questions and being done.

"I just sell them to whoever wants them." He didn't continue on.

So I tried an open-ended prompt. "So on a typical day, what do you do?"

"I sell chickens." (So frustrating.)

"But I mean, tell me about your day, start to finish. What the steps and procedures for selling the chickens."

"I sell chickens. What more can I tell you about it?"

I kind of wanted to die. Worst possible scenario for trying out this "How to Win Friends" business, but eventually I convinced the father to tell me all about his day and about chickens and a bunch of other stuff. After dinner, I decided to talk to the mother--she couldn't possibly be as frustrating. Besides, I love cooking and the dinner had been delicious, so I was happy to discuss it with her.

I went to the kitchen where she was cleaning up, "That arroz caldo was delicious. It really was the best arroz caldo I've had. How did you make it?" My compliments were sincere: it really was the best arroz caldo (sort of a soupy casserole with rice and chicken) I'd ever eaten.

Unlike the father, she was eager to talk, "Well, I start by browning the chicken like this." She showed me the pan and the chicken and made some cooking gestures. Then she showed me seasonings and few other tricks.

"But the key to good arroz caldo," she told me, "is liver."

Wait--what? I hate liver. Liver is pretty much the only weird food I didn't learn to love in the Philippines. The smell, the texture, the taste. Liver is disgusting. I mean, the liver is part of the digestive system. It detoxifies the body. How can you possibly want to eat the part of the body that takes in the all the sludgy stuff that isn't good for the body? Sick.

The mother continued on about the liver. And on and on and on. She showed me how much liver she had used and how she had cooked it and told me again how delicious liver is and how it's like the star of the arroz caldo. I wanted to die then even more than when I was trying to get her husband to tell me about delivering chickens. I cursed my brother for giving me advice. I cursed myself for following his advice. I could have spent the evening commenting on the weather. And I cursed what's-his-name for writing a stupid book about winning friends (who needs friends) and influencing people (so overrated).

Despite my inadequacies (and the whole ridiculousness of the situation), it worked. The whole asking questions to show you're interested in people thing worked: they invited us to come for Christmas.