things that hook you unawares

I had a roommate once whose mother was an occasional prostitute. On her graduation day, my roommate was getting dressed, when she asked me (in typical female fashion) how does this work with my outfit. She modeled for me some nylon stockings that had bows on them. I frowned and said in strong disapproval, “I wouldn’t wear them.” I didn’t know why, they just looked trashy and there wasn’t anything in the design that warranted such a judgment. I felt stupid. Yet, she wore them anyway, with a decently cut skirt and fully covering blouse. On the way to the graduation, we stopped at a drugstore to get some things when an old nasty man started to follow us around, ending up behind us at the checkout. His bloodshot eyes gleefully appraised my roommate and he took the liberty to proposition her while complimenting her crudely on her “stockings”. She was completely annoyed and irritated. However, later she told me that she had borrowed the stockings from her mother, who had likely used them in her line of work.

Research has found that if a seller puts pheromones onto their product, people buy it at a higher rate than if they do not. Other “smart” companies have begun to manufacture pheromone spray for human use. Make yourself more attractive to the opposite sex appeal sprays and attractants sold by so called “romance” companies. How does this effect your average Joe’s spending? How do these con products effect my spending and hence alter my life (outside of my reasonable choice)?

Once I was at a bar with some friends (I wasn’t drinking or abusing any substance). And I began talking to a guy from Venezuela. He was old—never my type. But as the conversation progressed and I found out he was a philosophy educator and knew quite a lot about religion, I suddenly felt incredibly interested in who he was. I wished we could communicate more effectively, however, the noise level in the bar was high and I barely understood him. We had a bit of an apologetics type conversation over the noise. Yet it was outside when we had the opportunity to continue in conversation at our leisure. Yet suddenly, I felt indifferent in contrast to my earlier interest. It was as if I had been wearing a coat and then I was not: nothing in the conversation warranted my sudden disintrest.