Fruit and Females

Originally posted August 3rd, 2009:

The other day I made the mistake of bemoaning my lack of girlfriend and general female companionships with two friends of mine. This qualifies as a mistake as it gives them license to voice their well known complaints about my general preference towards females. It also gives them a chance to point out that I am, in fact, a mean, cynical asshole, which, to most people, is not a trait conducive to creating friendship. While life does not generally rewards honesty and sincerity, I feel that it creates a smaller group of closer friends.

However, one of them pointed out that girls are currently “out of season”. This evoke images of peaches growing on trees and cucumbers ripening on the vines… in season? I was tempted to make some sexual reference in connection to produce and dating, but I decided to allow him to go on with his comment. In his view, the availability of datable girls varies by time of year, in the same way that fruits and vegetables go in and out of season. Just as one would look for blueberries in the summer and butternut squash in the fall/winter, one has best wait until the proper season to find a girlfriend.

He pointed out that the beginning of the school year (the fall) is one of the best times. Students are often lonely after ending summer flings and just lonely from not having seen college friends in a while. Seperation can add a new found outlook and just novelty that can act as a catalyst for relationships. Plus, the weather is getting colder and Christmas is coming up, all good incentives to find yourself a partner. As winter approaches, your quicker and more aggressive competition will have claimed an increasing large proportion of the target female population. In a sense, girls are going “out of season” as they become more difficult to find and generally lower quality when found. Things do get better after Valentines Day, as winter ends and people realize “oh shit, I have finals/other school work”. If you don’t believe me, look at the attendance of the eating clubs in the winter vs. the spring. At that moment, a spring full of blissful frolicking must take the backseat to studying. This disrupts existing relationships. However, the spring also introduces the prospect of summer. While more existing relationships will be broken, people will be resistant to creating new ones as time in the current year runs short. The summer comes, flings fly and the cycle begins again in the fall.

While somewhat entertaining, if also cynical, he takes a very cyclic approach to relationships. The flow of females is tied to the growing seasons. It seems more effective for someone trying to “play the field” instead of a committed relationship. I have to complement him for his unique reasoning and strong use of metaphor. It’s actually quite funny, because I have my own produce based metaphor for relationships, though it is quite different, perhaps more linear.

Instead of annual crops that grow and die in one season, consider a fruit orchard. True, fruit trees are still tied to seasonal change. Cherry trees bear their flowers in the spring and fruit in the summer. But trees live for many, many years, and the seasonal ebb and flow are tiny variances in the a large time span. A tree does not so much come into season, but matures over time. An avocado tree will often not bear fruit for over a decade after it is planted. To find a tree and watch it grow into a bright future is something that I can look forward.