Entitlement Theory: Point System of Love
The oddly sour taste of regurgitated “Be Mine” candy hearts is still fresh from my post-VD – Valentine’s Day – vomit. I guess it’s that rancid flavor that has love on my mind.
Love and I have always had a love/hate relationship – not that VD is all about love. Far from it.
Guys will say it’s more about torture.
Guys will say it’s more about kowtowing to the hormonally imbalanced romantic inclinations of the female of the species.
Some will even go as far as to say that the whole thing is just a sham. A sinister plot against men’s beer/sports/automobile-recreation fund. The creation of the diabolical triad involving female show hosts – Kathy Lee Gifford, Oprah, maybe even Sally Jesse Rafael – corporate America and those owning the rights to Air Supply’s musical catalog, where women are showered with gifts and sentimental greeting cards all to the soundtrack of carcinogenic love songs.
They’re all wrong. Men should be thanking women, because VD is all about an easy way to get points.
What? You’re not familiar with Baker’s Point System of Love?
Here it is: We’re all, at least on a subconscious level, putting point values on everything we do for other people.
As we accumulate points, we like to cash them in for different things. Men are likely looking to trade in carnal currency – we’ll occasionally accept food offerings, as well. Women usually want the perfect evening:
“Honey would ya fix the dryer, then get me some ice cream so we can watch re-runs of “Sex in the City” and then you can cuddle me to sleep while I tell you about my day?”
The guys says, “Yes, sweetie.”
But what he really means is, “There’s got to be some sports show on. Just has to be a game. Hell, I’d watch golf. And the cuddling, I guess I can’t just roll over and zonk out. I’m tired, too. At least they’ll be some nudity on “Sex and the City” – the old blond one is usually naked. Damnit, it’s on TBS. I wonder if I can just grunt my way through this conversation tonight? Not a chance. If I don’t get about 150 points for this, so help me I’ll … I’ll … I have no recourse. Take me now, Lord.”
That’s generalizing and stereotyping and being misogynous, but the important thing is, we’ve all accepted the point system, whether we know it or not.
We all go to extreme lengths to further the mating game.
Ladies, guys only do things like, watch “Fried Green Tomatoes,” go to yoga, listen to Jewel, shower, wear something besides their shredded Led Zeppelin Zoso shirt every day, have at least a cursory knowledge of celebrity make-ups and break-ups, wear pants – at all – or take down the inflatable penis and topless Jenny McCarthy pictures decorating their room, because they want to earn points and cash them in for a visit to a yet-unknown destination on the sex continuum.
Gents, girls only wear makeup, sit through sporting events, take time to make complex the idiotically simple male psyche, shave their legs, put up with our stinky, sweaty, hairy, gaseous presence to rob us of our body heat, have a strong and knowledgeable ally when the zombies come – because very few girls I know have a Zombie Contingency Plan – a shoulder to cry on when Ryan Gosling dies for the 45-millionth time and someone to drive them to get ice cream at any hour of the day or night.
Oh, and there is the whole companionship, love thing, but that’s a little too touchy feeling for my taste, so we’ll just stick to superficial things that are easy to characterize, stereotype and parody.
We never discuss point allocation out loud because it would take the romantic aspect out of it, and make everything we do into your basic model for prostitution. Although nothing is explicitly said, it’s easy to get a general idea of the point values for activities.
Dollars are almost directly proportional to points, unless you get over $50, then it should be about 1.5 points per dollar for every $1 spent after the first 50.
If Nicholas Sparks has anything to do with anything, multiply the original point value by at least four. Guys should also get credit by multiplying the length of any Lonestar song they make it through without vomiting by 10 to get the total point value.
Topics brought up in discussion that also get point multipliers include, but aren’t limited to: Politics, religion, “Grey’s Anatomy” – or similar trash – shoes, celebrity gossip, female singers (unless that singer happens to be Stevie Nicks. What a hottie?!), anything remotely related to fashion or interior design and programming on either Lifetime or Oxygen.
Guys, we should get multipliers for any discussion we actively participate in that doesn’t involve sports, beer and whiskey, Will Farrell movies, former Sportscenter anchors, NES games, metal or classic rock, early Adam Sandler comedy albums and beards.
But girls, you don’t have to take any guff from men in this whole point system thing. You can divide his points by a factor of three if you actively participate in conversations about any of the stuff above. You can take away an extra multiplier for every 12 people killed in an action movie or every four fart jokes in a comedy.
Anything to do with the art of lumberjacking, Steven Segal or carburetors, you can divide his points in half. And if we spend less than $5 a plate on dinner, take all our points away.
As guys, we realize you don’t want to talk about the finer points of “Rambo” or the intricacies and social implications of the NFL Combine, and we also realize that we’re probably losing points all the time, at a healthy clip. Sometimes, you just have to fart and laugh about it. I’ve had friends lose so many points because of “Madden” video games alone, they had their open-mouth-kissing privileges revoked – on a probationary basis.
The thing is, guys aren’t good at saving up our points for something big.
We waste them on a 10-minute discussion with ourself – because most girls don’t care at all for stuff like this – about who was the better Ozzy Osbourne guitarist: Zakk Wylde or Randy Rhoades?
We will spend the minuscule amount of points we earn from the romantic dinner at Carl’s Jr and an evening of profanity-laced putt-putt to take a trip to second base – from whence we will get thrown out trying to steal third.
If we were smart, we’d save all of our turbo, which we get from points in this video-game analogy, and swing for the fence, try to hit the home run. But, we’re content with being slap-hitters with a little speed, racking up doubles and – if things are good – the occasional triple. Batting average is important in this baseball analogy that only seven percent of people will truly understand.
Maybe this analogy will work better. Probably not, but what the hell? We’ve made it this far.
All of us have been to arcades or carnivals or any event or place where you can accrue tickets and trade them in for snowman erasers and stale candy.
So a guy, or impatient girl, will play the hell out of some ski ball, having that machine spitting out tickets faster than a bulimic person after a trip to the buffet. Instead of playing several games and saving up the tickets to get a badass set of fuzzy dice, the guy will just trade in his tickets after each game, collecting a thousand sticky fingers, condom-looking hopper things and 13-year-old Tootsie Rolls.
Basically, it all comes down to this: Love is just a really complicated ski-ball game, where some people get lucky and nail a 500 pointer, and others toil in frustration, hitting hundreds of 50 pointers and going home with two hands full of rubbery frog finger puppets.
Damn. That was deep. Profound, even. I’m starting to scare myself.
– da.bake@aggiemail.usu.edu