Dating Dimes* on a Dime in DC

*slang noun in relation to physical beauty in place of a "perfect ten"

By Westmoreland

03. Make The Tears Stop

God designed women with certain undocumented features (software engineers call these Easter Eggs*) that men are supposed to discover through trial and error (or word of mouth). I don’t mean a recent discovery that your lady likes chocolate. The fact that women like chocolate is well documented.

One example of an undocumented feature is the impact of gravity on a woman’s tears. To me water falling from a glass, rain falling from the sky, or a waterfall over a cliff appear to work differently than the tears falling from a woman’s eyes. When the water in a tear is set loose to descend a woman’s cheek, it runs slowly enough to be dramatic, but sufficiently fast to make room for more tears. I wonder can a woman cry on the moon? Or orbiting the Earth in a Zero-G environment.

It did not take me long to wish I had been on the moon when my colleague stopped me in the hallway (where I work), to cry to me about our project. Let me be clear. I do not mean cry-out. I mean weep. She was actually sobbing as she recounted the latest bit of weirdness on our project. I was almost too embarrassed to move, but too terrified not to offer that we find a conference room. A conference room for her to have a good cry. She declined and suggested we continue to the cafeteria where I had been heading. I felt very uncomfortable walking into a crowded, lunchtime cafeteria with a sobbing woman at my side.

I am a computer programmer. There is nothing related to computers that is actually sad. Bad bugs in programs can be stressful or depressing, but never have disappointments in my work risen (or fallen) to the level of sorrow. And if ever I come across a problem in my code that pushes me to tears -- those tears have to drop, silently, into the commode of a locked stall in the men’s room.

Man. Did I have ants in my pants. My loafers felt hot. I paid for my turkey burger and chicken breast and followed the distressed coworker to a lunch table where she (nervously?) wiped tears away and ate her baked chicken. Me? I cannot cry and eat.

After she complained about the unfair team lead, we threw away our trays and made the slow walk back to the foyer of the building. She wept and I fidgeted and scratched my neck. There is nothing more alienating than waiting for a woman to stop crying. At least she was not crying because of something that I had done. That, I would experience later in the day…


*A computer programmer “joke” that is inserted into a piece of software intended to entertain the development team. Some easy examples are http://www.google.com/intl/xx-klingon/, or Google/type: “French military victories” and select the I AM Feeling Lucky button.