How to Read People

I actually experienced this firsthand in the 5th grade. The apple of my eye -- the girl whom I'd pined over since meeting her three years earlier -- was ensnared by, of all people, my best friend. If that's not the ultimate form of betrayal, I don't know what is. I was partly to blame in that I was so shy to make a move that the girl likely ran out of patience. She tried dropping hints as often as she could: staring at me in class, asking me whether I had a date for the dance, giving me cutesy cards on Valentine's Day. She even told me one day that I was #2 on her list of guys she liked the most. When #1 transferred to another school in the 3rd grade, I was suddenly well positioned to win her heart. Unfortunately, however, I never had the guts to ask her to be my girlfriend. Still, she could have hooked up with anyone who wasn't my friend, let alone my closest buddy. I don't know if it was payback for giving her false hope, or whether she did it in hope...

Schools across the country are putting a ban on leggings, and it seems students and parents alike are divided on the issue. I'll be totally sincere: As a man, I love seeing women in leggings. They help accentuate the contours of a woman's lower body. If a woman has nice thighs and a great butt, leggings certainly help showcase them. I have a hard time looking away when I see women in them at the gym. I would imagine by now they know it attracts male attention, thus one of the reasons they wear them in the first place. Now, do I think girls in middle school and high school should wear them? When trying to answer this question, I imagine having a daughter wearing them to school and receiving the kind of male attention I described above. Naturally, it makes me uneasy. The issue is that a lot of women seem to wear leggings that look awfully tight on them -- so tight, in fact, that they ride up on their crotches and/or butts. Or, you could even see the woman's underwea...

Our high school/college days seem well behind us, don't they? There are certainly things most us might miss about that time of our lives, including: Having a busier social life than we do now: People go in different directions after high school, causing us to lose contact with many of our closest friends. And though we may be able to keep in touch with a few, things are never quite the same. Proximity plays a huge role when it comes to friendships. It was so much easier to maintain them when you knew you'd see your buddies every day in gym class or Home Ec. Once you graduate from college and have bills, work, and other priorities to worry about, an active social life no longer takes precedence. Once we hit our 30s and 40s, we can consider ourselves lucky if we have three people we can call true friends. Being closer to family members: For most of us, our high school years comprise the last stretch in which we'll ever live at home with our parents. While living at ho...

When we were kids, we were asked a specific question that we probably felt we knew the answer to: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Answers would run the gamut -- from firefighter to teacher to baseball player. It's understandable that we wouldn't know what our calling is at such a young age. Unfortunately, though, some of us -- even in our 20s, 40s, or 60s -- still haven't arrived at a concrete answer. It's well-documented that a lot of us switch majors multiple times in colleges and go on to receive a degree in something we might never use in the real world. While this isn't a big deal, it does become a problem when one opts to change careers several times after being in the working world for a considerable amount of time. Here are a couple of reasons why: It shows you can't make up your mind as to which career you wish to settle into People will start to think you can't hold down a job Your resume is proof that you have ...

Many women admit to having been drawn to bad boys in their youth. They claim that they found their hyper-masculinity and self-confidence almost irresistible. Unfortunately, nice guys with good intentions were kicked to the curb, left scratching their heads over what they did wrong. These same women say that they outgrew this phase as the desire for marriage, children, and overall stability crept in. So here's the central question: Do women truly get over this love of bad boys, even when they're older? I think that women eventually stop pursuing such men, but that doesn't mean they don't want to see a little "bad boy" in their partners at least once in a while. In my view, women want their men to have some of the qualities commonly associated with bad boys, such as: Self-confidence Standing up for what he believes in, even if that means arguing to prove his point Getting fired up for a cause about which he's passionate Being aggressive and tak...