The Parable of the Potential Suitor

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, who do you think opened the dialogue that led to the phone call between the American president and the Iranian president?””

Josh spoke thus:

A potential suitor pushed six numbers.  The seventh number remained unpushed.

This would not exactly be a blind date.  The potential suitor knew the potential suitee.  They were not intimate, the potential suitor and the potential suitee, but neither were they strangers.  They had not spoken to each other, the potential suitor and the potential suitee, but they had spoken of each other.

The potential suitor self-chastised for behaving like a middle schooler.  Thoughts of notes being passed in class, or more likely in the dining hall, sprang to the potential suitor’s mind.

“If you like me check here,” the note might say, with a box to be checked.  I good note wouldn’t give the checker a choice of “like” and “don’t like.”  Even a middle schooler should know the old sales trick of never offering an out.  “Tell me how much you want it,” is the salesperson’s mandate, not “Tell me if you like it.”  The choice is better or best.  The advertiser knows, as does the clever middle schooler, that the potential buyer should never be given a choice of not buying.  And advertising is, at its root, middle school.

“You want to be pretty.”  “You want to be popular.”  “You want to smell good.”  “You want to have friends.”  These are the goals of middle school.  “You don’t want to be ugly.”  “You don’t want to be left out.”  “You don’t want to smell bad.”  “You don’t want to be alone.”  These are the fears of middle school.

The potential suitor looked at the phone.  It was a confident phone.  It was a smart phone.  It had the latest software, the latest maps, the latest biometrics, the latest artificial intelligence.  Surely the owner of such a phone would be confident.  Surely the owner of such a phone would be sure of success.  Surely the owner of such a phone would have a middle school brain that wanted to go on a date.  Surely the owner of such a phone would have a middle school brain that didn’t fear being unable to go on a date.

Yet the middle school brain of the owner of the smart phone was, in the end, a middle school brain, even though the owner of the smart phone was middle aged.

Even the middle aged brain is occasionally the middle school brain that won’t push the seventh number.

The potential suitor pushed the seventh number and the smart phone connected the call.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t phone,” the potential suitee said.

“Check this box,” the potential suitor thought.  The potential suitor smiled.