to catch a predator

Do you guys know this song?

I sure hope so. Not only is it an iconic early-90s addition to those great Soft-Rock stations that syndicate "Delilah" late at night, but it's also the inspiration for a great story from my freshman year of college.

When I moved to Provo I was a pretty naive newly-18-year-old. I hadn't had a lot of experience with "the real world;" I'd never lived by myself, or really done anything without my mom close enough to come help, and I'd only had one real boyfriend-ish relationship.

Cue Todd, the guy that lived upstairs when my roommates and I moved in at the beginning of Fall Semester. He was quick to come introduce himself to the new apartment-full of six freshman girls.

Todd was your average Utah boy: about 5'8" with bleached blonde hair, overly-tan skin, and perpetually clad with a pukka-shell necklace and too-tight t-shirt. I didn't know enough yet to know this is the international symbol of douchebauchery.

He seemed nice enough, was a decent conversationalist, and attentive to all six of us. I was sure he had a thing for a certain roommate of mine (honestly, all the boys did, she's awesome) but she always denied that was the case.

One day I answered a knock at the door only to find Todd on the other side.

"Just the girl I was looking for," he said with guitar in hand.

He pulled me into the hallway, out the front door, and led me to a chair in the courtyard outside our building.

I sat there wide-eyed as he began serenading me with Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven. This shocked me. I didn't think any boy would ever feel this way about me.

Well, guess what?

He didn't.

He finished the song. We chit-chatted, and he asked me the deal-sealer: "So, do you think [roommate] would like it if I sang that to her before I asked her out?"

Part of me was insulted, part of me was relieved, and the biggest part began to laugh.

"Uh, sure. I think you should try that."

And from what I remember, he did; in front of all our roommates.

She was less than impressed.

That's when he started in on the only other song he knew on the guitar.

Yep, you guessed it. More Than Words, another classic 1990 hit.

And I'm sure you also guessed my roommate remained unimpressed. 

Todd stopped coming over after that, but he bounced back speedily as I heard him "serenading" another girl down the hall just a few days later. 

In the end, I was right -- he did have a thing for the roommate all boys flocked to. I also learned the d-bag warning signs. And I learned that any boy who only knows the two Provo-wide standard serenading songs (yes, unfortunately this is an epidemic) is never worth looking at as an option because they'll bounce back quickly and try to snag some other naive chick. 

(Plus any guy worth your time will actually cater his snagging methods to you.)

Oh, Provo.

xoxo.