brings back memories - the cool test

CNN.com reported today that a fired Santana dide blames guru's 'Test'. In the interest of this particular news, I went above and beyond what I usually do (reading only the headlines) and read the first paragraph of this story.

Here's the guy who cites so-called tests that his employer used to guage his ability to become enlightened. I can totally understand this one. It brought back some forgotten memories...

The first job I ever had was working at Media Play as a seasonal employee in the book department. One of my bosses was a woman slightly younger than me (I was 21 at the time) and was quite friendly on a personal level.

Quite Friendly.

It got to the point that I was either going to have to ask her out or file a sexual harassment suit. She couldn't keep her hands off me. She kept telling me how "huggable" I was.

As much as this sucks to admit, this was the first woman in my life to fawn over me in such ways.

Being inexperienced in the ways of the fairer sex I devised a plan to determine whether or not she was really going to be someone who could appreciate my company. Thus, the "cool test" was born.

She was always asking to borrow my pen. So one night when I was at a local exhibit featuring treasures from the Imperial tombs of China, I made a purchase at the gift shop - an eighty-eight cent ballpoint pen. I had it gift wrapped in extravagant fashion, golden ribbon and bow included.

The "cool test" boiled down to this woman's reaction when I gave her the pen. If she thought it was funny, she was golden. Any other reaction was bad.

When I gave it to her she made a big deal about how great it was... not getting the joke that she was always losing her pen, that it was a cheap pen, and that I had spent infinitely more on the wrapping than the actual gift.

Oh well.

I gave up on her and the job, but I have always regretted the cool test. It wasn't too much later that I realized that the only thing that really mattered was that she liked me and I liked her... and I was the one who should have been tested as I missed all the obvious signs of this woman’s interest in me...

But life goes on.

Long story short, I wish I could tell the wife of Carlos Santana that the results of such tests are meaningless. If you feel the need to test the people around you, then there is something wrong with you, not them.