Hello, is it me you're looking for?*

I was talking to my friend last week about making a CD of "stalking" songs.  (I have a few possible titles, "Look Who's Stalking" or "Here's Stalking You, Kid".  I told my friend that the songs are love songs and he seemed surprised by that, to which I replied, "There's a fine line between wooing and stalking" and I truly believe this.

In the movie 27 Dresses, gorgeous former cycloptic hero* James Marsden is intrigued by Catherine Heigel's character.  He shares a cab with her and she leaves behind her uber stuffed planner of wedding after wedding to be a bridesmaid or maid of honor.  He decides to use this planner to hunt her down, under the pretense of getting an idea for a story, but really, he's stalking her.  Because it is the overly attractive Marsden not many people bat an eye at this behavior.  But had it been, say, the guy at church who is obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons and who you neither find attractive or particularly easy to talk to, we would have all noticed that this behavior is socially unacceptable.  So what makes the difference? What pushes you to one side or the other?

It's the interest that the stalkee has in the stalker.  When a girl likes a guy she doesn't mind him texting all the time, asking to hang out, or showing up where she happens to be.  When this girl is not interested, this behavior goes from sweet and dreamy to super creepy.

An example, I am currently out of town (how exciting! Pictures and blog posts to come soon).  There are two boys who I would love to make an example of right now.

Boy A - writes me on Facebook and tells me not to miss "us" (Richmonders) too much, to which I reply, "I'll try not to."  I ask him what he is doing this weekend and he says, "might go to the beach, might go crazy, might miss you?" and then mentions how I didn't even leave him a survival guide.

Boy B - Sends me three texts and I don't reply.  He catches me when I am on Facebook and asks how my plane flight was.  I say it was good.  He asks what state I'm in, I say Vermont.  He says, "I miss you already" and I don't respond.

You can probably tell by the interactions on my side who I am interested in and who I am not.  If you can't, there would be some interest in Boy A.  Granted, he's never asked to meet my parents and hasn't texted me everyday since he met me (and Boy B asked has done both) maybe I would see him as a stalker if he did that.  Also, I've only hung out with Boy B once in a group setting and he seems to have developed an attachment from that and Boy A I actually have hung out with a few times and would say he's becoming a friend.

For my final example: notice in the following video how creepy the man's behavior is - at the time you are worried for the girl...as time goes on you realize that the girl may be interested and then everything is oh so sweet...or rather, still uber creepy, but you get the point.  And if you don't, at least you enjoyed the video, right? Right?