No. 31: It’s Not You, It’s Me
Dear Pards,
It's college football season, baby! I just finished syllabus week as a sophomore at the University of Arkansas (Woo Pig), and being a Dallas guy who's gotta drive across that Texarkana line every Fall, pulling back into Fayetteville always hits different. Do you have a dog in the gridiron fight?
I'm big into golf even though my high school sport was lax, and being from The D, I'm obviously locked in on Scottie, so watching him go take another Tour Championship on Sunday was an elite way to spend an afternoon.Anyway, that's not really why I'm writing in. This one's not golf, not CFB, it's relational. My girlfriend since like 7th grade, a year younger than me, just started at UT last week, and she full-on ended things with me right after rush week. Blindsided. I guess just not vibing with it at all.
We already survived a full year of long distance and I was locked in for three more, even with her all the way down in Austin. She's saying it's not me it's the distance, but bro, my gut says there's more to the story. I can't stop being a Monday morning quarterback about the whole thing, trying to figure out what actually broke the camel's back.
Full disclosure, I did get a little too banged up at a mixer the other night and FaceTimed her and may have said some stuff I shouldn't have, in addition to shoving a girl who tried to take the phone out of my hand while I talked to her, but that can't be the actual reason, right?? After all we’ve been through?
Not to mention the ensuing wreckage I’m left to clean up. Her Dad and I are playing in a charity scramble together next month, and all my good good sweatshirts are still in her closet, to name a few.
Breakups are brutal man. Am I cooked, or is there still a play here to salvage this thing? I really do love her.Woo Pig Sooie!
-Kappa Sig in Fayetteville
Dear Kappa Sig,
As an East Coast kid, I’m fairly detached from the football fandom in your neck of the woods, unless a dog comes hunting in the hills of northwest NC to take on my beloved Mountaineers.
I’m also not privy to Panhellenic life, other than some satirical shirts a buddy of mine made in college of two fingers holding a dart, above a Greek-scripted Coppa Cig.
I am, however, all too familiar with breakups and am sorry to hear about your recent split.
Are you aware of the phenomenon known in many female circles as an “ick”? It seems to have originally been coined on Ally McBeal, a late-90s legal drama, though per my wife, it was brought back into modern pop culture by Olivia Attwood in 2017, via Season 3 of Love Island.
Listen, I’m not saying this is applicable to you. But it does seem strange that such a long-standing relationship could be cut off by one bad, off-putting fifteen-second FaceTime that doesn’t seem to define you or what you’ve done for the game her.
I wonder if that call was just the final straw after a few other Busch Light-induced faux pas that led her to look for a Longhorn over a Razorback? Sometimes it’s nothing you did wrong, but rather just how your steps look when you’re strolling down Dickson Street.
All that said, time heals all wounds. You might end up putting a new driver in the bag that's better than you ever imagined. Or I could be dead wrong, and you end up putting a triple diamond on her finger one day, and this whole separation was just a blip on the radar.
I’ll leave you with two pieces of advice before North Alabama comes to town this weekend:
Don’t shove girls.
Turn off your phone before the tailgate starts.
P╞r╠℮P.S. The stamp at the top of the newsletter is Tot Hill Farm in Asheboro, NC, by Dave Baysden. It is not a sneak peek of this month’s mail club, though it is one of my favorite places to play golf.
Yes, that’s an 18-month-old’s hand helping me hold down my letter from the wind so I can snap a picture of it before heading back to the beach to sip peach Fresca and build sand castles.
Though we’ve officially entered the professional golf “off-season,” if there ever is one, we’ve entered my favorite time of the year to tee it up. With the weather cooling down, things are heating up in my world. While I’m not quite ready for the solid-background official statement on IG, several things are in the works that could make this thing a real job for me sooner than I ever thought. More to come. Okay, Scott O’Neil.
In the meantime, I’m excited about the September edition of the mail club, which will go out in the next week. If you don’t know what that is, or do know but have sat on the sidelines for this long, I’d love to send it to you. It’s a handmade physical artifact featuring a piece of art from Dave Baysden on 5×7 118g cotton stock with a letter from me you won’t find anywhere on the Internet. Along with that is a limited-run, linen postcard with a stamp on it, ready for you to tell someone that it’s time to plan that weekend buddies trip. Paired with a personalized note, packaged in a cotton, euro-flap envelope addressed with a pen and sealed with an actual stamp.
For half the price of a Grant Horvat kids set, you can get these mailers every month for the next year.
Or not. I’ll be here either way. Scratching an itch to write more, regardless of who reads. Thankful you’re here.
