Laying it on a little thick, aren't you darlin'?
I got an email from one of my former students today. She was a good friend of my and we were bordering on being close (that's a close friendship, y'all), though for some reason there just wasn't enough mutual interest or connectivity to move beyond teacher-student relationship to friend-friend relationship. That's how I viewed things until I got this email. It read something like a harlequin romance, or rather what an innocent who had never read a harlequin romance would think a harlequin romance should sound like. Here is an excerpt:
"i herd that you are planning to come back ....so....happy ....so ...excited...." I think it is all those ellipses that do it.....
So admitedly heart begins to pound a little bit. Had I been missing all these signals over the months? Did I really have secret admirers scattered across the globe? Well, then I kept reading the letter. At the end, sure enough came the reason she was writing. She wants me to help her step up a business venture here in the US. I can't help but feel that I was being buttered up for the request. I wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for how over done her ardent desire was, especially since I had never witnessed any such displays of emotion towards me or anyone else from her while I was over there. Seems someone has read "Idiot's Guide for Manipulating Men" and rather than chosing just one of the methods jammed them all together in order to get me to do something for her.
This sounds a little cynical but this isn't the first time something like this has happened.
---Was looking for a job in Chengdu last year and was offered a position at a stunningly low salary at a local university. I asked for more money, the recruiter said no. I said I'd need 3 days to think about it. She said think quickly. After 3 days I said I'd take the job and she said she already offered it to someone else, but she would let me know after a few days whether or not that new person accepted the position. Never heard from her again. 6 months later I get an email from her saying "Sorry I never let you know about that job offer, but my husband wants to go to Stanford and I was wondering if you could write him a letter of recommendation and introduce him to some of your professor friends over there." I now wish that I had responded to that letter instead of just fuming over it.
--- Got a letter from a student who I hadn't heard from in about 4 years. It was pretty short, just hi, how are things, oh, and is this still a good email address to contact you at? I replied, asking about her life, how things were going, what she had been up to in the intervening time since I saw her last, and yes it was still a good address to contact me at. Never got a reply, but two days later I did get a message from a complete stranger saying "Hello! I've never written to a foreigner before, but my friend gave me your email address and I was wondering if you could introduce me to some physics professors from Stanford so I can get accepted there for college!" I was somewhat irked by that and didn't respond to that message. Haven't heard from either of them since (going on a year now).
Goes back to that clash of cultures and notion of friendship which I wrote about before - namely that once you say you're someone's friend Chinese people hear you saying "please take advantage of me, disregard me as a person but please strip me of any resources that I have which you might be inclined to take, as is your right."
The sad thing is, these people are so close to truly being able to get exactly what they want if they'd just be a little patient and work at it a little more. For my student 4 years ago if she had responded to my letter asking how she'd been all this time and then asked if she could give me email address to a friend who wanted some more information about Standford I would have been happy to help out. If my student who just wrote to me had said "I heard you're coming back, that's great! Look forward to seeing you. Want to chat on MSN sometime?' and left it at that I would totally have looked her up on MSN and after some relationship-reestablishing small talk if she asked me about business over here in the US I would have been happy to help out. Unfortunately she decided to say "My breath quickens and my thighs quiver every time I think of you, and oh, by the way, why don't you drive over to Seattle and purchase me an import/export license -- at your own expense, of course." Too bad it is so see-through. I hope this is a first attempt at this sort of thing since I'd hate to think how blind someone would have to be to fall for it. Huh. I guess that doesn't reflect very well on her opinion of me, does it? Glad to know how I rate...
Sorry, babe, hommie don't play that game.