And the Award For Best Girlfriend in the World Goes to...

Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me
Don't cha, don't cha
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was raw like me
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was fun like me
Don't cha, don't cha
-Pussycat Dolls, Don't cha

Occasionally at work, I see a parent give their child something they want, then kindly smile at their child, and I think, "Aww, that's so nice, what a good parent." Then not long afterwards, the kid will ask for a lolly or something, and the parent will bark at them something along the lines of, "I'm not made of money, if you want something, go and get a job and buy it yourself!" and the kid will start to cry and I'll look at the parent in horror. It makes me wonder what goes on when they're not in the public eye.

It seems that watching parents gives you some insight into the types of characteristics good and bad parents have (I'm not saying the person described above is a bad parent, I know how hard it is to control children - that's why parenting books are so abundant, after all!), and I was wondering if the same would apply to being a girlfriend. Since MrMan5.5 and I got together, I've started paying more attention to the people around me who are in a couple, and trying to pinpoint what it is that makes the girl a good or bad girlfriend. To be honest, I think I've had an easy job because we have so much in common, and all I really had to do was do what I was already doing, except now I could do it with someone else. Even this post "Sex, Mario and Videogames" (which goes with what Dante has been saying for ages) says:

Games and girlfriends generally don’t mix. If you happen to be a girlfriend that loves games then we love you… really, we totally love you. But unfortunately you’re not part of the majority. Despite the increased prominence of the female gamer in recent years as the industry’s evolved from the depths of geekdom to be culturally chic, it’s still very much a sausage-fest out there and not particularly conducive to the horizontal mamba. Something about thunderous explosions, ear-piercing bullet-fire and oafish men screaming ‘get behind cover’ just doesn’t seem to get the ladies in the mood. Being an alien-slaughtering muscle bound-interstellar hero just doesn’t cut the mustard next to chopping wood in the backyard, sans shirt. Go figure…

(Although personally I'd go for falling into a lake with a white shirt on.)

So really, I'm just capitalising on my female gamer status and have managed to snag a guy who happens to like the same silly movies I do (Austin Powers, Rat Race, The Guru, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy, etc), can eat copious amounts of pizza and occasionally joins me in my quest to defend some ancients - none of those activities are something I wouldn't normally do in my own time anyway.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm putting as much effort into this relationship as I should be. They say that communication is important in a relationship, but I fail at that completely. I dragged him into Aldi once to look for some German gummy bears, and he was talking to me about something but I wasn't listening because I had been distracted by apple pie and choc fudge brownie cookies. I think it's a bad habit I've picked up from work, where I tune out enough so that I'm not really listening to the mundane things that people say to me, but am listening enough that I can make the appropriate responses.

(Oh, side rant. A customer at work today asked for some "twenty centses". WTF?! "Cents" is already plural! Not just that, but she gave me $5, and asked me to give her: $2, $1 and $1 worth of 20c coins. When I pointed out that it was only $4, she said she wanted 2 x $2, 2 x $1 and $1 worth of 20c coins. I told her that was $7 and suggested she take $2, 2 x $1 and 5 x 20c.)

Also, I've noticed that a lot of girls get dressed up for their boyfriends, but really, my method for choosing something to wear consists of whatever I can get out of the pile of clothes on top of my dresser that doesn't cause everything else to tumble down, but be enough to keep me warm for the rest of the day. When Nina and Charlotte asked why I don't wear make-up, I put it this way: I can either get up earlier and do my make-up, hair, etc., or I can sleep later the night before and get a couple of DotA games in. I choose DotA.

Another thing girlfriends seem to do is accompany their boyfriends to stuff. I don't really go with him to anything. He comes to a couple of my lectures, and to some parties that I've been invited to, but I don't really do anything with him that I wasn't already going to do anyway - like QCN's birthday dinner, or anime.

However, I don't think I'm a total failure on the girlfriend scale. I'm awesome at confusing him, making him angry, making him spend money, taking up his time, talking to him about boring stuff, making him watch girly movies, making him drive me around, dragging him around to look for clothes, and setting stupid rules for him. Taking all of those things into account, someone please give me a medal, because I'm clearly the most awesome girlfriend in the world.