Q Dear Miss Abigail:
What do I say to a girl to make her like me cause I am very shy and I don’t know what to say to a girl if I like her and how do I know if a girl likes me or not? Please help.
Signed,
Vensky
A Dear Vensky:
“Open up that mind, son, and snap into things,” says author Louis Le Claire Jones in his Birthday Chats with Tomorrow’s Man, published in 1940. You better listen to him. Any words I tell you to say won’t help without a little bit of confidence. Work on that, and then get back to me.
1940: Nerve vs. Confidence
You may have a girl friend who you admire from a distance. It’s ‘from a distance’ because you haven’t the courage to treat her as a friend, much as you would like to. To tell the truth she may be quite anxious to know you better, but your timidity is mistaken for coolness, and perhaps the chance for a fine friendship is lost because of it. It may surprise you to discover how cordially you would be received if you would turn down that inferiority idea for a while, and ignore its existence by denying it to yourself.
There is a difference between ‘nerve’ and ‘confidence.’ Nerve is something you use to force a situation ~ while confidence comes by honestly and fairly acquiring, through experiment and experience, the courage to accomplish what you set out to do. When a fellow acts on his nerve it is with the feeling that he is attempting something beyond him, but hopes he will succeed. When you do a similar thing in confidence, you approach the problem with a calm, serene feeling of assurance which denies any thought of failure. Son, if you don’t meet that girl, maybe you lack a little of both, and because of a certain ‘complex’ which has you ‘buffaloed!’
Source: Jones, Louis LeClaire. Birthday Chats with Tomorrow’s Man. Chicago: Charles E. Tench Printing Co., 1940.
~ pp. 97-98 ~