Why men don’t ask women out - The Contribution of Helen Francisco

By now, most of you are wondering what planet I must have been living on where such women exist to do nothing but try to destroy men for their own pleasure. Well, let me tell you about Helen Francisco (not her real name).

On one of the big picnic party holidays, I went to the home of a guy who was hosting what was promised to be a great day of fun, food, and fellowship. I got there fairly early (I’m not big on being “fashionably late”), which was good, as I had signed up to bring the chips and no one else had brought any. Now, if you’ve ever been to a big get-together, you know that hardly everyone has the same tastes, which is why I decided on bringing three different flavors of Dorito’s. Shortly after that, a small, heavy-set guy arrived and started telling me how no one will be eating the plain Dorito’s and how we should put away the cool ranch flavor bag and only open the nacho cheese flavor bag.

Now, I must admit that some guys do deserve a bit of a wake up call, and at first I thought I should tell him that I didn’t consider myself a nobody, as the plain Dorito’s is one of my favorites, but I ignored him, and when he went off to another room in the house, our host brought the bags back out and put them on the table, putting a bowl in front of each one. And, since I was a bit hungry, I decided I’d fill a plate with some of my favorite Dorito’s while a girl next to me had some cool ranch ones.

After all my experiences with the women in this singles group and seeing how this non-host guy operated, I guess I can understand how these women probably would’ve been considered normal to most other people. However, crazy is as crazy does, to paraphrase one of history’s greatest philosophers.

As the day progressed, I met more people and talked with some of those people I already knew. I was enjoying myself immensely and actually talking with a couple of women that had come together and were new to the group. As we were talking about a number of topics, I was rudely interrupted by Helen Francisco, who was also seated at the table talking with the aforementioned chip-controller guy. With a volume greater than a conversational level and with a significant amount of anger in her voice, Helen proceeded to tell me not to say another word, and that she was going to tell the leader of the group (who wasn’t at the party) that I didn’t deserve to be here, and that she was going to recommend I be kicked out of the group.

Needless to say, everyone at the table, which included the two new women, Helen, the chip-controller guy, and another two women that had occasionally been involved in our conversation, were dumbfounded with this incredible revelation. Since I had no answer to these incredible accusations, I had no idea about how to respond. Finally, after a few seconds of us all looking around at each other, I started talking again with the women I had been talking with when Helen broke in, kicking off a totally unrelated topic. The women engaged me once again, and as we talked for a while, I felt Helen’s eyes remain on me until she finally got up and left.

When Helen moved outside and out of earshot, I then asked the two women I had been talking with and the other two women if they had any idea what it was I had said or done to require such a verbal beating. The women I was talking with couldn’t identify anything, but I did get feedback from one of the other women at the table. She told me I did nothing wrong but that Helen had actually done something just like this to the leader of the group some time back. About that time, another woman came up and asked what we were talking about, so I told her, and she also confirmed that Helen had done something much like this before.

Later in the evening, a number of us were sitting around the TV watching The Best of Mr. Bean (I think that’s what it’s called) when Helen walked in the door with her mobile phone ringing. Perhaps it was my imagination, but she certainly said loudly enough for everyone to hear as she crossed in front of the TV that it was the leader of the group on the phone. I’m sure it was her way of trying to dig deeper into the wound she tried to inflict upon me earlier, but I just totally ignored her then and the rest of the night.

The following Sunday, I sought out the leader of the group to talk to him about the incident. He said he’d check into the event and let me know if he learned anything. Since he didn’t say anything about Helen telling him about this before, I was pretty sure she was up to some kind of game.

The leader never mentioned the incident to me again, but about a month later, Helen did come over to me while I was talking with a friend after Sunday School and apologized to me for her behavior at the party. In the following weeks, Helen’s highly talkative behavior transformed into a more quiet demeanor, and there were a number of things mentioned about how God was now using her in extraordinary ways.

So, if God can change Helen, I believe he can also change Yancy and Valerie.