barney stinson, the everyman

the other night, i was having dinner with a friend of mine who had just gotten dumped. those "i really need a girlfriend to talk to" dinners can be a little draining, even though all that's really required is to listen, nod your head and come up with a new insult every few minutes. nevertheless, there i was, playing right along in full-on supportive mode. however, as the night wore on, she kept going on and on about this scumbag and what had happened, and i couldn't help but realize that maybe things weren't quite as she was telling them.

soon it came out that devastated as this girl was, this had actually been a one-night type of deal. of course she regurgitated every word he had said to her, and soon it became clear: my friend had been dealing with a barney stinson. once i formed this conclusion, it was actually more of a struggle not to laugh at her than it usually is to appear to be paying rapt attention. why? because i love 'how i met your mother.'

this guy had convinced carly that he was leaving town the next day because, get this, he had been drafted as starting quarterback for the patriots right out of college and he wanted to savor his last night in chicago. i promise, she bought it hook, line and sinker. when she woke up alone and called the number he gave her, she got the chicago rejection hotline.

once this story had come out in its entirety, it got me thinking that this guy must watch 'how i met your mother,' too. while nodding blankly and randomly hurling degrading yet witty insults in his direction, my mind started to wander. i thought about 'how i met your mother' and how it actually teaches us many lessons about the crazy world of dating. many of these lessons come in the form of barney's theories and rules. as carly talked, i thought about my favorite of barney's theories and rules. i also thought about how many of these rules could be applied to my friend's life and make her less... pathetic might be too strong a word, but it's the one i'm going with.

take the hot/crazy scale. for those who don't watch 'how i met your mother,' the hot/crazy scale allows for a girl to be a certain level of crazy, as long as she's equally hot. there's a line called the vicky mendoza diagonal that delineates the appropriate levels of crazy and hot, but if a girl goes too far past the vicky mendoza diagonal, she reaches the shelly gillespie zone. i'm here to say that the hot/crazy scale also works for dudes. for example, i dated this guy who started out as 'cute target boy,' but as we got to know each other better, he became 'creepy target boy.' this was after i learned that his favorite movie was 'love actually' and that he dropped out of college, lived with his mother, had me in his fave five list halfway through our first conversation and during our first date started making plans for a weekend away. he got crazier and crazier, but no hotter.

then there's the platinum rule. barney explains it like this: "you know how the golden rule says that you should love thy neighbor? well, there's a rule above that called the platinum rule, which says that you should never ever *love* thy neighbor." it says that you shouldn't date someone you're around a lot, and therefore can't escape once you break up. it happened with this guy i worked with at target. he fell for this guy and they actually made a really cute couple until the close quarters started to make them hate each other, and it was awkward for weeks.

the most realistic depiction of the single life on 'how i met your mother,' though, is barney stinson himself. without the barney stinsons of the world, i wouldn't have to spend my saturday night and enough of my paycheck to cover two comfort food meals on watching my perpetually lovelorn friend sniffle and complain about some guy who conned her into a one-night stand. and somehow, i still like 'how i met your mother,' probably because it is realistic, and makes those crappy moments funny.