Mary Describes Her Ideal Man, Explained：at a drop of a hat

What's really going on

The scene turns courtship into a classified ad, and the joke is how much of Mary's real life she is trying to wrap in twenty words. She wants the romance that ads promise and the specifics that only she could know — a man who will take her and Warren to a ball game and eat hot dogs, who is self-employed and free to leave 'at a drop of a hat.' The friend hears the contradiction at once and names it: there is always a catch, and in Mary's case the catch is her own restlessness. The accusation is blunt — she changes her mind too much, and dumps men 'like yesterday's garbage.' The most telling detail is Warren: one former boyfriend said he would have popped the question long ago if Mary did not have her brother in her life. Mary's wish list is trying to solve that problem, but her friend's verdict is that the problem is Mary.

Theme

このチャプターで学べること

• A personal ad turns private wishes into checkboxes.
• Cut the crap is the friend's way of demanding honesty.
• Freedom in a partner can mean never staying put.
• Old flings come back as gossip at the lunch counter.

発音のポイント

• do it anywhere — Do it anywhere links up with no pause after it.
• supposed to — Supposed to often sounds like supposta.
• change your mind — Change your can blur into change-yer in fast speech.