Pavlov's Dog was Smarter

For those who do not know, Pavlov was doing research on dogs. He noticed that the dogs would start salivating before the food actually arrived when there was another stimuli that typically arrived before it. The presence of the stimuli was enough for the desired behavior to take place even without the expected condition. While most people believe it was a bell was used as the stimuli, Pavlov's notes mentioned many various stimuli used throughout his research.

For some reason today, I was thinking of my former girlfriend Ivonne. Maybe it is just having too much time on my hands with me being "on vacation" but being a little too sick to do anything and it being too cold outside, but I have just been thinking of her. When she and I were together, she like many women always tried to get her significant other (aka me) to go shopping with her. Like most men, I do not shop unless it is for automobiles or electronic gear. For the most part, I know what I want to get so I go to the place where I can get it and I buy it and then I do something else. Simple. One time, Ivonne dragged me shopping with her. I felt like a little kid being dragged to church, knowing that it would take an incredible effort on my part to maintain my consciousness through what could possibly be an entire day of extreme boredom. I practiced all of my lines before leaving of "Oh, baby, you look wonderful." and "Oh, oh, sweetie, your butt is just incredible in those pants. You should buy them. Now!" and "That outfit is perfect on you! Let's buy it and leave!" Those lines did not work and I spent hours trying to act interested. She decided to reward me by taking me to a lingerie shop and modeling some outfits for me. Needless to say, I really enjoyed this portion of the shopping experience. I mean what guy would not like to have an attractive and petite Latin woman with the curves in the right place model lingerie for them? Very few, I can tell you that.

The next time she asked me to go shopping with her, I put up less resistance but was still did not looking forward to a long day wasted shopping. But she once again returned to the lingerie shop and once again modeled for me. And I really enjoyed that! This continued on for several weeks until I became conditioned to associate shopping with her with seeing her wearing lingerie. Anytime, she asked me to go shopping with her, an inspired and hearty "Yes" burst through my throat and I sped to her house to pick her up so we could go shopping. Over time, she decreased going to the lingerie shop until after a year, we never went there, but we always went shopping. And there I was, a modern homosapien version of Pavlov's dog, an Ivonne's dog -- merely thinking that my reward had to be coming soon. At least Pavlov fed his dog once in awhile.

Epilogue

Ivonne left me for some rich guy a few years ago. After four years, I went from being her dog to a rain dog -- after spending so much careful attention in marking my territory, a storm came and left me standing and watching from a doorway, wondering where in the hell it all went wrong.