Spite presents: The Scientific Method, page 2
Experiment One: Cut off all communication with her.
To start my experiment, I refused to call, email, or even ask about her. I acted as if I had never met her. How quickly she re-contacted me should reflect her true feelings for me, I reasoned.
To my surprise, I discovered I had developed a non-emotional physical addiction to phoning and talking to her. Because of this purely chemical problem, during any period when I had not communicated with her I would find myself neglecting work and staring at my phone, usually for brief three-hour spells. But for science I persevered and dealt with these withdrawal symptoms.
I started this experiment on a Monday and didn't hear from Stephanie for a full week. I was almost ready to reject my hypothesis when I received an email from her.
Exhibit 1: Stephanie's Email
(full text)
"Hey babe, Haven't heard from you in a while. How was your weekend?- Stephanie"
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Fascinating. In the interest of science, let's take this one line by line.
"Hey babe" - a definite term of endearment. Score one for the hypothesis.
"Haven't heard from you in a while." She missed me. However, she also seemed unaware of exactly how long it had been. She said "a while" when in fact it had been 7 days, 4 hours and 13 minutes since our last communication. So overall, that line is neutral.
"How was your weekend?" She's concerned for my well-being.
Bearing in mind that she had initiated this communication, I felt it was safe to conclude that my hypothesis could be correct.
But I didn't want to judge hastily. So in the spirit of careful examination, I printed several copies and stapled them around my apartment. I annotated one with markers, denoting the signs of affection with red and the evidence of detachment in blue. Then I framed another one, leaving it unmarked to serve as a control group.

Exhibit 1: Stephanie's Email (framed and unframed)
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I replied to her email by telling her I was very busy studying, when in reality I was very busy watching several episodes of
The Practice I had been taping.
Conclusion One: Inconclusive. Try a new experiment.
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