Proposal making:

"There are plenty of ways to get your proposal across..." says some popular book that deals with human psychology and talk about things that sound so simple. Wake up! Making a good proposal is a real tough deal and get it from an expert who has proved it over and over again.
I remember I was always trying to give proposals from a very early age... ranging from "You should study harder to succeed in life" to my younger kin to "I love you and you could also do the same" to some wide eyed lass who would be totally taken back by the suggestion of even sharing the information as to what time it is, with me. I have been successful.
Yes I have been successful if you would consider the various reactions that have been generated as a result of my suggesting power. The very first success came when I was in the third grade when I successfully proposed someone to steal the notes diary from a classmate whom I could not stand. Things were moving as planned except that I had no contingency plan in the event that the victim complained to the teacher. Oh I shudder at the mistakes...
My faith in luck and my not-failing confidence over the fact that suggesting might be a piece of cake just for me even after repeated disasters made my intensions more resolute. Failures are after all the pillars of success and I was sure that success was in sight every time I tried to propose a plan to anyone. The sight however proves to be a mirage and every time it seemed that I got into some loop.
I have had once successfully proposed some "eye opener" sessions to my classmates that left them with scars on their foreheads resulting from the constant rubbing with a piece of cloth between the eyes on the forehead, an act supposed to bring enlightenment on them who practice it. I have had since then left with a fear of the power of proposals and its after effects. I still remember how hard it was for me to justify my discourse (about the divine third eye) and proposal to the angry and skeptic teachers and the parents of my classmates... leave alone the extreme conditions when I faced my own parents. If only others had little imagination I would have not had been punished so brutally then.
Nevertheless unable to douse the urge to suggest someone onto something I finally took upon the sport of proposing potential girls to be a date!! That was something I should not have thought about in the first place... for the results were dismal. On the very first romantic meet with a girl I was to propose for a date; I ended up being very open minded about the choices she had: I said "If you like me it is okay with me; but suppose if you don't then also there will be no problems whatsoever. I am a very open minded individual who respects the individuality of others". Guess what? She preferred the freedom. I did not envy her decision. In a later instance when I had proposed a girl on the very first meeting she took me to be a liar! Gone are those days when people would believe in love at first sight. I am not altogether bad as a person though. It’s only a matter of luck that people don't last long enough to judge me on an unbiased plane. When people first meet me, they find me prickly, irascible, and slightly unhinged. But if they hang around long enough and get past my rough exterior, they find qualities that are marginally less negative. (Past those it gets worse than before, but by that time it's too late.) She obviously was not in a mood to know better to have called me a liar.
Other future endeavors proved equally dis-heartening. I tried creating the magic in a Bus, by a Lakeside but to no avail. I did not give up easily. It took about a dozen of refusals to wake me to the reality that Proposal making is an all-important art that needs to be mastered. No matter how much people like me and take to me as a good friend, proposal making remains hard as it was and the fact remains that I have no knack for it. I have now taken a stance to make it point that intelligent people are often misquoted or misunderstood and if I was not successful in proposal making I was too intelligent for the audience. That gives me a satisfaction though I know it is as true as the earth is flat.
So please don't neglect the art of proposal making and try to be positive when you actually do it. The art actually is to be at home and pretend that the audience is dumb!! Success will follow wherever you might choose to go.
Amen.