I remember the days of high school when playing a dumb damsel in distress was some ploy on us girls' parts in order to land the jock with the 2.0 grade point average. It just wasn’t cool to be the smart girl back then. Most of the time falling into the smart girl role left you eating lunch with the chess club or those girls who mended their reading spectacles with tape. So there began the act of dumbing down. Those who didn’t want to be branded “geek”, “nerd” or “social outcast” chose to play the sheep, following the juvenile follies of the majority. She may have driven 30 miles to watch a Jeunet film, and carried a copy of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik in her backpack, but you’d never have known it by the way she gushed over the latest edition of Teen Magazine.

Until the date with Mr. I Hate Smart Girls, I had thought things would progress as we moved into adult hood. That perhaps the “smart girl” would gain popularity. That somehow the 2.0 jock would turn into the physical therapist and he’d yearn for a girl who could recite the philosophy of Sartre, whilst dabbling in quantum physics on the side. That he would confess that all the while he was pining for the ditzy head cheerleader who giggled just a little too much, and vowed to land the job of that lucky gal who gets to name the lipstick shades, he always had his heart set on the girl who knew everything about Dostoevsky and nothing about the Brenda and Brandon plights on 90210.

So here you are reading this as you push the PlayStation games out of the way of the keyboard, whilst knocking over that Budweiser onto your prized collection of Adam Sandler DVD’s. All the while you’re also wondering what the hell I’m talking about. You’d love to be canoodling with a smart girl. In fact, you’ve gone after the smart girl on more than one occasion, but unfortunately she always had the much older boyfriend with season tickets to the ballet and a collection of photographs from his exploits in Swaziland.

What if you are this guy? The guy who yearns for the smart girl, may even be fighting to keep her attention at this very moment. What if you’re tired of the girl who takes two hours to plaster her face, can’t do anything that might break a nail, and has never seen the inside of a bookstore or library? I’m still of the belief that you exist out there somewhere and might be disguising yourself in the body of the beer guzzling, WWF maniacal, Sylvester Stallone fan.

The ever so backwoods feminist Nancy Drew said in The Secret of the Wooden Lady, “Boys like girls who doggedly pursue their goals”. But what about what girls like? Perhaps it’s time to change the rules a little, as most guys out there really wouldn’t want to land the type of girl with the beer gut, not to mention the WWF and Sly Stallone fascination.

I hate to point the menacing finger and shout “Change!” so perhaps I’ll just send a few clues your way and include some things which you may wish to include in your “How to Win a Smart Girl” booby trap.

#1 Make sure you can recite more of this article than the number of naked girl pictures on this website. (O.k., so it’s a somewhat biased tip). To go further, make sure your copies of Maxim, Stuff, and Playboy are dog-eared at the pages in which the most profound articles are found and not at the Jenna Jameson pictorial. Oh…and this means taking down the Jenna tribute you’ve pasted to your walls as well. That is unless you want some dissertation on the many ways in which porn queens demean the morale of the female populace.

#2 Hide your PlayStation 2, X-Box, and Game Cube, or whatever the newest thing may be, as well as all those games you have stacked up all over the place. It’s fine to play them once in a while, but the smart girl definitely doesn’t want to think a potential beau spends day and night playing Simpson’s Road Rage.

#3 Hide Mr. Sandler, Farley, and Murphy (early years). As much as you may find snot and fart jokes fascinating cerebral stimulation, the smart girl won’t approve. Yes, the fact that you can recite all the lines from Dumb and Dumber may be an appealing factoid for your frat boy resume, but Ms. Smarty Pants will turn off completely after the first couple of lines in reference to Harry’s “shaggin’ wagon”.

#4 Leave Mr. Machismo in the cave where he belongs. Ask for directions when lost, and don’t hate her for knowing the right way to get you out of wherever you’ve found yourself because you didn’t ask for directions. The smart girl likes a man who’s capable, but also one who’s sensible enough to ask for help when needed.

#5 Don’t fall into the “I don’t care” mode. Decisiveness is a sign that you know what you want, and aren’t afraid to tell her. If she asks what film you want to see, or what restaurant you feel like trying out, tell her. Being flexible is great, but making your wants known in ALL aspects (from Saturday outings to boudoir bonanza) is a sure sign that you actually THINK about your likes and dislikes.

O.k. so enough about what you shouldn’t do, right? You probably already knew all of this. The question remains in where you start your journey to becoming the smart girls dream guy.

Remember those magazines you have now dog-eared in all the appropriate smart girl places? Now is the time to throw some more cerebral minded literature and magazines into the mix. The most important facet of all this is that you actually engage in picking up and reading this stuff. We’re not trying to pretend you’re the smart girls dream beau, we are adding some stimulus to help you BECOME her dream beau. So amongst the Playboy, pick up Psychology Today and a copy of Astronomy Magazine. It also wouldn’t hurt that you come to adore all the fascinating aspects of Zamyatin’s We, Abbot’s Flatland, and Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. Being a person with the ability to seek out and engage in stimulating conversation about thought provoking pieces of literature is something a smart girl desperately seeks out.

In the place of those X-Box games, leave some chess pieces slyly about. Even a deck of cards would work. Anything that shows you’re capable of escaping the call of the video game.

Yes, there are also those films. You know the one’s I’m talking about. Hide those behind the gross humor comedies and purchase (or at least rent) Kieslowski’s Double Life of Veronique, Wender’s Wings of Desire, and Jeunet’s Delicatessen. Hey, I didn’t tell you to ditch the others, but at least this way she can deem you a well-rounded video or DVD connoisseur.

I’ll tell you this much. It may not be so hard to land the smart girl, but it’s much more difficult to keep her attention. She’s cultured, and whether she is working her way through college, adapting some great literary work into a screenplay, or was a child prodigy who now works as a physicist, she’s sure to need continued stimulation.

Yeah, this is the hard part. She’s (gasp) going to want to discuss things, and (gasp again) these may be things that you don’t understand. That’s fine. It’s completely o.k. not to know, but as the self-confident decisive smart girl lover that you are, you should be happy with asking questions, with exploring and finding answers for yourself, and lastly for simply being o.k. with looking dumbfounded as she attempts to explain Planck’s quantum principle or Hawking’s theories on quantum chromodynamics. Yes, you may need to stock up on some extra strength Motrin to tackle the migraines her talks will induce, and she may still believe that taped spectacles will be the next hot thing, but hey, you’ve caught yourself a smart girl, and I guarantee that boredom, at least on your part, will never come into play.