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Idiom: Beat you to the punch
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Don’t you hate it when you want to say something, but someone else says it before you do?
Well, not only did they take the words out of your mouth, they beat you to the punch as well.
If someone beats you to the punch, they do or say something before you can.
In English, we have the expression (s)he who hesitates is lost.
One moment of indecision and someone else will have the same great idea you have and do it first.
A Japanese friend of mine once asked me why male English teachers in Japan always seem to find a girlfriend quickly.
Now, I can’t speak for everyone.
However, I can speak from what I’ve seen.
Some guys tend to hesitate. As long as they continue to do that, other guys will beat them to the punch every time.
Some guys have to build up their courage before asking a woman out on a date.
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They get to know the girl, slowly talk to her over a few weeks, and then finally, when they think the time is right, ask her out.
By then, not only has he been beaten to the punch, but another guy has gotten to know the same girl, asked her out, lived together with her for a while, gotten married, bought a house and had a kid.
A particular type of guy lives in a foreign country.
They are generally confident and tend to be go-getters – they see something they like, then go and get it.
Not all Western men are like this.
However, western men who live in foreign countries are more likely to be outgoing and highly confident in their abilities than those who stay home.
More often than not, male English teachers in Japan tend to be this type.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 79.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.