Boys and men have no idea how to attract women.
Some are blessed with pouty good looks and money so the job becomes a lot easier for them. For the rest of us poor saps on the male side of the equation, well, we just flail away and hope to grab attention 鈥� somehow.
The usual stuff, as pointed out by comedian Jerry Seinfeld, consists of wolf whistles or hitting the accelerator on a rigged-out car or truck. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 all we got, after thousands of years, that鈥檚 all we got,鈥� Seinfeld said in his standup routine. Of course I鈥檓 paraphrasing here.
When I was a kid, back in pre-historic before-Tarzan days, it was no better.
I clearly recall the 鈥渇ace-wash鈥� was considered to be the best way to let a girl know she was accepted by the male. The face-wash could only be administered in winter when there was snow on the ground. In other words, this past winter would have been a tough one for the young guys attempting to draw the attention of girls using this tried and true failure of a technique.
The ritual for those Grades 5 to 8 boys was to sneak up behind the girl of your choice, with a handful of snow and then apply it to her unsuspecting face and then mash it around in a circular motion, sorta like a Three Stooges pie-to-the-face routine.
Yep, that was a sure-fire way to let a girl know you cared.
It also indicates the evolution of man is not what it鈥檚 cracked up to be.
And, if a girl did that to a guy? Well, then they were practically dating! So, that rarely happened. As you can discern dear diary, 11-and 12-year-old guys are not that sophisticated.
I assume the face-wash applied only in Saskatchewan and it was universal here because two years after we were married, the bride blindsided me with a face-wash as we got out of our car and made our way to the house one night after a long work day.
In fact, it was so vigorous, I dropped (flung) the car keys in a snow bank and didn鈥檛 find them until the following spring. Fortunately, we had a spare set.
So, I took that as a sure sign she liked me as my Grade 6 instincts kicked in. It verified the marriage.
I simply smiled, re-adjusted my glasses and figured, Gee, that means we鈥檙e probably going steady now!
I forgot to mention, face washers and washees had to be somewhat careful if the washee wore eye goggles. Still, there were a few broken eyeglass frames over the years, which made optometrists and eyeglass factories real fans of the Saskatchewan face-washing rituals I am sure.
In our schoolyard, back in the day, we had snowball fights, built snow forts and played dodge ball with frozen soccer balls or pump-pump-pullaway (another game I am sure would be banned in today鈥檚 picture perfect school yards). But the very best was the face-wash. We also kept score. If Garth gave Michelle more than three face-washes in two weeks, well, he must really, really like her. What Michelle thought was another thing altogether.
So, here鈥檚 a belated apology to Judy, Janis, Sandra, Maureen, Christine and Vonda who were recipients of a Parksie face wash those many years ago, some of them more than once. I beg your forgiveness, I did not know what I was doing, cause I鈥檓 a guy.
