One of the saddest, funniest book donations I received, and due to the nature of the donor, I received it more than once, as she donated things in small, easy installments, was a collection of books on the subject of, um, how to win friends and influence people. Nah, let’s put it right out there. She was donating her collection of books on how to catch a man.
There’s a large literature on this and, naturally, plenty of books on how to catch a woman. And there is no shame in buying these, especially, either on the part of someone who is just figuring out that meeting people you want to become involved with romantically can be awkward, OR for experienced rovers who want to know if there’s any gambit they’ve missed. I would not have observed anything amiss about her owning one, two, or a half dozen such books. It was never my job to criticize anybody’s reading choices, and I hope things stay that way.
BUT I had noticed in other books her habit of dog-earing pages she wanted to return to. She also highlighted pages. A LOT. Sometimes a whole page would be highlighted, and she’d go back and underline things as well. That this renders a book almost impossible to resell was not her concern, and she was not alone in this among my donors.
But these books on how to meet a man exceeded even her books on how to get a job. See, you can dog-ear a page by folding down a corner. You can double dog-ear a page by taking that folded corner and folding part of it back up. In these books, she had highlighted, underlined, dog-eared, double dog-eared, triple dog-eared, and even quadruple-dogeared pages. Some of these books were three times as thick at the top as they were at the bottom. They had been rendered unsaleable except as art objects. She had really STUDIED these books (and apparently had no qualms about passing them along to people who might mention how thoroughly she had studied them. I did hint at this once, and received the answer I expected: she thought EVERYBODY did that.)
What she would have done with a man if she’d gotten one is unclear, as she told me about a number of her broken relationships over the years. They frequently ended when…but we are taking a long detour to get to what I wanted to talk about, which was the pick-up line. (We do not have the space, nor I the degree in psychology, to discuss her romantic life, real or imagined.)
Postcards of the past have plenty of suggestions, some for first encounters, some meant more for use on people you knew somewhat, but wanted to tell that you were interested in knowing them better. I have my doubts about how well some of them would work, but there are passive ones, aggressive ones, and passive-aggressive ones, so take your pick.
I do know someone else who studied the question at length, and was much impressed by a book which suggested a general approach was best. Everyone, it noted, was willing to talk about food, so that was a non-threatening way to get someone to talk to you. Start with something noncontroversial, it suggested, like “Some of my friends don’t eat breakfast” or “Do you like cheese?”
She reported that “Do you like cheese?”, in actual practice, never got QUITE the response she was going for. In fact, rather than attracting men, it had the opposite response.
Another acquaintance of mine, on meeting a young lady who sparked his interest (so to speak), who try a simple opening line of “Will you marry me?” This had pretty much the same immediate response as “Do you like cheese?” The lady would back away a bit and whisper to someone nearby “How much has he had to drink?” But her interest (and eyes) would grow on learning that the man in question didn’t drink at all. So this line, at least, won some response.
So choose what you like from those approaches, or the possibilities offered by the postcards of our ancestors. Let me know what happens, but remember the first rule of dating: bloggers assume no responsibility if you wind up in court.
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