Well, here it is spring and, ignoring a few random blizzards to kill the sprouting tulips, we are prepared for spring pursuits: basketball tournaments, baseball games, and, of course, what we are told our hearts turn lightly to even though we know very well we’ve been pondering it all winter. So I thought we’d consider the sport of flirting.
Etymologists are not as certain where this word came from as they would like to be. Some derive it from small flowers—fleurettes—given by young men while courting in France, while others derive it from flit: that word for the way butterflies dance near flowers. Which brings us to the birds and bees, suggesting we’re on the right track.
Anthropologists have been studying the whole principle for years, discussing two essential types of flirting: that which is indulged in as a means to an end, and that which is played as a sport in its own right. There are many words to describe the professional flirter, who is only in it to pass a few boring hours without planning anything more intimate, the most frequent one being “useless”. Flirting, according to most anthropologists, is a serious pursuit, like that basketball tournament, with rules and qualifying rounds.
Guides to how flirting should be done go back centuries. Variants of these can be found now on the Interwebs, with videos attached to make it clear how and when to flirt properly. Fashions change in this as in all human matters.
Somehow, though, basic gameplay has changed only by adding new technologies. There is still the Opening Line (“Do let me help you with those hat boxes”), the Misleading Conversation Topic (“The next phase of the basketball tournament has some interesting match-ups”), and, of course, the movements of the hands, head, and especially eyes. (Anthropologists have found flirting females from cultures separated by continents exhibiting exactly the same head and eye movements while having a conversation with an interesting and unattached male. The men in all these societies either learn these moves right away or fail to pick up on them into old age, still wondering what just happened.)
There HAVE been societies, of course, which found flirting random and dangerous. Relations between the sexes are matters for serious discussion and consideration of social and financial requirements. Communities have tried banning it altogether. (Shakespeare covered this in Elizabethan days, an era of enthusiastic flirting.) You might think, since flirting relies so heavily of body language and eye signals, that it would be impossible to regulate. Nonsense. If you’re determined enough to forbid something, you will find a way. (Ban anything that seems slightly suspicious and you’re bound to get all the villains.)
One of the worst things you could call a woman (in public) was a “flirt”, while men who were known as “flirts” were distrusted by all men who were pillars of society (whose wives made sure to invite a few flirts to a party to guarantee its success: that double standard again.) After all, such arid souls point out, flirting could “lead to misunderstanding between sexes” (what doesn’t?) and contribute to “pre-determination” (an obsolete term college administrations used to refer to young people choosing sexual partners before graduation.) It could result in SPOONING, as one generation put it.
Or petting, as the next generation spoke of it.
One result of the battle to suppress flirting is that for generations we have simply assumed that two people conversing with their heads too close together, or their eyes moving in directions which have nothing to do with conversation are flirting. We go so far as to assure them, if they deny it, that they either don’t REALIZE they’re flirting, or that they are just fibbing. And we are correct just often enough to make us supreme in our knowledge of the world and its ways.
Which brings us, and the flirters, back to the old admonition to “gather ye fleurettes while ye may” or something like that. At present, it IS spring, and as long as you’re not living somewhere with a zero tolerance code on the books, run outside and organize a quick pick-up game. There’s bound to be SOMEONE who’s willing to play a round. (If you find out it’s still all about basketball, after all, you can always call for Shirts Vs. Skins.)
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