Anybody who knows me knows I’m not sexy.
It’s amazing, however, what poems will do for a man.
When I was in high school, one of my best friends and I made sugar cookies (his mom helped) and wrote poems to deliver anonymously on Valentine’s Day.
We never got anywhere with the girls we delivered cookies and poems to (they didn’t know it was us), but I’ve been able to tell that story for years and have all of the women around me think I’m sexy?for a few seconds. It’s like Love Potion No. 9.
Think of the irony. We delivered something to girls we liked but were too cowardly to talk to, and thereby endeared ourselves to every daughter of Eve we’d ever meet thereafter?for a few seconds.
At first, I thought we were so brilliant it was beyond our comprehension. Now that I’m married, I know it’s just because women are crazy.
Valentine’s Day is a woman’s holiday. It’s full of sugar and spice and everything nice.
That’s OK, I’m not bitter. The Fourth of July is a man’s holiday: You watch cool cars parade down Main Street, make big fires, cook lots of red meat, wear the shirt your wife tried to burn and then watch stuff blow up in the sky. Ferraris, food and fire.
On Valentine’s Day you do sweet, sentimental things. Nothing is sweeter than poetry.
I’m about as poetic as I am sexy, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The attempt to offer compliments with rhyme or rhythm is all it takes. In my and my friend’s experience, you don’t even have to give it to the person you like. Just writing it for someone surrounds you in a beer-goggle bubble?for a few seconds.
I wonder what the people I actually gave the poems to thought. From what I was told later, I picked the wrong girls. Although they looked good from a distance, they apparently weren’t nice people.
Worst of all, they didn’t need poems from me. Apparently they had “Sweet Bros” knocking down their door (a “Sweet Bro” is the type of guy who uses that phrase instead of “cool”).
But I didn’t really do it for them. My friend and I did it because we were bored. This activity gave us a chance to be clever, artistic and original-and end the night by doorbell ditching. Besides, it was too cold to play on the rope swing behind the fairgrounds.
So people who lament the 14th being “Singles’ Awareness Day” are idiots!
Go do something nice for someone else. Write a poem, bake some cookies, or deliver a $15 bundle of vegetation. If you’re aware of being single, maybe it’s because you’re selfish.
Don’t worry about whom to do these things for. Do it anonymously if you’re afraid of feeling weird. What could go wrong with a night of doorbell ditching?
If you’re a guy, it will automatically make you sexy, if only for a few seconds. Ten years from now you’ll still be able to impress girls with stories of the night you wrote poems and gave treats on Valentine’s Day.
You can start practicing working it into conversations the very next morning. I promise it’s golden?for a few seconds.
If you’re a woman, give the poems and treats to other girls to seem like they’re from a guy (it’s a woman’s holiday). Or deliver it to someone married to see if you can hear the yelling from inside your car.
Or give it to a guy you like-but don’t expect anything-he’s counting down the days until he can light up a grill.