My friend has just gotten started on internet dating. So far she’s gotten way more hits than she expected (YAY!), but the emails she’s been getting are clearly indicative of the fact men have forgotten how to pitch woo (Boo…).
Now, the pitching of woo is a different thing from the hurling of sheep or whatever it is they do on facebook these days. Woo (our deep late night patio discourse has determined) is something beyond dating, it actually precedes dating, it is the taking the effort to get to know a girl, convince her of your honourable intentions, sell her on the idea of dating before you even date.
Nobody does that anymore. And I think it’s a bloody shame. Nowadays everybody just does “coffee.” Coffee, something you do with your friends, something you do for work, something that doesn’t necessarily imply anything. It’s just coffee, it’s not drinks, it’s not even dinner – hey, it’s just coffee. Coffee is not woo, coffee doesn’t even imply woo, you ask a girl out for coffee, she doesn’t even know if it’s a date until the guy moves in for a kiss – which may be a bloody surprise after just coffee.
Coffee is a no risk scenerio. No risk scenerio is not sexy. Falling in love is scary. If you can’t risk beyond coffee, can you risk falling in love?
My brother was telling me about how he and his wife got together; they met at university. He had taken a few years off between 2nd year and 3rd year and was telling me how the dating culture had changed in just that time. When he first when to school, you asked a girl out – dinner, movie, the whole shebang. You stepped up to the plate and the girl knew she was being dated [insert quote of Leonard telling Penny: if I was dating you, you’d know you’d been dated!]. When he came back to school everybody just went for coffee and he thought that was bogus. When he had his eye my sister-in-law… he asked her out. And it must have worked – married 10 years now.
So what is woo? My whole generation doesn’t even know. We’ve been having some serious late night hypothesizing here tonight and so far we’ve come up with:
Woo is about taking time. Investing, pursuing, a little sweat equity (don’t take that as an innuendo!). Doing the work to show a girl she’s valued, and you’re a man who can be counted on – worth the effort for us to shave our legs and wear those wobbly shoes.
If a girl matters to you, let her know, show her she’s treasured. Put some effort into winning her affections – ’cause we’re all very affectionate, we just need to know we’ve got a good man to be bestowing it upon.
In a world of technology and high rise offices, swathing grass and pitching hay isn’t something we do much anymore; but fellas, come on, flex some muscles and pitch some woo. It’ll be well worth your while.
Valerie Roney 
“Woo may be wuined by the web” (thanks J for that phrase.), but chivalry is alive and well. Valerie and I were driving along when a car pulled up along side and the passenger warned us that we were driving on a flat tire.
So we pull in to the nearest mall parking lot and check it out. Yup a rear flat and a slow leak front. After Valerie and I reviewed the options, I decided that it was time to learn to change a tire. And from experience I know that Valerie is a fabulous teacher. So we got the jack and the spare out. She taught me how to check the tire pressure and we found out the spare was low but drivable.
After much huffing, pufffing and prying we got the hub off, jacked up the car to the required minimum and commence trying to loosen the lugs. But we soon discovered that neither of us had enough upper body strength. So I went to search for a kindly strong young man. Of course I didn’t find him at the Sears entrance but I did find a “knight” at the entrance where the bar and restaurant was. I explained the problem and he promptly said he would help.
Little did he (or me for that matter) know that it was more than we expected. When we got to the car Valerie had found another young man willing to put his muscles to the test. After he tried for a few minutes, the knight, positioned himself so that instead of using only his upper body, he used his whole body (for those who know what I’m talking about – dan yu baby!) Still it wasn’t easy but he got the lugs loosened and instead of leaving the rest to us fair damsels he tried to finish the job.
Lucky he was persistent in his generosity because what should have been easy once the lugs were loose, it wasn’t. Part of the problem is that the jack that Suzuki provides is pretty lousy but the main problem was that the tire was really stuck on to the drum. Our knight tried prying, banging, tugging, wiggling to try to get the tire to at least budge. All this while the knight’s cell phone started to ring. And as luck would have it, the weather took a turn for the worse. It started to rain lightly. The tire finally came loose and the spare was put on.
With grateful hearts we thanked him and apologized if he missed an important phone call or appointment. He said that it was ok, Karma would probably visit him sometime and that the call was his girlfriend.
So Yay – Chivalry is alive and well.
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Yay! Great story Donna, and evidence chivalry at least is alive and kicking. I laughed at the part where you and I went off and came back with different men. Yours got the job done, mine provided the colourful language (somehow so apropos for us both!).
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