It’s About Making Babies!

Annie at Smart at Love wrote the other day about "The cost of dating and love: who pays the bill".  In the Comments to the post, Annie mentions "… I think it has made the earliest stages of dating feel more like an interview than like the pleasure of slowly getting to know a potential romantic partner.".

I think in earlier generations much of the nitty gritty of the interview was accomplished informally, by checking on the potential partner’s family, checking reputation, and finding people that knew the person for many years. We no longer have the extended close family, interfering aunts (at least, many don’t), or small communities.

And perhaps the problem is looking at advanced age (over 18) suitors. The younger folk have less understanding of how cruel life and people can be, so their checklist is a *lot* shorter. It is those of us that have survived a pairing or three that start making lists of  things to guard against.  In some cases we now have a checklist that would serve a marine battalion getting ready for battle! I don’t recall the actual quote, we get "Too soon old, and too late smart".

The other side of the coin is also true. Unless we stick to the youngest crowd, with their virgin vices and immature treacheries, we are having to pick from potential partners that have also survived troubled times. They have built walls and habits to reduce their risk, too. They have learned to *appear* good candidates, to hide weaknesses. They also learn ways to take advantage of their opponent .. um .. intimate partner. Some of them, anyway.

So if the interview checklist seems to get more forbidding each year, the need to check closely gets more important as the potential partner gets older.  It seems a bit morbid to claim "Look how many danger signs I check for on My List!!".  Like many defenses, our list of ‘hot buttons’ reads like a list of battle wounds.

Unless we want to ask Aunt Dorothy if our next potential partner is ‘good people’ .. and are willing to settle for nothing less than "he looks like a nice boy."    I mean, it would be a shame to worry about whether he is stable, respectful, functions well at home and at work, and a cheerful and moderate demeanor — even before we find out if he is a good kisser.

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I found it.

Sometimes there is a place for the silly songs. The fun things without hurt. Not humor, but joy. Maybe the majesty of a full-blown cloud-framed sunset, the quiet wonder of the world and sky at dawn. Or a nonsense ditty like the Llama song. Llamas are camelids (related to the camel family of mammals), but are not camels. In some ways they are raised in South America, and increasingly around the world, similarly to sheep, for their wool and meat. In many parts the llama is used as a beast of burden, to ride or carry goods like a donkey, and also as a guard animal to protect cow and sheep herds from predators.

For those that haven’t enjoyed The Llama Song, this is a Flash presentation with semi-synthesized voice singing the lyric, which are printed below picture. Someone like a children’s book, only the lyrics look more like they were written by one of those random-word chunks so popular with SPAM emails.

“Llama, Llama, Cheesecake, Llama” and “I was once a treehouse, I lived in a cake, but I never saw the way, The Orange slayed the Rake.” Simple tune, minimal percussion and organ accompaniment. We assume the song is played to perfection — it repeats identically over and over. Really. I listened longer than15 minutes, and didn’t hear any variations.

This isn’t my first exposure to silly songs on the Internet. For the diehard Wisconsin fan, or anyone that likes a fun song with silly graphics: Badger, Badger, Badger. “Mushroom, Mushroom!” to you, too.

Listening to Dr. Demento’s radio program some years ago, I occasionally caught the ‘One Hen, Two Ducks’ song. I remember listening to the tape over and over, trying to master the lyrics. Now it turns out that this counting song (One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese..) is posted on the girl scouts web site, as well as other places. The version the good Dr. Demento played reeled me in with the dramatic ‘Seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array’ line. What may be an original version, or quite close, is posted on the Jerry Lewis Comedy web site. This tongue twister was used to test applicants for radio announcer jobs at Radio City in New York. In 1941 one of the applicants (that got the job) passed the words on to Jerry Lewis. Jerry used the sequence as a tongue twister in his comedy routines. I still like the deep, dramatic sweep of ‘Seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array’. I really like that line. The recording I heard used the words more as listed at the Wikipedia entry, with the addition to the last line of ‘very same time’ at the end.

One more mention of a favorite ‘different’ tune. This is actually spoken poetry. Shel Silverstein is the only one I ever heard record ‘Sahra Cynthia Sylvia Stout, Would Not Take the Garbage Out’. From ‘The End of the Sidewalk’, this cautionary children’s fable .. uh, glories in the debris in the garbage can. Entertaining. Shel Silverstein was a talented performer, somewhat out on the edge.