Puppy Love
Back when ‘love’ meant sharing your recess snack
Melissa Hiebert Staff
Ah the wonderful world of dating. From the time you are old enough to go to school, you will inevitably become caught up in one of the most cruel and wonderful games that life has to offer: the dating game!
It’s all the same, really, the only thing that changes are the rules. Remember back when ‘dating’ referred to holding hands under the play structure at recess, or giving the girl of your dreams the finest ring that any candy dispenser at the mall had to offer? Love often begins in elementary school in the form of an unwanted feeling that warrants much teasing from fellow classmates. This teasing most often consisted of the singing of a set of exceedingly witty lyrics, namely, “Michael and Jennifer, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g,” and then came the baby carriage and all the rest. Like I said, witty as hell.
And of course, there were the numerous methods of determining to whom we should direct our googly, lovesick eyes. These methods included such rituals as jumping rope while reciting the alphabet. The last letter you said before you tripped was without doubt the first letter of the name of your future sweetie.
Everyone knows that the best way to determine the entire course of your life at the age of eight is to play MASH (an acronym for Mansion, Apartment, Shack and House). This is the best way to determine not only whom you are going to marry, but also where you are going to live, what car you are going to drive and where your honeymoon will be. Just pick a random number, and then count through the lists ‘eeny meeny miney mo’-style, crossing off the names/places/cars that you land on. Whatever you are left with will decide your life’s entire future course of events. (It is crucial to pick your random number very carefully.)
Of course, these scientifically tested ways of determining your future love fade around the end of elementary school, as those more intense, icky feelings begin to set in. There was only one logical thing left to do then, and that was annoy, pester and otherwise harrass the object of your affection. This could take the form of poking, name-calling or even the temporary stealing of personal property. In other words, any behaviour that would warrant an offending adult a restraining order or minor fine. But it’s all fair play in the elementary dating game.
Once the harrassment is over, though, it finally becomes time to bite the bullet, accept your feelings and just go for it. And what better a place than the local roller rink?
At the roller rink, the definition of dating suddenly changed to refer to people who held hands while skating around in circles for hours on a Monday night (because that was the one day that all of the Winnipeg crosswalk patrols got in for free!). But love does not come without a price, and the utter rejection of someone refusing to hold hands with you stung, even back then. But there’s always another Monday, and loads more cute patrols to skate with you to Backstreet Boy pop ballads.
Maybe the rules never really change all that much after all. Instead of poring over your latest crush during a late night sleepover, we do it over a mid-afternoon latte. Instead of showing off and parading around at the roller rink, we do it in bars. And they still play really bad music!
Oh well, maybe we should all accept our fate and face the fact that we’re still a bunch of eight-year-olds looking for love, playing by pretty much the same rules. Maybe we should all just learn to stop playing.
