Personal adds

Subject: Personal adds
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 08 Jul 05 - 12:03 PM

This thread could go in either section, as it is about a song. But, let me start in the beginning.

A few years back, when I was "unattached" I ended up eating out often. While I was sitting around, I'd browse through the free newspaper they had at many of the restaurants and when I'd read the small number of articles of mild interest, I would end up with nothing left to read except the Personals. I found them very revealing about the differences between how men and women advertise themselves. Here are a couple of composite listings, as typical examples:

Men:
Youthful, athletic, vigorous, succesful busines man in his fifties looking for an attractive woman who loves sports, the outdoors and having a good time. (We all know what the "good time" means... wink, wink)

Woman in her fifties seeking a man who appreciates quiet walks on the beach, candlight dinners and slow dancing. Must be employed.

The men try to sell themselves like they'd sell a classic car. The emphasis is on being in good shape, well-maintained and plenty of power left under the hood. They're looking for a female who can appreciate how much she's getting in the bargain, while offering a "good time" in return.

The women are seeking something much more intimate. They often mention quiet walks on the beach, moonlight dinners, and a man who enjoys reading, theater and music. From sad experience, some of them add the line about the man having a job.

And a song grew out of this. The song is titled Lavender Ladies, and is about widowed women later in life, with "hours to kill and no one to kill them with."

The verse that relates to the Personals is:

"And where are the men who can find their contentment
In a livingroom waltz, or a walk by the sea?
Who still know the meaning of now and forever
And a love that will last through eternity"

When I introduced the song, I'd refer to the Personal adds, and how differently single men and single women view themselves and what they are looking for. When I said that men try to sell themselves like they were selling a car, the women in the audience called out with the greatest of one liners, describing their husbands:

   "A good Station car"
   "Slow, but reliable"
   "Hard to start in the morning"

The first verse of the song echoes that less romantic image of their own husbands:

"What good is a man whose idea of pleasure
Is a can of cold beer and the game of the week
Who can't find his socks, or make his own coffee
Who expects you to jump every time that he speaks"

When men talk about a "good time" most of them aren't thinking about dancing to a waltz in someone's living room. Or a walk on the beach at sunset. Some are, of course.

Who would think Personal adds could be so revealing of the differences between men and women?

Jerry

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: jacqui.c
Date: 08 Jul 05 - 01:51 PM

Yet somehow we adjust to each other.

The most romantic thing that anyone ever did for me was when Kendall planted tulip bulbs in the shape of the English cross of St George in the front yard, before I came over to get married. He kept it as a surprise all through the winter.

A definite vintage Rolls Royce - a bit cranky but still running well.

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Deckman
Date: 08 Jul 05 - 02:42 PM

A very interesting thread topic Jerry. I've got to go do a couple of chores, but I plan on returning to this in a couple of hours. CHEERS, Bob(deckman)Nelson

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: semi-submersible
Date: 08 Jul 05 - 07:57 PM

I heard a true story about a matchmaking service: one woman in her late 50s in her ad described herself very humourously as if she were a vintage car (engine, upholstery, etc). She got a huge response, giving her lots of choices.

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: michaelr
Date: 08 Jul 05 - 08:09 PM

Who would think Personal adds could be so revealing of the differences between men and women?

Anyone who's read any. Jerry, you've come up with some good, if quaint, threads here, but this one's a bit weak. However, it did remind me of the old Zappa song that contains the timeless stanza:

My dick is a Harley
You kick it to start

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 04:18 AM

Good thread - you have contributed a couple solid gold ideas about wooing women

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Slow dancings, without shoes, on the living room carpet is a lot cheaper than triple "dirty-olive" martinis at the Ritz. And the carpet is soft, ready, available. Your house or mine?

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: harpgirl
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 09:04 AM

hhhhmmmm... have you got a good retirement package, garg? LOL

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 11:48 AM

What makes a great thread? I dunno but this is one.

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 11:53 AM

Huh.... seems all my life I'm going to end up with the Skoda....

If I were a car, I'd have to be a Rover 2000... Solid, well upholstered, easy to steer but a little unreliable in bad weather... plenty of room in the boot.

LTS

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: kendall
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 12:38 PM

Way back before computers I ran an ad in which I compared myself to a car, and I got 51 letters.

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 04:48 PM

How many were mechanics, Kendall?

Jerry

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: RiGGy
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 04:55 PM

This strikes very close to home. Since becoming a widower a year & a month ago, these STOOPID activities are an obsessive daily thing.
I have my profile up in several places, and see profiles of other folkies I know already on the female available side of decidely non-folky sites. We discuss these same issues and everyone shares the same observation that the process doesn't work. I wonder why not.
If you post, as I do, with full disclosure of passion, quirk and wart, you should be able, with a sufficiently large population, to find your mutual ideal. Nope. I don't get it. [In both senses! ]
Riggy

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 05:03 PM

Hang in there. RiGGy:

Just when I figured there wasn't going to be another woman in my life and was ready to give up, in walked the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and within a week, I knew I would ask her to marry me. And she did. That was seven years.

Sometimes you have to wait if you REALLY want to get it right...

Jerry

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Ebbie
Date: 09 Jul 05 - 10:29 PM

My father married again four years after my mother died. He was 89 and he married a chick of a child- only 76. She too was widowed.

They told each other that even if they had only one good year, it would be worth it. They had four of them.

A few months after Dad died at the age of 93, she visited a friend in a nursing home; in the waiting room she found a note a man had written introducing himself and saying that he was looking for a mate.

She called him. They were married for seven years before he died.

She died this year at the age of 92. She was a beaming generous-souled love of a woman and I'm so glad my father found her.

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Jeanie
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 04:33 AM

Here's a lovely John Denver song about this very thing:

LOVE AGAIN

I didn't think it could happen again
Just too old and set in my ways
I was convinced I would always be lonely
All of the rest of my days
Maybe I gave up on romance
In my longing to give up the pain
I just didn't believe I would ever love again

I was like one who had shut myself in
Closed the window, locked all the doors
Afraid of the dark and the beat of my heart
And yet knowing there had to be more
Though it sounds like a great contradiction
It's the easiest thing to explain
You see, I was afraid I might never love again

What does it take for a blind man to see
That there's more there than just meets the eye
What are the ways that the magic comes in
That can turn a song into a sigh
Sometimes I think that I'm dreaming
Or maybe I'm going insane
Maybe it's just that I'm falling in love again

Here I am standing beside you
Oh, life's such a wonderful game
Look at me now, I'm falling in love
Look at me now, I'm falling in love
Look at me now, I'm falling in love again

*******************************************************

Life IS such a wonderful game, isn't it ?

- jeanie

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 06:04 AM

That's a wonderful story, Ebbie:

When Ruth and I were married seven years ago, the Gospel Messengers sang an old black gospel song at our wedding that seemed very fitting:

   "All things are possible, if you only believe.."

Jerry

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 06:52 AM

I believe ! I believe !

but I still can't find a beautiful deaf mute nymphomaniac who owns a brewery and five miles of the river Tay.

eric

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 05:54 PM

Perhaps you already know a drunken nymphomaniac (What are you going to do? Share her with all the guys?) without the other attributes? Scale it down, mon. *G*

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 05:55 PM

Possible, not probable, Eric.. :-)

Jerry

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 05:56 PM

Oh, and thanks, Jerry. I love their story too. I wish I were more like them. As Dad told my brother, After your mom died, I thought I'd never be happy again. But now, I wake up in the morning wondering, 'What's going to happen today?'

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 06:30 PM

If my Mother had been a couple of years younger, I'm sure she would have re-married after my Father died. Admittedly, she was only 91 and definitely agreeable. Some man would have gotten a wonderful wife.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: SINSULL
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 07:10 PM

Send me a postcard
Fill in a form
Mine forever more
Will you still need me
Will you still feed me
When I'm sixty four?

I stopped answering personal ads. Too much baggage and unrealistic expectations along with outright lies...on their part not mine.

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: jacqui.c
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 07:18 PM

Had the same problem - reality never matched the description. A friend of mine kissed one hell of a lot of frogs answering the personals.

I found that being truthful doesn't work - as soon as I mentioned an interest in Shakespeare and science fiction no more correspondence. I found Kendall purely be being myself on the 'Cat....

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 09:05 PM

You hit on it, Jacqui... if either person is trying to fulfill the other's expectations, it won't work. No one can sustain the pretense indefinitely.

Maybe Mr. Rogers wasn't so dumb after all when he used to end his program saying "I love you just the way you are." Houses may indeed be fixer-upper projects, but people never are...

Jerry

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Jul 05 - 09:26 PM

A man - foreign born - once told me: I love you, but if you were my wife I would change you.

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 12:36 PM

On my banjo head I had these words:

THIS MACHINE KILLS TIME

That is what everyone with too much time on their hands needs----a banjo!!! ;-)

Art

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 12:46 PM

It's strange how the maladies, and vagaries of fate that come at us like freight trains down this track of life we're huddled on often hit us right where we live. My largest, and most vexing symptom now is that I cannot play any of my instruments.

Bad luck, yes, even though I know some here might see it as proof of "intelligent design"!!!!   ;-)

Art

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: GUEST,Pseudolus at work
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 02:53 PM

Ebbie,
Have you seen the show "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now change"? Incredibly funny show and an excellent Sound Track. Your post reminded me of that show...

Frank

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: sixtieschick
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 03:11 PM

Jerry, all your posts about your wife are very moving and beautiful, as is the photo of you two. You both are very fortunate.

The way people meet each other is very mysterious. I know couples who met through both intentional means and by happy accident--if there is such a thing as accidents: through personal ads, marriages arranged by their parents, at the bus stop, at an S & M club (that particular couple isn't even into S & M), at work, on the internet--singles, folks already married to or involved with other people, or involved with people of other genders than the ones they end up with--you name it. There are people who do affirmations, rituals, light candles, "work on themselves in order to be ready" to get a mate and never meet anyone, and others who weren't looking and didn't want to meet anyone, and who answered the door in a ratty bathrobe, with a bad cold and a handful of kleenex to behold the plumber of their dreams. Mysterious.

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Ebbie
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 03:58 PM

LOL Frqnk. No, I haven't seen it. Is it a television show or a film? Probably written by my ex-boyfriend. *G* Sadly, I did't change.

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 04:36 PM

Oh Sixties, how right you are.... I met the love of my life in a potato field in a Friary (sort of like a monastery...). He wasn't a Brother for which I was eternally grateful. I'd just left a relationship which did not end amicably and was hiding out in the middle of nowhere. I was hot and sweaty, having just cycled 12 miles up hills and it was a total love at first sight thing.

Ended about 8 years later when he went to China.... but wow... what an experience!

LTS

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: sixtieschick
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 05:17 PM

Liz, that is sooooo sweet. But how come he didn't get you on a slow boat to China?

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 05:20 PM

Now, there's an idea for a great thread, sixtieschick. I'll take the liberty of starting it, and give you the credit..

How did you meet your wife/husband?

Jerry

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: sixtieschick
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 05:53 PM

Okay, Jerry:

I met and married my first husband in first grade. The solemn ceremony took place on the sidewalk under a flowering cherry tree. I wore my best white dotted swiss dress and patent leather mary janes. A doll presided, and our combined collection of teddy bears acted as witnesses. The groom did not kiss the bride--ewwww--kissing was ickky!

We are friends to this day. However I was devastated when he recently confessed that I was--oh, this is painful--not his first wife! He had married another girl in our class a few months earlier--in the school sandbox, no less.

M.

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: CarolC
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 06:08 PM

JtS doesn't especially enjoy walking on the beach but he'll do it with me because I love doing it. I think that means more to me than whether or not he likes doing it himself.

Sometimes you get what you want even though you didn't know exactly what you wanted before you got it.

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 08:45 PM

Hey, sixtieschick:

Young love can be difficult. My oldest sister was madly in love with a boy in our neighborhood. My Mother wanted to name me Lars Peter (would've loved that name.. after my Grandfather. But my sister was persistent. She made life completely miserable for my parents until they finally caved in and named me after the love of her life, Jerry.
My sister was five years old, back then..

As far as I know, they were never married. I think he was six, and preferred more mature women..

Jerry

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: sixtieschick
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 08:57 PM

That's a GREAT STORY! Named after your sister's first crush. Wow.

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Mr Happy
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 09:09 PM

I luv walkin' on the beach-it's flat11

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Peter Kasin
Date: 11 Jul 05 - 11:03 PM

The personals is a real minefield, but one I still feel worth walking through. Why not use those available means for finding a partner, I say.

iI is a minefield, though. One woman on our first and only date admitted that she lied about her age by ten years, another posted a photo that, after we met, was obvious it was taken about fifteen years ago. I'm sure women have many similar or weirder tales to tell.

Chanteyranger

Subject: RE: Personal adds
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Jul 05 - 12:36 PM

Lysdexic wingle sight male seeks cemale fompanionship.
I believe in the American lay of wife.

(this has potential.)