My brother Adam is a bottomless well of interesting dating advice.
\I've found the perfect way to break the ice with female classmates,"" he told me recently.
""How's that?"" I asked.
""Here's what you do,"" Adam responded. ""when you're sitting next to one, start writing out TV theme lyrics in your notebook. She'll inevitably look over and think you're writing poetry, and chances are, she'll be intrigued. Then, when you're sure she's peeked, casually slide your notebook over to her. If she doesn't crack a smile when she sees you wrote out the 'Saved by the Bell' theme song, she's a waste of time anyway.""
Needless to say, I haven't tried this out yet. I love and trust my brother, but it seemed at the time that perhaps he didn't have the right idea when it came to meeting new companions. That changed when I soon faced a different approach from an even more bizarre source: Memorial Union.
As part of our senioritis extravaganza, my roommate and I are taking Wisconsin Union Mini Courses. Our massage technique class was fun, but we never realized the Union was so interested in our love lives until we found a course called ""Seeking Your Soulmate.""
Don't get me wrong. If there really were worthwhile classes in how to find that special snookums, I'd have no objections. After all, in my experience, love is like trying to shave when I'm in a hurry; it starts with me looking myself in the mirror confident that I can do it, and ends with me on the floor of my bathroom, wounded and crying. But somehow this class didn't seem viable.
Maybe we're just cynical about love. Or maybe it's just that we half-expect the class to be cross-listed with ""How to Meet Desperate People You Might Get to See Naked."" But it seems to contradict the starry-eyed notions of cosmic romance and soulmates to attend a PowerPoint lecture on how to find your one and only. Frankly, the class seems more useful as a really funny way to dump somebody (""You know, Jimmy, I thought this might be a good place for you to find someone who does love you."")
Taking classes in things like acupressure and CPR is fine, since those aren't things you want to try to figure out on your own. But a three-hour class in finding true love seems a bit cockeyed. Chemistry, patience and attraction are things you find by trial and error. A class in soulmate-finding is like a class in roulette; the fundamentals are easy, the rest is dumb luck. The University of St. Andrews in Scotland even just released a study saying that women taking birth control pills have altered taste in men. So at some point, shouldn't we yield to the things we can't know about mating and just hope for the best?
As alluring as a class in seeking your soulmate may sound, the same money would be better spent renting five Cary Grant movies. Those can teach you what you really need to know: to stay cool through unavoidable mistakes, freak occurrences and international espionage. And maybe they can teach you to loosen up and make the best of those random opportunities that most often lead to romance. In the end, that's really what Adam was talking about. Looking next to you and taking a chance.
And being sure to remember the lyrics.
Amos' column runs every Thursday in The Daily Cardinal. He can be reached for comment at AmosAP@hotmail.com.
