I did ask for feedback on the story about courting, call it romance if you wish, twenty five years ago, and I got several comments. I also realize that I promised for this week to give you the details for the actual courting visits of the young man to the girl’s home but I will skip it for next week to bring you more on this romance.
Guys will recall that it was not too often that they had the opportunity to see their girlfriends, so they easily got nostalgic (suffer macobi) about them. If for any reason they had to move to different places, the romance did continue. Boys used to send letters to the girls with a strand of hair or something personal in the envelope for her to feel his presence. In return the girl used to write back to her boyfriend using a perfumed page, of course using her favorite perfume. One can imagine the girl reading her letter and kissing that strand of hair. And at the other end, you can be sure he read the letter over and over and kept smelling that perfume that so much enchanted him.
Want to be more romantic? The girl would stamp her lips on the letter with her/his favorite lipstick. And you can be sure that when he received the letter he kissed over those lips over and over again. Now you tell me if that wasn’t romantic! No wonder the marriage relationships that followed twenty five years ago tended to last more than the marriages of today. Tell me if this wasn’t romantic! All of that fun the guys of today miss out, when today they simply send her a message by email with code messages like xoxo, lol, lmao and LMFAO. Can’t beat the strand of hair from the boys, and the perfumed letters with loving kisses.
And if you think this was all the romance, wait a minute! Girls collected several of their boyfriend’s handkerchiefs, and kept them as loving souvenirs. Some girls kept untouched packs of Spearmint chewing gum and bars of chocolate. Every boy in a relationship used to wear his girlfriend’s ring on his little finger or carried it hanging from a gold chain around his neck. Some girls kept their boys’ wrist watches.
I want to tell you that I have seen an actual letter written by a young lady to her boy on a perfumed handkerchief. The message was telling him that she was aware that he was casting eyes at another girl, and that she was prepared to forgive him if he made up his mind. Now tell me if that wasn’t a climax of romantic experiences-a love letter written on a personalized ladies handkerchief!
Another romantic thing the guys of twenty five years ago did was to take a serenade to their girls. A serenade consisted of going to the girl’s house and singing two or three love songs to her in the middle of the night while she was asleep. And I mean a true love song, not songs like: “I feel good, yeah yeah” so “Beat it, beat it”, “Pose, pose”. Let me attempt to translate the lyrics of a love song to a girl: “Wake up sweet love of my life. Wake up if you find yourself asleep and dreaming of me. With this song I want to give you my heart and my soul. Listen to my voice vibrate under your window. Forgive me if I interrupt your dreams, but I can’t wait no more and with this song I come to tell you how much I love you.” You can bet that if she was not completely sure of her love for him before then, she was convinced now after the romantic serenade. So folks, this is the picture of courting twenty five years ago. Would be fun going back to that custom and culture, don’t you agree? Of course, feel free to comment or give ideas at nunez_nest@yahoo.com or ambergristoday@yahoo.com
– by Angel Nuñez, Columnist
