We flirt when we want to show someone affection. We flirt when we want attention. We flirt because flirting lays the foundation to any relationship. But flirting techniques differentiate just as people’s personalities differentiate and successfully form a relationship depending on the technique (and what kind of person you are trying to flirt with). There are those who flirt with crude pick-up lines, there are those who flirt with nice deeds, and there are those who flirt from afar.
Society uses pick-up lines daily as a form of flirtation. The old flirtation device goes far back in history. Remember Romeo and Juliet’s “My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand/ To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss?” Unfortunately, society no longer uses pick-up lines as simple (or as pg-13) as that. No, society has transformed its pick-up lines into long dwindling jokes or crude sexual innuendos that no longer hold any charm or romance. In fact, many find the pick-up lines of today to be degrading, disgusting, or disrespectful. Imagine yourself sitting at a bar and calmly drinking your choice of drink when a person who’s had more alcoholic drinks than their liver can process stumbles up to you. You can guess what happens next. They drop a crude pick-up line that goes something like, “Hey, do you want to go to the party? Where you ask? Why, it’s in my pants.” Of course, some members of society have devised pick-up lines that are more elaborate than that, but the lines all end in the same blunt and abrupt manner: a sexual innuendo.
We mustn’t lose hope in society, despite the crude form of flirtation, for there are some members of society who choose to flirt by doing nice deeds. While walking through the hallways of school one day, someone rudely bumped into me, causing my papers and books to fall to the floor. With my papers scattered about and flying in the wind, I turned around quickly to yell at the insensitive jerk who pushed me to the floor. Upon turning around, I shockingly found the “insensitive jerk” on the floor and picking up my fallen books. In normal high school circumstances, the perpetrator of the insensitive act would have walked away by now (followed by my yelling after them), but my perpetrator had stopped to help me. I was humbled. After picking up my books and placing them in my arms, my perpetrator smiled and apologized profusely for the accident, even offering to carry my books to my next class. I declined the offer, though I asked if he wanted to accompany me and he accepted. Later on, I found out that the “insensitive jerk” had helped pick up my books as a way to ask me to go to dinner with him on the weekend. Though the performers of these acts of kindness are few, they are greatly appreciated. Like a breath of fresh air, they clear the cloud of crude pick-up lines that hovers about society.
Unlike those who flirt with nice deeds or those who flirt with crude pick-up lines, those who flirt from afar are quite the mystery. Their success or failure unable to be determined, those who flirt from afar rarely make contact with those they try to flirt with or those they try to flirt with never take notice of them. We have all seen those 80’s movies of the high school geek trying to impress the popular cheerleader, or the shy boy trying to send a message of infatuation towards a girl he likes. We also have heard songs that talk about liking someone, though they will never know (Teardrops on My Guitar by Taylor Swift). Though majority of the time the person they try to flirt with will probably never know of their existence (simply because of their shyness), those who flirt from afar have a greatly appreciated standing in society. These flirters who flirt from afar allow the subject of their infatuation to fantasize about who their secret admirer may be and allow those fantasizing subjects to relish in the idea of some mysterious person liking them-until they find out their secret admirer likes to wear their pants high and plays in the marching band or calculates the Pythagorean theorem as a hobby.