The Words I Crave.

I'm such a sucker for a well constructed line. My knees go weak at the slightest hint of a compliment. I can live on some words of affirmation for eons. I know the story of the spider and the fly. I have been warned. I have been caught.( Many times) Like a moth, I just cannot stay away from the light. What woman doesn't want to be told she's one in a million without the use of a single cliche?  One of my love languages just has to be "words of affirmation" Like a plant I just blossom with a few well directed words of encouragement.

Now when your household outnumbers you, one middle aged mother to three teens, one pre-teen and the youngest child, words of affirmation are few and far between. So I fill my cd player with the likes of Jack Johnson and Seal. They tell me how amazing I am and how gorgeous I look. Jack's lyrics are a little offbeat and I like off beat. I pretend they are singing about me and I get my fill somehow.

When I was studying to be a teacher I spent one amazing night with a Zimbabwean, who was really, really tall and lanky. He was the epitome of quirky and his sense of humour was off-beat. We went to a university party where gorgeous girls were being romanced by slightly intoxicated jocks and alpha males. He wasn't an alpha male. I wasn't exactly an alpha female. We stood by a fountain and talked and talked and talked. He lead me to the dance floor where his solar plexus and I got better acquainted. ( I told you he was tall) 

As the night wore on it was apparent he wasn't exactly a fast mover and eventually he managed to hold my hand. After another slow dance with his head towering over mine, he led me outside to "our fountain" and suggested we played a game. The object of the game, he explained was to kneel down facing the other person, knee to knee and to get as close to the other person as humanly possible, without touching. Off beat yes, wacky, true. I was dangerously close to him,determined not to touch him. He leaned over to me and kissed me very briefly on the lips. "You win!" he said. 

That could be one of the singularly most romantic moments of my life. What words could be sweeter than "you win" anyhow? Those Victorian Gentlemen were a wonderful lot, they specialized in the art of woo-ing women with words.If Jane Austen is to be believed, what they lacked in after sales service, they made up for with an array of spectacular romantic verses and sentiments,penned in quill and ink or whispered to the half fainting, blushing corseted woman. 

Nowdays the closest we come to the love poetry of the past are the pick up lines bandied about every pub this side of the North Pole. Many of them bawdy and crude. I'm wondering...? What is the most romantic thing someone has ever said to you? Wouldn't it be fun to find out?