LAYDEEZ, ITS A LEAP YEAR

SHOULD YOU PROPOSE ON FEBRUARY 29TH?

WORDS: NICOLE BUCKLER

So you are drowning in a sea of mobile phone calls, and people have assumed that because your laptop is always with you, you had an accident with superglue that you haven’t yet resolved. You wear a Wi-Fi detector on your wrist so you know where you can be online (setting off the occasional nerd alert). Your employees are all pregnant at the same time and one nearly burnt down the warehouse. And you are single. How on earth do you meet someone worthy of your good lovin’ in the midst of all this?

Well the good news is that in 2008, if you find yourself a decent nice looking fellow who knows how to act in public and knows how to operate a dishwasher on the rare occasion, then it’s going to be a good year for you. This is because it will be socially acceptable for you to propose marriage on the 29th of February to your chap.

This tradition of women being “allowed” to propose to men on a leap year supposedly has a historical basis. Alas, no historian is prepared to stand by the legend as fact. I wouldn’t either. I’m more convinced that the Yeti is alive and well and eating small children in the Nepalese mountains. Anyhoo, it is said that this tradition sprang forth from a law made in 1288 by Queen Margaret of Scotland (who was at the time five years old and living in Norway so the baloney factor is probably quite high). If a woman proposed to a man but the man refused, then he would have to give a generous gift to the woman to soften the blow. Compensation ranged from a kiss, to £1 (probably a hefty enough sum back then to buy a decent pig) to a silk gown. Obviously women, being the great business minds that we are, soon learned how to fleece men, once we realised we couldn’t give a fig if they married us or not. We went around proposing to every male over the age of 10 and under the age of 107. But of course men changed the laws to halt the year-long fleecing fest, and proposals were restricted to 29th of February. Whether this is true or not is still up for debate, but the tradition is a handy one in modern times if you are campaigning for betrothal.

So the question remains, would you propose to a man? Maybe you need to consider it, especially if you have dropped so many hints that you need a shovel to move them off your lounge room floor. In this world of equality, it would not be that unusual to suggest to a man that he will benefit deeply by only having ‘relations’ with one woman (you) for the rest of his earthly life. Once you convince the poor soul of this, you can propose. You’ve just got to work out if you are more equal to your partner than your partner is comfortable with. If you think he might not flee in emasculated horror, you have some preparations to get under way. First would be, if you should be single and approaching February 29th, to meet a fella in the first place. So where can such fine specimens be unearthed? If you think I am going to say, the bookstore, or the supermarket...you would be utterly misled. This is a load of trollop. If you went up to a hottie in Tesco and struck up a conversation over the pears, he would just think you are a lonely weirdo who has escaped the looney bin. And what would you even say over the pears? “Don’t look at that pear, look at this pair?” It’s all too dodgy. The same goes for the bookstore. If you approach a guy in Eason’s over the DIY manuals he would probably learn pretty fast how to build a wall to keep the likes of you out.

For busy women juggling everything from a career to the cat, the only options are to narrow down the field with ruthless determination. Here are some ways to do that:

INTERNET DATING
Internet dating is simply just a modern version of the blind date. Although, you pick the date yourself. While traditional blind dates are a tried and true way to meet people, the caveat is that your friends are in control. So you have to make sure your friends have really good taste, because you don’t want to be set up with a derf-wad, be forced to reject him horribly, and then have to see him at every party for the next six years. At least with net dating you can choose your own victims. However if you are a generation X-er or a Boomer, you’ll still be deeply suspicious of this practice. Need confidence? Just check out the Bebo generation (pretty much anyone younger than you). They have no qualms about net dating and simply go forth. Talk to any hyperactive Bebo kiddie and they will say that sporting a fear of internet dating is just old fashioned and backwards. They are suspicious of anyone who is single and who is RELUCTANT to internet date. And yet many boomers don’t like the fact that it isn’t “face-to-face” communication, the kind of rolling conversation they are used to. But here’s the rub, you might not like it, but that’s the way the world is going. Better get on the bandwagon otherwise it will leave you behind and throw a disused trumpet at you on the way through.

Read more about Virtual Hotties in the February | March 2008 issue of WMB, subscribe now.

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