A perfect man

First, let me apologize for my late posting. The Internet must have gotten confused somehow and mistakenly backdated my post so that it's now late. That's the only possible explanation I can think of.

So with that out of the way, I'd like to continue to the next installment of "Speeches My Students Have Made." Since we were studying Jane Eyre, I had some romantically themed speech topics. One of them was "What kind of man do you like?" This, as I had hoped, produced some rather amusing results. In terms of the most popular traits overall, the ideal male specimen would be tall ("maybe not too tall, but taller than me!"), kind, funny (or, as the girls say, "humorous"), responsible, and respectful to parents and elders in general.

Some were more particular. "He must love small animals," declared one young lady, "because I love small animals, and we can have many of them in our house." "The best boyfriend will be very romantic," said another. "He will think of a wonderful surprise for me every week." "He must be handsome," noted a third. "And he must have good skin."

A few of my students had more . . . unusual tastes in men. Three of them said that they wanted men that were slightly ugly, generally unmotivated, and possessed of less than scintillating personalities. Their reasoning (wait for it) was that "then no other girls will want him, so he can only stay with me." Others, perhaps losing something in translation, said that their perfect boyfriend would be "macho," or even "a male chauvinist." One girl said she thought that "fat is handsome, so I want a little fat man." Based on my experience with Chinglish, I adjudge that she means a man who is slightly fat, not a spherical man.

One noble girl said, "My best man will not wash dishes or do housework at all, because I can do all these things for him." The earth trembled slightly when she said this, but it was probably just Glora Steinem rolling over in her grave (all the more impressive considering that she's not dead yet). The girl's classmates all clapped at this line, though.

Others took a different approach. "He should think I am right even if I do something wrong," said one girl firmly. Another, summing up her speech (to peals of laughter), concluded "The most important thing is, he must obey me very well." On financial matters, one reasoned, "The money we have should go to me, because if a man have a lot of money, he will do bad things." Others expressed suspicion about men in general. One explained that men must be watched carefully, "because men always pretend themselves until after marriage."

My favourite line from the whole speech, though (and one of the favorites of the class, to judge from the volume of laughter) was from Emma, who, in explaining her ideal man said "He needn't be rich, like Bill Gates, or handsome, like Tom Cruise, or lovely, like Dave, but he must love me very much."

That's right, friends. You are reading a post by the ne plus ultra of loveliness. I am to lovely as Bill Gates is to rich. You can look it up in the dictionary. In fact, go ahead -- I'll wait.

Dave