Out with the old!!!

I cry for the generation who grew up in the 90’s. Do you want to know why? It is because we grew up on a wealth of experience brought to us courtesy of Walt Disney pictures. Our minds were constantly bombarded by the Disney love story and the mindless entertainment of the Spanish tele-novella. Those stories always went the same way: Boy meets girl, and its love at first sight. They kiss on the doorsteps of her house after their first date and after many many months, they get married and have 2.5 children, a dog, a big house with a front lawn and a white picket fence and 2 cars: the old sports car that Dad has been restoring for eons and the station wagon Mom uses to drop the 2.5 children in school.

This story changed a bit in the late 90’s. It became boy meets girl, hates her so much the first time he sees her then after a while he either saves her or teams up with her to stop the bad guys/girls and as a result they fall in love and ride off into the sunset. We never got to know what happened after they rode off into the sunset.

When I compare this fairytale of a love story to what happens in real life, it brings tears into my eyes. Most people barely remember the last time they truly fell for someone at first sight. Yet, somewhere within us, in our inner child, we expect that everything should and will go the fairytale way. I blame this squarely on Disney and the malleability of the young mind.

Anywhoo, that’s not what I wanna talk about. The traditional boy-girl relationship is dead. It seems to have died quite a while ago and yet I have only realized its demise now. In this day and age of speed dating and social networking, it seems that young people have less and less time to ‘waste’ getting to know each other. We used to count the number of dates it took for a guy to get the first kiss from a girl. Now we count the minutes. The faster a guy can score a kiss, the higher his standing within his group of friends. And it’s worse online. Believe me.

I should put it out right now I am a traditionalist. I do fall into the class of people who grew up watching Disney flicks (you couldn’t say no), but I haven’t yet conformed to the popular forms of dating. You see, when I was growing up, the people I looked up to all took eons of time dating before they even thought of announcing an engagement. So I expected the when my time would be nigh, the same would happen to me. But looking at what is going on in this world, I think I am the only person holding on to this ideology, though I am sure that I am not the only person who was indoctrinated with it.

Therefore, irregardless of what popular culture is bombarding me with, I believe that someday I will meet that special someone and I am sure that I will not fall for that someone at first sight, but also I won’t launch into a barrage of snogs with her within the first ten minutes of our meeting. I will take my time to get to know her and who knows; maybe I will set a new standard for the new generation. But in the meanwhile, I will be attending the memorial ceremony for the traditional boy-girl relationship. It will be held at the cemetery where it was buried next to chivalry, romance and true love….