Bev and Bill Spotz

From her 1961 Billboard hit, Patsy Cline sang, “You want me to act like we’ve never kissed, you walk by, and I fall to pieces.” The Marvelletes pleaded, “Please Mr. Postman, look and see if there’s a letter in your bag for me.”

Nearly 50 years later, lyrics about “disco sticks,” womanizers and naughty nights in Vegas fill the pop music airways.

As music portrays, the dating scene has changed drastically — such a metamorphosis that the romance of the past has little affiliation with hookups of today. From kisses to she-wolves, from love letters to text messages, from falling to pieces to love drunk, college-age dating has transformed into an unrecognizable culture from that of previous decades.

See how the popular nuisances of dating culture have changed through the decades in the opinions of these local men and women.

1961: Coke dates and chaperones
The first time Bev Spotz met Bill, he arrived at her sorority house to take out one of her friends.
“You had to call on the intercom when someone came to pick you up,” Bev Spotz says. “My friend wasn’t ready, so I went downstairs to tell whoever it was that she’d be a few minutes. I went back upstairs and said, ‘Who is that who’s picking you up? He’s so cute!’”

Later, that same friend introduced Bill and Bev and left them alone to finish their “Coke date.”
As Bill Spotz, now 67, of Boulder, recalls, “A Coke date is an afternoon date to see if you like each other — very non-committal.”

The two met in 1961 at Iowa State University’s student union. Their Coke date allowed them to chat and see if their personalities matched.

“We started dating almost immediately and got pinned and unpinned 11 times,” Bev Spotz, 69, says.

Pinning, associated with the collegiate Greek system, symbolizes a couple’s commitment.  As for their 11 unpinnings, the Spotzes say they cleansed all the fights out of their system before marriage.

Other characteristics of ‘60s dating: A sense of a looming Big Brother of chaperones and limitations. In the dorms, girls trotted back at 10 p.m. to make curfew. No boys had permission to walk upstairs to the second floor to the girls’ bedrooms. Conversations occurred in the lobby or living room.

Instead of bar hopping and beer pong, for entertainment, the Spotzes danced, attended ballgames, strolled on long walks and visited each other’s families.

1985: Cliques and house phones
Andreas and Paula Gerthe, both 40, of Lafayette, met in Boulder in front of The Sink, formerly known as Herbie’s Deli, in 1985. Three weeks later they were engaged.

“I didn’t date a lot. I was very selective. I always thought that I will only date a girl if I can see myself marrying her,” says Andreas Gerthe.

Paula Gerthe says she knew after one week that he was the one.

The couple feels like the dating scene then was similar to today — except a few vital differences.

“There were a lot of cliques; if you were a jock, you dated a jock. If you were in the band, you dated someone in the band,” Andreas Gerthe says.

Then there’s technology. In the ‘80s, the only phones people used were connected to cords and no one had heard of the Internet. Online dating didn’t exist. Neither did Facebook or text conversations.

“When guys use technology, it really takes away the personal aspect,” Andreas Gerthe says.
Dating intentions have also become clouded, Paula Gerthe says.

“We also didn’t do the coffee thing. We went out for dinner; it was specific and intentional,” she says.

2010: Facebook chat and texting woes
The social demands of the modern relationship may be outpacing the most technologically connected generation yet, according to some local college students.

“It must have been nice in the older days when people didn’t have text messaging and all that kind of stuff, because it just seems like everything was so much more genuine,” says 20-year-old Cassie Owens, of Lakewood.

She thinks dating has become fast-paced, yet less straightforward.

According to Dorian-Michelle Smith, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Colorado, “You’re overly dependent on communicating all the time. If you don’t get a message from that person within 24 hours you feel like, ‘What is this? Are they trying to just blow me off?’”

Messages sent through texting or Internet chats can be easily misconstrued, she says. Sarcasm can be easily mistaken for an insult, or a serious question can be taken as a joke. Facebook chat has become the new way to ask someone out.

“There are 1,000 ways to communicate,” she says.

Owens and Smith both wish that dating in their age group would slow down a little and revert to earlier dating traditions: a simple dinner and a movie.

“Our whole culture of dating has changed. We don’t go out on real dates anymore,” Smith says.

— By Caroline Seib, Meghan Tschanz and Kate Klein

On the Web
Want more on this topic? Check out www.findingbeausinboulder.wordpress.com.  
Here, you can see a multimedia slideshow of dating in the college scene (“A sneak peek inside the college dating scene”) and a video interview with the Gerthes.

After the rains

I wanted to learn from this moment.

A fabulous beach vacation with my family: On the third day, we rested.

We woke up and it was gray. Then the skies opened up and the rain didn’t stop until long after the invisible sun had set.

I started the day with that vague discomfort I always feel when things are awry. What if it rains for the rest of the trip? What if my disappointment ruins the fun for everyone?

But I had never gone to the beach with little children before. Our small resort room was a castle for the 2-year-old — she’d skip from the couch to the window to watch all the large cruise ships drifting in and out of the cove, like giant ghosts in the mist. A warm bath was as fun as any swimming pool; better, in some ways, because her chubby little feet could touch the bottom.

The 4-year-old glammed it up, putting on the adult-sized plush slippers, and ordering room service just like Eloise at the Plaza.

The next day, and the next, and the next, the sun burned a bright hole through an impeccable blue sky, warming our winter bones and sprinkling freckles across our shoulders and noses.
But even now, weeks later, the 4-year-old talks about our rainy day as if it were part of the itinerary. Ask her about Mexico, and she’ll tell you it has beaches, and the ocean and room service.

I think about happiness a lot for someone who is, generally speaking, happy.

A collection of studies in 2002 concluded that materialism — the desire for more stuff — made people unhappy, whether they were rich or poor. People who looked on the bright side were happiest; but don’t feel bad if you don’t, because 50 percent of that ability is genetic. Grateful people were happy; unforgiving people were unhappy.

A 2004 study of more than 900 Texas women showed that money — as long as people weren’t in poverty — didn’t make a lick of difference, but that lack of sleep did. Sex and socializing made people happy; commuting and housework did not.

A 2009 study by Harvard may be the longest running happiness survey ever, starting in 1937. This one started with male Harvard sophomores. Stable marriages, not smoking and having good relationships made people happy. So did exercise. Alcoholism made people unhappy. (They found that this was not putting the cart before the horse — we assume unhappy people tend to drink more. The study actually found that abusing alcohol was a larger factor in making people unhappy to begin with.)

They all make sense, all these scientists working so hard to tell us whatever it is that we should already know. (Take my happiness survey, please. Ba-da-bum!)

I’ll keep looking for their answers. But I think I’ve seen the secret to happiness, and it looks a lot like warm baths and room service on a wonderful, unanticipated rainy day.  

— By Erika Stutzman
erika@womensmag.com

Nelson

Just look at a man listening to a woman who is rambling on. He enters the trance, kind of like a dog staring at a fan. He looks dazed and confused. His eyes seem to beg, “Why is she telling me all of this needless information? Just tell me ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ woman!”

During one seminar, a man used that old saying, “You ask a woman what time is it, and she tells you how to build a clock!” Do we have a gender gabber dilemma here?

Sayings such as “Get to the point” and “What is the bottom line?” are borne out of male culture. Women are more process oriented. They want to share their stories and provide the details that they think make the stories rich. Women want to go on more than men want to hear. Simple as that.

Switch It Up!
If you tend to be a ramblin’ kind of woman, we recommend speaking in pyramid style. When a man asks a question, begin your answer with a one-word or one-sentence explanation. Imagine this as the top of the pyramid, the smallest part. Good. You’ve given him what he wants: direct and to the point.

Now, if you must elaborate, shorten your descriptive explanation by half.  Finish with silence. If he wants you to go on, he will ask for it.

— By Audrey Nelson
Nelson, of Boulder, is a communication consultant, trainer, keynote speaker and author. Check out www.audreynelson.com. Contact Nelson at 303-448-1802 or audrey@audreynelson.com.

This column was inspired by a chapter in “Code Switching.”

“Thanks doll. Me wuv you,” the text message read.

I read it again. Then I scooted the phone across the table to my friend The Captain. He read it and spit sushi out of his mouth.

The man on the other end of the offending phone is not and never has been my boyfriend. We went on one date. One. His message confuses me. Why is he telling me this? Why is he saying it like that!?

It’s been a long time since anyone told me “I love you” in a romantic sense. But no one, ever, has said or written it in baby talk. “Me wuv you” is like a bad car accident — I couldn’t stop re-reading that text. Thinking about it. Telling everyone about it. Trying to figure out what it meant and why it was sent.

Scott Halzman is a professor at Brown University in the department of psychology and human behavior.

“I think the purpose of baby talk is to protect the sender from rejection or embarrassment,” he says.

I see his point, but after one date? I’m concerned that this guy thinks I find baby talk sexy, or is perhaps confusing me with his 6-year-old child, or, or, or? I tell Dr. Halzman about the sappy text message and how it perplexes me.

Halzman agrees, “People look forward to sex with adults, not infants, so baby talk can dampen the sex drive.”

Talk about an understatement.

I want to be loved, but not “wuved.”

— Leah M. Charney
Contact Charney at lcharney@womensmag.com and www.datingandotherbadhabits.com.

Broken Neck Baby was once a doll that could blink and cry. The blinking had stopped, leaving it with one open eye and one sealed half-closed. Its little rubber noggin had come to rest for days on the mailing label of my Vanity Fair: It left a permanent tattoo of my name and address on its temple. Its neck was broken, the exposed wires of what used to make it blink and cry made me constantly vigilant to keep the doll away from the baby.

Photo by Ray Tollison, www.pixelpooch.com

But the longing disappointment was real: Days later, a doll’s pacifier is ferreted out of a full toy chest. “Oh,” said a voice trembling with near tears, “this belonged to Broken Neck Baby.”

This is a story every parent knows already: Children will love toys to death, and if you held on to every scrap of the broken possessions, you’d be living in a landfill. Grown-ups have to teach children how to move on from material things. And on a daily basis, we need to teach coping and safety skills as well.

And children teach grownups, too, with their spirited defense of all creatures beautiful and ugly, of dogs both clean and smelly, of things whole and shattered. With their capacity to forgive flawed mothers who throw away beloved things, they remind us on a daily basis about the worthiness of unconditional love.

— By Erika Stutzman

Today, at age 38, he doesn’t need a drum set.

Megibow’s mouth is the snare, the bass and the cymbal, as well as the rumbling bassline and the singer. One mouth. At least five different instruments. And then there are a few sounds that he can spit — literally, spit — that sound like instruments not yet invented.

When the Boulder man is on stage, rocking with the local vocal band Face, eyeballs in the audience pop and jaws drop. Does he have five different voice boxes? Is it prerecorded? Is it a trick? Is he even human?

Face’s popularity continues to grow, having recently recorded in KBCO’s Studio C. The band has been named “best local band” by multiple media, and recently released its third CD, “Momentum.”

We had to know the mystery behind this human drum machine. So we cornered Megibow — in between his rehearsals, three-plus shows a week, teaching beat-boxing to youth and managing the band.

Here’s how it went down.

Beyond the band, what’s new with your life?
My family has recently been a part of one of the biggest blessings we’re ever likely to experience. Sara, my wife, carried a child for our close friends, Forest and Mindy. (Forest Kelly is the bass in Face.) Mindy was left unable to carry children after battling — and winning — breast cancer. Her fertilized embryo was ultimately transferred into my wife’s body and carried to term.
Trey Forest Kelly was born Nov. 1, a perfectly healthy and happy baby. Sara and I are now godparents to Trey, and our 4-year-old son, Elan, calls Trey his “godbrother.”

Tell us more about the work you do with youth.
I have been working with teens on leadership, relationships and life skills for 12 years. The kids like to say I relate well to them because I never really matured past a teenage mentality. I argue this point, because I’m not sure I really made it past second grade. Be that as it may, I love the teenager’s passion for life. If I can help give them an ounce more direction, self-esteem or happiness, it’s been a good day.

What is your motto?
My favorite is a quote by Habib Bourguiba: “Happy is the person who can laugh at himself. He will never cease to be amused.” Two of my son’s first words were “Try again,” which I take to heart.

What was your resolution for 2009?
I resolve to be thankful every day for the life that I have. I have the most amazing wife and son; my parents and grandfather live here in Boulder with me and are a big part of my life; and I get to perform far and wide with Face, which is made up of five of my best friends and their awesome families.

What is your favorite holiday memory?
I already know that this coming December will be the most memorable of all.

— By Aimee Heckel

Photo by Amanda Tipton, Koroko Photography.

My eyes are big and brown and haven’t changed as I’ve aged. They are still inquisitive and rimmed with long lashes. I don’t happen to think they’re my best feature, but the man in the hat thinks they’re beautiful.

A few weeks later another man — a very married photographer friend — declares randomly, “You know what’s the prettiest part of you? Your bottom lip.”

My bottom lip? But the man in the hat said my eyes.

“Your eyes are pretty, too,” the photographer says, pausing as though studying me like one of his compositions, “But your bottom lip is gorgeous.”

Beauty is indeed a thing no one can absolutely agree upon. For a guy trying to pick me up in a dark bar it was the eyes. For a friend whose whole life is art it’s the bottom lip. I’m curious to know what men I’ve actually dated find beautiful about me.

Since most of my ex-boyfriends become my best girlfriends I ask them. It feels awkward, like I’m fishing for an unauthorized confidence boost. But I really don’t know how else to get answers.

What is beautiful about me?

“It was the way you talked,” says the clever musician. “It was silly, eccentric. That’s what I found attractive.”

The way I talk? I love to talk and am often concerned I’m saying too much and hijacking conversations. But upon first meeting, at a time when he knew very little of or about me, the way I gesticulate wildly and tell animated, detailed stories about nothing was not only interesting, but apparently beautiful.

I unleash the question upon the rugby player, a Greek statue of a man who doesn’t skip a beat.

“You happen to life, you don’t let it happen to you,” he claims before expounding. “You influence — impact, I think would be a better way to put it.”

And that’s beautiful?

“I think so,” he says seriously, almost daring me to accept the compliment.

Like many women I have a hard time taking a compliment. I think it’s written somewhere in the girl handbook. But it was pointed out to me that defining beauty isn’t about conceit. Instead it is the measure of confidence.

It was much easier to ask the question than to accept the answers, or worse yet (gasp!) answer the question for myself.

So, deep breath, here we go:

I love my breasts and my bottom and those pouty lips, too. I have hair that belongs in a shampoo commercial. Sometimes I snort when I laugh and when I smile I scrunch up my entire face. But those are not my most beautiful qualities. No. Not even close.

I am kind, generous. I am a fiercely loyal friend. I believe in the possibilities. I live for the journey. I am stubborn. Defiant. Silly. Serious. I am a walking contradiction, always and never the same.

And it took the men who know me most intimately to remind me of all this. The men who have seen me both all dolled up and completely dressed down. The men who have seen me fragile and scared. The men who after dating me still wanted to be my friends. They have answered the mysterious question.

My eyes and lips are nice enough. But my character is luminous.

— By Leah M. Charney
Contact Charney at LMCharney@gmail.com and www.datingandotherbadhabits.com.

I have no idea what she meant by that — unless she meant kisses should be small and nutty and taste awesome covered in chocolate. But since the woman spent her life writing about kisses, I’ll wager she knew a thing or two. I have not ever written about kisses until now, but I have done a fair amount of kissing in my time.

I am thankful for kisses. Kisses are small things, to be sure, but oh-so-important. I wouldn’t want to live my life without them. Life in single-girl-world means sometimes spending weeks or months without so much as a single peck.

There are different types of kisses and different types of kissers. A quick Google search of kissing will turn up hundreds of Web sites devoted to types and tips and how-to’s.

Think back to the best kisser you’ve ever known. Perhaps that person is your spouse, or a lost love of long ago; or maybe the best kisser was that stranger on New Year’s whom you spent a mere two minutes with. It doesn’t matter who your best kiss was with, but I’ll bet you are thankful for that moment.
The kiss is sometimes a thing we look most forward to. My best guy friend recently had a first date with a hot Boulder doctor. The date went great, until the kissing part came.

Photo by Flickr user e.esders.

“Maybe you’re a good kisser, and she’ll be a fast learner,” I said, trying to comfort him during our post-date pep talk.

“I dunno,” he responded. “It’s real bad. It’s like a horse eating an apple.”

Ouch.

I’ve also known bad kissers. I’ve shared moments with “washing machine” kissers who slobbered all over my face and chin. I dated a boy in high-school who was a “chicken” kisser — he’d lunge forward with quick, piercing pecks, like my lips were bits of corn feed. Then there are the “vacuum” kissers, who Hoover through the mouth with such force I’ve feared for the safety of my teeth. Still, I am just as thankful for those bad kisses because they taught me to appreciate the good ones.

I have learned how I felt about someone just in the way I kiss him, and have in turn learned his feelings for me. A few years ago, I was dating a Perry Farrell look-a-like who unexpectedly kissed me goodbye by planting a soft, sweet kiss. On my forehead. In one motion, he had clarified our relationship — it was going nowhere — and less than a week later he was gone from my life.
The kiss is something we often take for granted, until we miss it.

Take my friend, Ginger (not her real name). When we were in college at CU, there were young men to be found at parties every weekend. Recently she recounted the tale of one such party. It had gotten late and was time to go.

“But I haven’t kissed anyone yet!” she bemoaned.

“Will someone make out with Ginger so we can leave?” her male bodyguard and buddy pleaded to the party.
Cue the line of men. Six or seven of them.

“So who’d you pick?” I asked.

“Oh, I kissed all of them,” she said, “And the last one was the best kisser. I was annoyed I didn’t start there.”
She paused. “I miss college sometimes,” she said.

But it’s not the parties she misses. It’s the opportunity for kisses.

– Leah M. Charney
Charney is sassy yet classy and always up for a good kiss. Contact Charney at lcharney@womensmag.com and www.datingandotherbadhabits.com.

Now, I don’t believe I’m a cruel person. I’m just not good at nurturing plants. Or is that relationships?
I still think about my tenacious little weed as I search for my Bees Gees CD. I picture the little guy perfectly, its one limp leaf, its stem in soil so dry and tight it reminded me of a dug-up Peruvian mummy. I see the sad sprite, but for the life of me, I can’t picture the housemate.

I don’t think I’m a cold person for that. I’m just not that good at remembering names. Or maybe I can blame it on the 1970s, John Travolta, polyester pants or platform shoes. Um, I don’t think so. The learning came earlier in life.

I moved around a lot as a kid. Memorizing classmates’ names always took a back seat to safeguarding my youthful shoots. When Mom said, “Stay off the phone, your father is expecting a call,” I knew I’d soon be yanked up and transplanted to a new state, to a new school, to untilled ground. But I’d spread my roots as fast as I could, before the end of semester, before the phone would ring again.

By college, my favorite plant was a misanthropic dandelion seed drifting on the wind.

Although I bravely battled isolation in my youth, I now embrace it as I shift into the autumn of my days, as I hum along with the soft jazz pumped through the grocery store. Many times I’ve cringed at myself in front of the red-leaf lettuce.

Fall now has shaken the last leaves from my trees, and I’m forced into the claustrophobic mood I call winter; my spirits gray. I finally find my Bees Gees CD and spin the disc as I drag a droopy geranium from frosty porch to warm kitchen; this one has survived my neglect for years.

The geranium makes me think about my college plant just as my favorite song begins to play. I take a break from the schlepping and point my finger in the air, thrust my hip out to the side and sing at the top of my lungs, “Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.”

– By Bridget Cassidy

The study, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, found that parents lie to children, and lie a lot. Some of the lies are white lies — “You did such a good job cleaning your room” when it’s still a mess — and some were definitely not.

Example: “The police are going to get you if you don’t stop crying now.” Some experts said the fibs are no big deal if the overall effect is raising children in a protective environment — one that is safe for them, even if they don’t know the truth about what is outside their parents’ boundaries. Others were aghast at the study, said it could hinder cause-and-effect learning, and wondered what kind of values parents are passing along to their little kiddies.

Because children don’t lie, goes the convention. Rumor has it, children are honest and lying is learned behavior.

Poppycock.

For the record, I don’t lie to my children. (Nor do I share the entire truth: The image of a serial killer stares at us from the morning newspaper. “Who’s that?” she asks. “Oh, it’s a stranger, named Scott,” I say. “I have an uncle named Scott!” she shouts, pirouetting away from me.)

Choosing not to lie to my children isn’t all about my values, though. It’s because it’s too easy to get caught. “You SAID ‘Dora the Explorer’ wasn’t on TV right now. BUT LOOK!!! LOOK!!!”

But in defense of parents who do lie, and the shameful role models they are, where did this reputation for honesty in children begin? Because they’re blunt? “Mommy, you still look like you have a baby in your tummy, and you already had the baby!” Honestly?

Fact is: Kids lie, and lie like rugs. I know a boy in Gunbarrel who claims his favorite dish is monkey soup. They don’t even sell monkey soup in Gunbarrel.

We bought ski passes for the winter, and my wide-eyed, honest daughter tells me tales about last ski season, when instead of learning to ski during ski school, they went up into the clouds. To hang out. Clouds are not cold, or wet, or fluffy. They are warm and gooey.

She tells her teacher all about her five brothers and her cat. Lies, lies. Her favorite sense is the sense of smell (this is actually true.) Her favorite smell: Dragons.

In truth, there will come a time when she’s going to forget about her imaginary brothers and the made-up cat. Years from now, she won’t remember the gooey warmth of clouds, or be able to recall the delicious scent of dragons. I’ll remind her.

Because, and this is the absolute truth, I’m going to miss all of them.

– By Erika Stutzman