Billingsley’s bullets: T-shirt love at first sniff

Have you read or heard about pheromone parties? Before the party, you ask those invited to bring a slept-in T-shirt that will be smelled by other party attendees. After smelling the T-shirts, you pick your partner, the one whose T-shirt smell you like the best.

These parties give smelly T-shirts a whole new image. Instead of going online for a date, you fire up your nose. Sniffing becomes more important than conversation or looks. Working at a job that generates a lot of sweat may be an asset for dating. Your armpit replaces flowers and a candlelight dinner. Sweat replaces perfume. Perhaps a very large nose makes you more likely to pick the right mate for you.

I read once that blood pressure medication can affect your sense of smell. Don’t take it before you go to the pheromone party.

• The “Mental Floss” magazine carried an article about how couples in the 18th century had a problem exchanging tender words in public. Couples were not afforded privacy, and they were not to get close enough in public to whisper to each other. A six-foot long, hollow tube was created so couples could speak privately when other people were in the same room.

This “carry a big stick” (tube) idea allowed each person to speak without being interrupted and required each person to be an attentive listener. If you said something the lady didn’t like, she was too far away to slap your face. However, she could knock you on the side of your head with the tube.

For you readers who are dating, take a six-foot hollow tube when you meet your date’s parents for the first time. It will be fun to see their reaction when you lift the tube to talk to their daughter.

Mitzi Stockel of Placerville sent me the following definitions she found on Internet:
• Raisin: A grape with a sunburn.
• Secret: Something you tell to one person at a time.
• Skeleton: A bunch of bones with the person scraped off.
• Toothache: The pain that drives you to extraction.
• Tomorrow: One of the greatest labor saving devices of today.
• Adult: A person who has stopped growing at both ends and is now growing in the middle.
• Beauty Parlor: A place where women curl up and dye.
• Chickens: The only animals you eat before they are born and after they are dead.
• Committee: A body that keeps minutes and wastes hours.
• Dust: Mud with the juice squeezed out.
• Egotist: Someone who is usually me-deep in conversation.
• Handkerchief: Cold Storage.
• Inflation: Cutting money in half without damaging the paper.
• Mosquito: An insect that makes you like flies better.
• Yawn: An honest opinion openly expressed.
• Wrinkles: Something other people have, similar to my character lines.

• There is a Hopi Indian expression that states, “One finger cannot lift a pebble.” I am not sure what this statement means. To me, it is a good explanation of what makes a marriage work well, for both parties.

It takes two people to argue and two people to reach an agreement. If only one person wants to argue, there will be no argument. When only one marriage partner wants to work out an agreement, the agreement will not be created. In the Hopi world and in marriage, it takes two to tango and two to succeed. Respect means you shut up until the other person is finished talking.

• Love occurs and flourishes when the husband and the wife learn to get outside themselves. The other person’s needs are as important as your needs. You don’t lose when you compromise. Compromise means both of your needs are considered, and then you move forward, hand in hand.

Bob Billingsley is a weekly columnist for the Mountain Democrat.

Bob Billingsley

Bob Billingsley writes Heard Over the Back Fence three times a week, keeping his pen on the pulse of the community. He also writes a biweekly column called Billingsley's Bullets, in which he uses “sideways” thinking to make your day a little easier to handle.

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