Where is that boy in freshly polished shoes and that girl in home-made dress
WHATEVER happened to the courting couple? The courting couple used to be everywhere, especially on fine days. Hand in hand. Dawdling. Strolling. Maybe mooching. Or if it was raining, then the courting couple might take refuge in the back row of the cinema for a conoodle, regardless as to whether the film being shown was comedy or drama. But now I find that the word ‘conoodle’ does not show up on my computer spell-check, giving me pause wonder whether I am imagining such things.
Recollections of the summer weekends of childhood are populated by courting couples. They used to pass by the gates of Medders Manor at an average rate of one young courting couple every ten minutes if the weather was good. The boy of the couple had freckled face and sun-burned neck, as best I can recall, while the girl wore a pretty home-made dress. Does anyone else remember them? He with his freshly polished shoes. She displaying her first trembly stab at applying lipstick. Please assure me that I am not making this up.
It should be stressed that I am not a first-hand expert in such matters, having come through adolescence believing that girls were essentially of a difference species. Reaching out from the confines of single-sex schooling and all-male sports to find a girl was altogether too daunting a challenge for me to overcome. The most obvious potential source of girls to ask out was the circle of classmates around Big Sis – so called to this day because she is older than Little Sis. While her two siblings were living through adolescence, Little Sis was practically a baby and of little or no day-to-day relevance to our social lives.
Big Sis one the other hand had plenty of eligible girlfriends – pretty friends, chatty friends, outgoing friends, thoughtful friends, tall friends, short friends, witty friends, covering just about the whole range of possible attraction. The problem was that Big Sis did not generally bring any of these lovelies home to the Manor because she was already one half of a courting couple herself. The bond formed on youthful summer strolls and in the back row of our local flea pit proved enduring and they have since chalked up forty years of rock solid marriage. But the way the foundation was laid for their partnership, as a courting couple patrolling the by-ways of Our Town, is a far cry from how most 21st century relationships are formed.
My first intimation that something was changing was given to me in an Amsterdam cinema where I saw the Agatha Christie classic whodunit ‘Death on the Nile’ in the late 1970s. The attendance at what was billed in Holland as ‘Moord op de Nijl’ was mainly young but there was no conoodling – these good Dutch folk were all here to watch the movie. They had the benefit of sub-titles in their own language which meant that they laughed at the funny bits before those of us following the plot in English got the jokes.
The Netherlanders were ahead of the Irish - but we have caught up. It is now a matter of remark to see a bashful courting couple smooching on our streets, in our picture palaces, or ghosting around our public parks. One reason that the courting couple has become an endangered species must be that houses have become bigger while families are smaller. It made sense to go walking as a courting couple when the alternative was to share telly and sofa with a set of annoying younger kids and a mongrel pup. Nowadays, however, there are plenty of nooks and crannies in many homes – and a choice of TVs – so there is ample scope for privacy.
It must be the case too that modern teenagers are less secretive about their romances than those of previous generations, so they see no need to venture out of doors. The parents of the new millennium are more accommodating and liberal than used to be the case, facilitating young love rather than enforcing old inhibitions.
Presumably social media also have an impact, opening up lines of communication at all hours of day or night, so that a couple may court without actually being in physical touching distance. Old fogeys such as I may suggest that it might be healthier to enjoy fresh air and exercise along with any conoodling but, heck, what do we know?