10 funny flirting facts

"10 funny flirting facts"
By Laura Schaefer

So you’ve mastered the eye-contact game and can beckon a cute prospect with a few coy glances… but do you really know all there is to know about the fine art of come-hither? Just to make sure you’re up to speed, we culled some very surprising info that you can use to your advantage. Read on for some juicy tidbits that may up your cute quotient in no time.

1. Flirting is good for you. Studies show that people who flirt have higher white blood-cell counts, which boost their immunity and keep them healthy.

2. Think it ends at a little eye batting? Hardly—all told, scientists say there are 52 “flirting signals” used by humans. Of these, the hair flip is the most common.

3. In some places, flirting is illegal. In Little Rock, AR, an antiquated law is still on the books warning that engaging in playful banter may result in a 30-day jail term. In New York City, another outdated law mandates that men may be fined $25 for gazing lasciviously at a female; a second conviction stipulates the offender wear a pair of blinders whenever he goes out for a walk.

4. Why wait for Happy Hour? Lots of people get their flirt on during their morning commute. A full 62 percent of drivers have flirted with someone in a different vehicle while on the go, and 31 percent of those flirtations, it turns out, resulted in a date.

5. Flirting need not occur face to face. According to Pew Research, 40 percent of people who look for love online say they can easily flirt with someone via email or IM.

6. In the Victorian era, fans were the ultimate playful prop that could communicate all sorts of messages. A fan placed near the heart meant, You have won my love. A half-opened fan pressed to the lips suggested, You may kiss me. Hiding the eyes behind an open fan meant, I love you, while opening and closing the fan several times warned, You are cruel. Given how much a fan could come in handy, it’s a shame they ever invented air conditioning.

7. These days, cell phones do the flirting. In one survey, half of all mobile phone users have texted suggestive messages to keep things interesting while away from their amour.

8. Watch out, you can overdo it. According to the Social Issues Research Centre, the most common mistake people make when flirting is maintaining too much eye contact.

9. Sometimes, flirty gestures aren’t what they seem. Research has shown that men tend to routinely mistake friendly behavior for flirting.

10. Flirting is universal. A woman living in New York City and one in rural Cambodia may not have much in common, but when it comes to attracting a little attention, they both employ the very same move: smiling, arching their eyebrows, then averting their gaze and giggling. Animals flirt, too: Birds, reptiles, and even fish have their own way of strutting their stuff. Moral of the story: If the simple sea bass can act cute to enhance a romantic agenda, you can, too—so give it a go!

Let me just find my plaited fan, and we can hit the road! I'm so joining that 62% of people who flirt with people in other cars. Ahaha.

- -

I was trying to see what I blogged on Valentine's Day the past four/five years. Nothing! I was so disappointed. But I found this ("3 Things Wrong With Me"):

Saturday, February 21, 2004 >> 11:05 a.m.

(. . .) 3. I believe in a thing called RANDOM love…
Yay, now I can work [what I’m going to say next] into an entry. (I’ve been thinking of ways to do so; no success.) I want a guy who… I can approach randomly (as in, I didn’t know him before, is a complete stranger to me), at the mall or something, start having a conversation, and have him say something intelligible back to me. And then have it progress from there. Jussssssssssttt like in a movie chick flick. Like… HOW GREAT WOULD THAT BE?! Hahaha… I don’t know, here I go with my whimsy and imagination again (referring to Flaw #1). I think it could happen… (I’m really tempted to incorporate God and religion into this.) Like… if it’s MEANT to be, then why couldn’t you meet your “significant other”… randomly? Rather than at camp, or at school (those are obvious references to people… really happy for you guys!), why not just randomly? And then this makes me think of [another topic that has been bothering me for a while] all of those random encounters that I’ve had in my life with complete STRANGERS. The old lady you chance to stand next to while looking through the [OVERPRICED] clothes at wet seal, who wants to know which shirt would make a better gift for her teenage granddaughter (hypothetical); the ten-year-old-looking boy you walk past on your way out of a truck stop, who lets you pet his golden retriever (non-hypothetical). The old lady could have died the next day, and the boy could grow up to win the Nobel prize in literature, and you would never know! NEVER! I just wonder about random encounters… if they amount to anything. And then I think about how utterly trapped we all are in our own worlds, and how everyone else is trapped in their own worlds, and how these worlds sometime overlap… sometimes… sigh.

When I went to New York (City) sometime last November (I think) for an orchestra field trip, I went into Toys R Us with three other friends, to ride on this HUGEEEE Ferris wheel that they have inside the building (the cars are plastic recreations/models of different toys). We got onto this Ferris wheel (approx. 20 minutes left until we had to meet back at X, the pre-determined meeting point for our bus’s departure), WHEEE, riding on the Ferris wheel (haha), and you know, it was stopping every so often to let people off. We got to about… 3:00 on a clock face (if the Ferris wheel starts at +270°, it went 90° counterclockwise), and it started stopping (wow, paradox) to let people off. So we’re sitting in this car (it was the Barbie car, wow, fun)… we take some pictures… and there’s really nothing to do, so I look to my right, towards the glass elevator, and there’s this guy in it. Dirty-blondish hair, he looks like he could be in high school… he’s wearing a short sleeved shirt (not a tee-shirt though… something more form-fitting) and he’s leaning against one of the walls of the elevator. And I don’t know, from +20 feet away I could sort of see him, he looked kinda cute, so I just watched him. AND THEN (gasp) he turned his head… AND LOOKED BACK AT ME! Ahhhh… allrightthen, so, being me, being guy-shy, my immediate reaction was to look away. And then I looked back again… and he was still looking at me. GAHBLUMAHGEIOMVEARDC. The Ferris wheel starts moving again… when it stops (5 seconds later), I look back at the elevator, and he’s looking back at me… I think he was going from the third floor of the store down to the first, and that's why he was still in the elevator after all that time. Sigh. When he got out of the elevator, he stood by it for a while, waiting for someone. The Ferris wheel started moving again, and when I looked back again, he was gone. I wonder about him, about all of the random strangers in my life… about that boy at the truck stop... I don’t understand why these people stick out in my mind. I guess I just think too much. Wonder too much. Like, I was wondering about that guy in the elevator… if he went to high school, why wasn’t he in school? We went to a New York on a Friday… but it was around 4:00 in the afternoon when we went into Toys R Us. Okay, so what was he doing in a toy store? What was his name? What were his hobbies, his ambitions? What is wrong with me????

- -

Haha. And I don't think I've changed at all.