Its early up here in my little corner of the world, in fact we haven’t even gotten the girl child off to preschool yet. So I am sitting here reading my paper online, sipping a cup of hot delicious coffee and listening to NPR. This is pretty much my routine everyday, consume caffeine and consume news….the world doesn’t feel right unless I do those two things early in the morning.
Anyway this morning, I heard a report on NPR about young folks and hooking up. In case you are like me and a tad old, and not familiar with this term it basically means young folks no longer date or even have a random one night stand. They just hook up, they get their sexual needs met…by the way the hookup may or may not involve intercourse unlike say a one night stand. Though it does have a sexual aspect to it.
See, it seems dating is just notdone. You have your crew of buddies that are your friends and then you have folks you might want to get the hook up with….hook-ups apprently are not meant to evolve into a relationship. In fact they had a young man speaking about how costly a date can be, that he doesn’t bother to take a young woman to the movies after all its at least $43 to $50. Wow! It seems the women don’t expect a date either…
Look, I hardly had a vibrant dating life as a teenager since I was a Black girl in the 1980’s in a predominantly white setting and that was before interracial dating became the norm, so that meant that I rarely had any dates. However as a young woman in my twenties between husbands (remember I married the first time straight out of high school) I did have a chance to date and the norm was for a man to take you out on a date. A date consisted of a meal, some entertainment maybe in the form of a movie, a a play or stopping to hear some live music. On this thing called a date, the man paid for the date….look I am a equal opportunity woman who considers herself a womanist but at the heart I am still old fashioned and expect men to pay. Heck even my best friend who is a man pays for our outings even though I don’t expect it but he too is a old fashioned cat. The only man I ever dated whom I opened up my pocketbook to, turned out to be a less than honorableman. So yeah, I am old fashioned. If I became single today and a man wanted to go out but expected me to pay, it would not happen and if it did he would not be comsidered relationship material. He would be a buddy, not man material.
Anyhoo, back to this story..the interviewer spoke with folks from various backgrounds, Black, White, college-educated, not educated…they all seemed to agree that the hook-up is here to stay. One young woman admitted she wished for more but that was not how things are done these days.
Ok….putting on my Mama hat. What the hell is wrong with people? Look sex between two consenting adults can be a wonderful thing but generally it gets better, the better you know each other. I have tried a hook or two type deal when I was single and as my Granny used to say…that’s for the birds. Connection is a beautiful thing. Its a once in a lifetime deal when we meet someone and connect immediately buy even those explosive types of connections are still superficial. After all you don’t know the other person. If you just need a release, get a damn toy. If you are a man, use your right hand.
What’s even more scary to me aside from the hook-up is how folks use social media to make the connection. It seems we can meet via a shared friend say on Facebook, we exchange texts and other messages and eventually we make the connection. Now if this was turning into an actual relationship I would have no issue with it, I have several friends who have met their partners online…that’s cool. No I am talking we meet online only to have sex and not even evolve into a friendship…sorry, I am officially old because that just seems sad and wrong.
No, as a mother it scares me to think that this is the brave new world my kids are in since elder boy is already there and one day girl child will be there.
So humor me…what are your thoughts on the hook-up? Is it a good thing or bad? Am I just being an old stick in the mud?
