Love in the time of Autocorrect

My puppy love aspirations are as large as a Great Dane, but unfortunately the execution is small and sassy like a Pomeranian dressed in a golf outfit. This is due in large part to being perpetually broke and unable to woo a woman like I’d like to. In my wildest dreams, I’d like to pull off a grandiose move like Henry Hill did during Goodfellas when he whisked Karen into The Copacabana with grace and pizazz. Unfortunately, the best I can do at the moment is make a mixtape with the same Crystals song playing and adorn the outer packaging with drawn on hearts that look more like playing card spades and haphazardly glued Hershey’s Kisses that will inevitably be smashed during transit.

It’s no secret that I’m girl crazy. I have always been, and probably always will be until I find myself jam-packed inside a blissful wedded union like tuna and sardines do with their can partners. Since this is an affliction I’ll never kick, I’ve had to get pretty creative over the years when it came to expressing my feelings without shelling out the hundred bucks I had plans for – namely putting food in my belly that didn’t have the word “Ramen” tattooed on the front.  You might ask yourself, “That Alec Banks is certainly a crafty little bugger, what possibly could he come up with that keeps him bathing in kisses and not drowning in salty soup broth?”

I am the master of the love letter.  Yes, I said master. You see, the world we live in is all about immediacy. We text. We email. We eat with our hands. Everything is a clusterf**k of “gimmies”.  That’s why when you take time out to actually use a pen and paper and *gasp* send it out in the snail mail, you’ve already said to that special person, “I like you so much that I’m not going to send you a text message of my trouser ampersand or chest participles.” Now that’s true love.

Besides the aforementioned coldness that comes with expressing one’s self through emoticons that look like chickenpox with sassy faces, the iPhone is always second guessing the words I want to convey to my sugarypopsiclesweetheartpoptartfuzzybunlicoricebubblegumtonguehappyface. Take that phrase, for example – my damn iPhone always wants to make some type of sense of the word I chose to type.  Sorry iPhone, I didn’t want to call her a sweaterpoopingsweatlodgepopfartbunkbedbikeringtroubledumpsappyface.  My iPhone is a poetic jerk.  Hence, why I prefer the old school method made famous by Bill Shakespeare.

Writing a love letter is a lot like writing something in cursive besides your signature. You’re probably out of practice.  Have no fear, I’ve got a couple tips and suggestions for penning that handwritten proclamation of wanting to eventually pee with the door open in front of each another.

1. I like you. Do you like me?  Worked in 2nd grade.  Still works when you’re in your twenties and thirties.
2. Send candy.
3. Do NOT start the love letter by writing Dear (INSERT NAME). You want the person to feel like her/his heart strings were getting tugged on by a caboose, not like they were about to get audited.
4. It’s a whole lot cooler to refer to someone as the scientific name of a flower instead of the common one.  For example:

Gertrude

Your purveying beauty is that of a Rosa berberifolia with eyes that dazzle like a Dianthus caryophyllus. 

Worst case scenario: The person thinks you’re calling them an antibiotic, which is quite the compliment in my uninsured book.

5. Use at least one old-world adjective and noun.  Your bosoms are quite brobdingnagian.  I swear I’m not being a flibbertigibbet.
6. DON’T admit that you started writing the letter during a romp with Two Buck Chuck.
7. Use the phrase, “You make my tummy feel weird.”
8. Make a boat reference because those are always overtly sexual in nature.  My canoe longs for the splish splash and spray for a night spent in your port.
9. Steal a lyric from CCR but claim it as your own.
10. Tell the person you wanted to write them a song, but you were out of practice with your ukulele. For one, the word ukulele makes people smile. Secondly, ukulele players are inherently more charming and whimsical in nature.
11. Admit that you played MASH prior to writing and that you can promise them at least four different housing options.
12. Alert that special person that you’d travel great lengths on their behalf to funny sounding places like Bugtussle, Kentucky, Hoo Hoo, West Virginia and Hoop and Holler, Texas.
13. Close the love letter by telling the person that they are the one who puts the the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp and the ram in the rama lama ding dong.

Sincerely,

Alec Banks

p.s. Anyone want to meet me in Humptulips, Washington?