“saide Hawkins Day"

By Author: allan
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Pace up your running shoes, girls! It's an opportunitythat only happens once every four years, and you don't want to miss it! Can you guess what it is?a)#a chance to compete in the Olympicsb)#a big sale at your favorite storec)#a chance to get a management track job normally reserve!for men only in a high-status corporationd)a chance to propose marriage1 to the man of your choiceIf you guess "d", you are correct!In the "old days", when men were men and women were not, a properly brought up young lady had to wait until her beau (ar old-fashioned word for boyfriend) proposed marriage to her. But in the American heartland, women were not content with such a passive role. Pioneer women and brave cowgirls thought if they were strong enough to survive the Western frontiers, they ought to have a chance to choose their own husbands, especially since some of those Western cowpokes were too shy (or too dumb) to speak up and ask the girl to get hitched.Once every four years, on February 29 in the leap year, it was considered acceptable for a girl to ask the boy to get married. I remember my grandmother telling me about some of her ...
... girl friend anxiously waiting for the leap year to roll around, and trying to figure out if the intended boy would accept or reject the proposal, jThen in the 1930s, a very famous American newspaper cash toon artist, Al Capp, created the amazingly popular cartoon strip; called Lil Abner, depicting the antics of group of country bumpkinsj living in the tiny, fictional town of Dogpatch. One of the characters was a very ugly girl named "Sadie Flawkins. " Sadie got tired of waiting for one of the boys to propose marriage to her, so her father, the mayor of Dogpatch, declared one day a year "Sadie Hawkins Day. " On that day, any unmarried girl who caught an unmarried boy could propose marriage to him. Originally the Sadie Hawkins Day race was run in the cartoon strip in November, but over time this event merged with the leap year tradition.For the past forty years or so, the Sadie Hawkins Day race and leap year have been celebrated in many American high schools and colleges. Boys and girls dress up in country-style clothes all ripped and torn, with patches, and if it's warm enough, go around barefoot wearing silly big straw hats with ugly plastic flowers in them. Usually the tradition is modified, so that instead of marriage, the girls are expected to invite the boy of their choice to a party for dancing. Other schools have a race in which the chase the boys, with each girl trying to catch the boy she likes best (or at least the boy who runs very slowly right in front of the girl he likes).When 1 was in high school, this was the most popular social event of the year. Long before modern feminism helped to break down the rigid customs of the past, everyone really enjoyed this gender role reversal. ~ The boys liked not having to take the risk of asking the girl out, and the girls enjoyed the thrill of finally getting a chance to pick the hoy they preferred. The fear of rejection was high, especially for the shyer girls, but peer pressure (plus laughing at the ridiculous costumes) carried us through.Nowadays Idon't think too many schools in America carry on the Sadie Hawkins Day custom. My daughter, who is 18, manages to attract the attention of her chosen boy without such a formal ritual as a public race or inviting him to a dance. My son, who is 17,x often receives telephone calls from his friends, many of whom are girls, to invite him to go out to a movie or for a hamburger. Gender roles are not so strict as they used to be, and making fun of poor "Sadie", who was really quite ugly, was never kind.But the day was fun.We got a special kick out of watching some poor boy, blushing and stammering, totally surprised, when a girl he had no idea even liked him was asking him out for a date. Not to mention'1 the sight of her happy smile if he accepted.