Because it's summer: smooth song of the day #3

Wild World by Cat Stevens
Poor Ellen.

She dumped me after about eight months and it took me sixteen months to get over her. I know what you are thinking, why "poor Ellen"?

Well, shortly after we broke up one of her best friends saw me sitting in what had been one of our favourite places moping and she came over and sat and talked to me and consoled me. And when I say consoled, I mean consoled.

And it kept happening. Seven years later I'd come back home for the summer and Ellen and I would meet and she'd introduce me to her latest friends and almost inevitably one of them would hit it off with me for a summer romance.

The problem was that poor Ellen would take these women aside and warn them about me. She would tell them I was a hopeless romantic and that any relationship, while it might be fun at the beginning, was doomed to founder. What is obvious in retrospect, but never occurred to her or me at the time,  is that having a doomed relationship with a hopelessly romantic guy is one of the experiences an awful lot of young women in their late teens and early twenties put on their life list.

Anyway, Ellen never figured out that the warnings she was providing were actually making me more attractive. I was so unaware, I didn't know she was giving them these heartfelt warnings and was feeling too incredibly lucky to step back and analyze. Years later one of the girls took me and told me about "the Ellen effect". They'd all noticed it and not just in Ellen. As Laura put it, there are three sure fire ways to complain about your ex to your best girlfriend that will greatly increase the odds of her 'consoling' him. For the greater good of women everywhere, here they are:

• If you are in your late teens or early twenties, complaining that your ex is a hopeless romantic will  make him more attractive to your best friends.
• If you are in your late twenties, complaining that he pushed you sexually in ways that you weren't comfortable with will  make him more attractive to your best friends.
• If you are in your early thirties, complaining that he was pressuring you into marriage and children will  make him more attractive to your best friends.

So now you know.

That has nothing to do with this rather condescending song but all those smooth, clean girls in Indian cotton loved this tune.



The series starts here.

The next song is here.