Last week, I met up with my BFF from high school for a girl’s trip in Phoenix.
Why Phoenix, you ask? Well, we were mainly going off of airplane rates for both of us, and Phoenix was an affordable rate for both of us. I insisted I would not go to Phoenix any later than May, which turned out to be smart thinking.
Turns out Phoenix is having a heat wave. Temperatures reached 106 degrees while we were there. Phew, that is hot!!! Reno generally breaks 100 degrees a few days in the summer, so I’m not used to temperatures that hot.
But still, we were without kids, and without responsibilities for three days, which truly is heaven. We spent lazy time at the hotel pool, liesurely shopping, and hiking in the mornings. We also went out to eat sushi three times in three days. YUM.
On Friday night, we went out to the bars in Scottsdale. Scottsdale seems to have a freaky ratio of 8:1 for men to women. Lots of men, and not many women. I tell you, if you’re single, Scottsdale would be a great place to move (and much warmer than the alternative of Alaska, which also has a crazy ratio of men to women).
Anyway, it didn’t take long for us to observe something we had never seen in a bar. Suddenly, a man in a crowd would break out into a dance — waving his arms in the air, the running man, or even one man that did a spread-eagle cheerleader jump. They do this to get the attention of women. I guess when the ratio of men to women is so out of wack, the men have realized that they need to stand out in order to be noticed. It looks like some strange mating ritual. In fact, I actually saw one man doing an impression of a bird (though it looked a lot like a chicken dance).
What is even stranger is that it works. We sat back and watched women flock to the men putting on these strange peacock shows.
There were also men with keychain flashlights and glow sticks. They would wave them in the air, and women would flock to them like moths to a flame.
It was a highly interesting thing to watch. I had a brief conversation with one man who appeared to be in his 30s that was doing a peacock show, and he mentioned to me that he went to the bars every night from Tuesday through Saturday. My immediate response was, “you must not have a job.” But oh, no, he did. Just a male version of a bar fly.
There was another guy who had his own version of a peacock dance, where he went around insisting that the girls in the bar would smile. He’d come up and touch their faces and insist that they smile before he’d let them pass. We watched him do this over and over and over again.
But truly, the best thing about watching all the single people mill around and do their little mating rituals is knowing that I have a handsome man waiting for me at home. Every time I go to a bar, I’m reminded how thankful I am that I am now married and not having to put up with such rituals.
It was a fun trip, and I’m still in denial that it is over and I’m back to the grind. However, it did make for a sweet reunion with the family.
