Great lines

Tonight's twilight weeding musings revolved around great romantic or tormenting lines I've delivered to the fairer sex in my younger days. What they have in common is they were all earnest as only a young man can believe and deliver.

• "Yes", I told my first girlfriend in grade 11, gazing into her eyes with that lovestruck teen look. "What, what, what do you mean by 'yes'" she begged, begging to know if i meant those 3 words of all the songs we danced to. But an enigmatic "yes" was enough
• "Thank you." Evidently not the best response to a grade 12 girlfriend saying those 3 words for the first time. Turns out you're supposed to say them back. I thought I was being noble and kind in letting her have her moment, waiting a few days for my turn.
• "I want to explore you." Uttered during a lunch date while explaining why I couldn't get involved with her like that because i was in love with my girlfriend (who had just moved 2,000 miles away to become a ski bunny)
• "Smell this." Pick-up line for the aforementioned ski bunny, at an incense stand of an on-campus African-American fair.
• "I haven't decided if I want to sleep with you." Honest introspection may be the best policy, but maybe not on a crowded 14-hour African bus ride to her remote Peace Corps village for a month.
• "Are your eyes really shining that bright, or just reflecting mine?" She actually questioned whether that was a genuine original.

Interestingly, I can't think of any zingers that I've thrown at my wife, except maybe a line from a poem from before our wedding - "I dance your broad expanse." Maybe sad in a way that we become less moved in verbal ways over the years, but overall it's a deeper, more complete love that no longer surprises me into new expressions.