Where the boys are

One year my friend got me a book entitled “An LDS Woman’s Guide to Getting a Date”, by Dr. Brent Barlow.  In it, Dr. Barlow presents some very useful tips for getting males to ask you out.  However, the book appears to be geared towards students at BYU, or people living in some other utopia where the single men are plentiful, as there is nothing in the book on where to find men on whom you can practice these useful tips (more on the tips in a future post).

So I've put together my own theories on where the men are - now in these theories, "men" refers to people who meet the criteria on The List.  Unfortunately, most of my theories actually relate to where the men are not; as in, they are not at the single adult activities where I used to live.  Not that there were no single men in that town, even single, active LDS men.  They just generally didn't attend activities.  I'll leave the question of why they didn't attend for someone else to figure out.  Single men are also generally not in the temple sessions I attend, although I keep hoping that one day I'll attend and there HE will be, just waiting for me (yes, I know, that's really hoping for the easy way out, where I don't actually have to apply any of Dr. Barlow's tips).

Single men are rarely at my workplace, and rarely in my ward (although there are apparently a lot of them on my ward list).  Single men do not work at my car repair shop, they do not wait for the bus with me, they don't even ride the elevator with me (yes, I often check).

So where are the men?  We've all heard the rumours that they're in Alaska.  I've never been there to follow up on this rumour, but I met some ladies from Alaska at a singles event, and they were having trouble finding men there.  I've come up with a few places where you really can find men.  The first, and my favourite, is China.  The combination of their one child policy and their cultural priority placed on male children has resulted in a skewed male female ratio.  I read an article the other day about a man in China who went on over a hundred dates, and none of the women would have anything further to do with him, because they could afford to be picky and hold out for someone 'better'.  Some other places you can find a very high male : female ratio are in jails and homeless shelters.  The question then arises - do you really want a man you might find in those places?