12 dates you should never forget
Train your memory and you’ll reap only satisfaction.
1. Her mom’s birthday. Hell hath no fury like a woman with a mother-inlaw scorned.
2. Her birthday. Hell hath no fury, no dinner and no sex with your better half scorned.
3. Her time of the month. Surprise her with a basket filled with chocolates, jewellery or perfume and see which impresses her more. That or the roses she got on Valentine’s Day.
4. The edible kind. Sans poison, dates are low in calories (24) fat and cholesterol; full of fi bre; and richer in potassium than bananas. Eat six or seven a day and shave points off your blood pressure while adding some snap to your bullwhip.
5. The date when you took her on a picnic instead of to a restaurant; to an art museum instead of a movie; or on a midnight stroll on the beach instead of to a bar for a nightcap.
6. November 26, 2008. The attack on Mumbai. Few attacks come unannounced, whether in the battlefi eld, at work or in your own backyard.
7. D Day: 15th August, 1947. If the Brits had won, we’d probably still be eating saltless food. History has a series of pivot points. We bet your own life has had a few. Learn from them and it’ll be easier to spot the next one coming.
8. Your date of birth. More specifically, your sign. Think astrology is psychobabble? An increasingly large number of attractive women don’t. So indulge them. On a first date, the drone of rigorous skepticism is about as sexy as a dentist’s drill.
9. The expiration dates for your driver’s license, health insurance and passport. Red tape isn’t to be tussled with. To defuse each of these bureaucratic landmines, you’ll spend years on hold and standing in endless lines when you could be fully covered for car-wreck injuries in Switzerland.
10. Your first road trip to Leh with the guys. That macho feeling of absolute freedom as you burnt the rubber on rough terrains is the stuff fast friendships are made of.
11. January 1, 2000: The Y2K scare. Two dropped digits plunged cyberspace into chaos, resulting in premature missile launches, a global transportation shutdown and a worldwide economic meltdown. Oh, wait a minute. No, they didn’t. So the next time a coworker or your pesky neighbour starts hoarding drinking water and stockpiling munitions because the end is near—heard about the 2012 apocalypse lately?—abuse him verbally.
12. The expiration date on a condom wrapper. This ain’t no Tuborg or Carlsberg. The consequences of cracking open a stale one will dog you for 18 years, if not more. Condoms with spermicide last no more than two years past their date of manufacture; those without, no more than five.
