Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today, we once again take up the topic of crying and its relationship to respect.
Perhaps some might wonder why more than one post was not sufficient to amply cover this tearful topic. I would have been among those who wondered about this a few years ago, but then I wrote a post titled, “Responding to Criticism: Four levels of Maturity.” There, the most immature level was originally described as:
1. This level requires displaying one or more of the following:
- Weeps or sobs with tears or pouts
- Physically attacks the criticizer
- Damages property
I had derived this level along with the three higher levels by first making a lot of TV shows with a variety of actors. In each show, the actors respond to criticism in different ways. Then I asked others to view the shows. Together, the viewers and I discussed our reactions to the way the actors in the video recordings handle criticism.
I soon became very familiar with what people thought of as immature and mature responses. I then put them in order from the least to the most respected. Then, when I published the post that described these four levels of maturity, I began to get a great deal of criticism because I included the crying description as one of the most immature responses.
To address the criticism, I wrote a follow-up post titled “Responding to Criticism by Crying: Is it a Sign of Immaturity?” It became one of my most popular posts immediately upon my publishing it over seven years ago. Since then, people every single day continue to find it through search engines and regularly provide thoughtful comments. Apparently, the post touches a sensitive nerve, and raises new questions that I have tried to answer in follow-up posts.
After considering the feedback, I wrote a follow-up post titled, “My Answer to the Question, Are People Who Cry When Criticized Immature?” There I declared that in response to the feedback, I decided:
Weeping, sobbing and crying will only be viewed as the lowest level of maturity if the person responding to criticism does nothing else but that, or if he or she does that along with the other lowest level responses such as physically attacking the criticizer or damaging property. If, after crying, he or she then begins to display responses consistent with level 4, crying will no longer be viewed as a sign of immaturity.
With that change in my “Responding to Criticism” model, I thought that had put an end to the topic of crying, but then I noticed how embarrassed many folks are if they cry in front of others, typically apologizing and feeling guilty. 
So I wrote a post about this titled, “I’m Sorry For The Tears.” That post also led to some heartfelt responses. For example, one reader wrote:
I think it is great to get a conversation going about crying. I actually became so emotionally cut off for a period that I didn’t cry for about 10 years. When I began to let my emotions move again though and started to be able to let some tears fall again, I felt that it actually was extremely healthy for me. The tears seem to help emotions move and process through me far better than just forcing them down inside myself like I did for so long. I think the stigma against crying is an unhealthy one, and yes I feel that it is great to develop other tools for processing emotions as well, so that we can have many options for processing the hard things in our lives.
Incredibly, the topic of crying continues to be brought up by readers of this blog, thus leading me to write several additional posts delving into more and more subtle domains. Examples of these can be found in posts titled “Am I Bad for Feeling Sad?” and “Tears at the U.S. Open.”
And now, recently, I was listening to Bob Dylan’s Street Legal album and the song, “Baby, Stop Crying” came on. It led me to to think about today’s question, “Is it okay to ask someone to stop crying?”
Dylan’s Song, “Baby, Stop Crying”
To begin thinking about this, let’s take a quick look at some of the lyrics of Dylan’s song, which he sings, it seems to me, with a bit of annoyance, although we can see in the lyrics he’s trying at the same time to be compassionate:
You been down to the bottom with a bad man, babe
But you’re back where you belong
….
Baby, please stop crying, stop crying, stop crying
Baby, please stop crying, stop crying, stop crying
Baby, please stop crying
You know, I know, the sun will always shine
So baby, please stop crying ’cause it’s tearing up my mindGo down to the river, babe
Honey, I will meet you there
Go down to the river, babe
Honey, I will pay your fare
….
If you’re looking for assistance, babe
Or if you just want some company
Or if you just want a friend you can talk to
Honey, come and see about me
….
You been hurt so many times
And I know what you’re thinking of
Well, I don’t have to be no doctor, babe
To see that you’re madly in loveBaby, please stop crying, stop crying, stop crying
Baby, please stop crying, stop crying, stop crying
Baby, please stop crying
You know, I know, the sun will always shine
So baby, please stop crying ’cause it’s tearing up my mind
How well did the character in the song handle this crying situation? In thinking about this, I think we can agree that when someone is crying, there are times when it can be annoying. For example, I was once in a hotel room, extremely tired, trying to fall asleep. A baby on the other side of my wall began to let it all out at the top of her or his lungs. I recognized that it wasn’t the baby’s fault, and as a parent myself, I felt some compassion for what was going on. Nevertheless, I sure wished that baby would please stop crying.
I stayed silent. Some time later, upon reflection, I came to think I probably would have been wise to have called the front desk to see if another room was available, but I just laid there fuming for quite some time until I finally dozed off.
In the Dylan song, the character he created is not a baby, he cares about her, but pleads with her to stop crying. He tries to be helpful by offering to pay her fare to go to a more pleasant place–the river. He also lets her know that if she wants to have a friend to talk with, he’s more than willing to make himself available. He does say please, when pleading for her to stop crying.
Is there anything wrong with this approach?
For me, personally, with the exception of the crying baby in the hotel example, and a few times when I was shopping in a store where a baby was loudly crying in an ear piercing manner, I don’t recall experiencing annoyance from anyone crying. Instead, I welcome the opportunity to offer my empathetic support. To me, empathy is the capacity to feel the experiences, needs, aspirations, frustrations, sorrows, joys, anxieties, hurt, or hunger of others as if they were her or his own. It feels natural to me to remain present and to communicate that I care.
That said, I certainly recognize not everyone is the same as me. So, let me try to put myself in the shoes of the character in the song.
Hmmm. Well, if the person identified as babe in the song is crying and it begins to wear on my nerves, I don’t think I would ask her to please stop crying. I guess what I would do is say something like, “Babe, I’m going to take a walk around the block for a few minutes to deal with some feelings that are coming up within me regarding what you are going through. I’ll be back as soon as I can, and then if you think of anything I can do to help, please let me know.” As I prepare to leave, I might go over to her, give her a tender kiss on the cheek, and a gentle loving touch on the back of her shoulder.
I wonder how others feel about this. I invite your thoughts and expressions of your emotional reactions.
My Best,
Jeff
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
For those of us growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s, Ricky Nelson was a teenage idol. Some would, at the time, have picked Elvis Presley as the teenage idol, but for me, Ricky was right up there with Elvis,
My generation first got to know Ricky when he was 8 years old as one of the stars of the TV series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. In 1957, upon turning 17, he began his long and successful career as a popular recording artist.
But then, on October 15, 1971, many of the early rock stars, including Chuck Berry, George Harrison, John Lennon, and Little Richard, as well as Ricky, joined together to put on a concert at Madison Square Garden, billed as “The Garden Party.” When it was Ricky’s turn to perform, he chose to play The Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women,” and the crowd began to boo. Those at the concert reported that the booing was not directed to Ricky’s performance, but rather, to police who were dealing with some disturbance. 
Nevertheless, Ricky thought the booing was directed at him because he no longer looked like a teenager and his hair had grown long; or perhaps it was because he chose to play a song that was not one of his own earlier hits.
When I got to the garden party
Bob Dylan, after having great success writing and performing Woody Guthrie-influenced folk music, began in 1965 introducing some rock & roll songs into his sets. His folk fans were not at all happy about this, and their boos were unmerciful. Nevertheless, Bob kept playing the music he wanted to play, and he eventually found a new, much larger, audience that loved his new material. Eventually he impressed the Nobel Prize Committee so much that its members awarded him their prize for literature.
By 1966, they were far and away the most popular band in history, and then John Lennon, during an interview, in an off the cuff comment, stated, “We’re more popular than Jesus.” This led to people threatening to kill the band members, and newscasts showed people flinging Beatle albums into fires. John eventually apologized, and soon after, the Beatles recorded several number one hit singles and the enormously popular album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, considered by many the greatest album ever.
Some people who experience a booing experience come to think it is the end of the world, and they will never recover from their feelings of rejection. To each of them, I want to suggest that, as these three stories of rock & roll stars suggest, there is at least a chance that you will recover. Just keeping that possibility alive can be enormously helpful.
The technique involves writing over the course of four days, for a minimum of 15 minutes at each sitting, about something that has led to your challenging emotional experience. As you do so, make sure you include not only what happened, but also what you felt when it happened, and how you now feel about what happened. Include your deepest emotions and thoughts about what occurred. Really let go and explore your feelings and thoughts about it. As you do so, recall the sensory experience of these feelings, not just the words that define the experience. In your writing, you might tie this experience to your childhood, your relationship with your parents, people you have loved or love now, or even your career. Explore, as well, how this experience is related to whom you would like to become, whom you have been in the past, or whom you are now.
As he explains on one of his Theme Time Radio Hour shows, whenever he wants to come up with new material, he goes out into the world and sees what people are talking about. If the topic is something that has captured their interest, and if it is of interest to him as well, he soon finds himself writing a song about it. Of course, he adds a little creative flair to it, and this seems to work for him. Like Bob, I have found that when I think about what to write for new posts, listening to what others are currently talking about with interest can be helpful.
As for the Beatles, the lesson here might be that if you offend some folks during your effort to connect with an audience, perhaps a humble apology might help to ease some of the anger. Then, get on with doing your best to come up with fresh, interesting new material.
While working on this post, I happened to be listening to Bob Dylan’s song, “False Profit,” which appears on his new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. A couple of its lines suddenly caught my attention:
Bob’s lyrics leave a lot to each listener’s imagination, which is true of many of his songs. Therefore, I don’t mean to suggest my interpretation of “False Prophet” is the only proper one. But I humbly invite you to join me to to see if my very personal reaction might be of value.
These lines returned me to when Bob began his musical career. Taken by his songs that so captured the pulse of events that were unfolding during the 1960s, some began to say he was a prophet. There are several definitions of a prophet, so let’s take a quick look at them:
When Bob was asked in a 1965 interview about those who were saying he was a prophet, he laughed and said humbly, “I’m just a song and dance man.” But this didn’t stop many who began to treat him as a kind of holy messenger, and some with this bent of mind began showing up at his home as if they were participating in a religious pilgrimage. Bob tried to disabuse people of such notions, but at the same time, he wanted to promote his career, and to express his emotions, feelings, and personal views in his musical art form. 
These lines delineate some of the values that Bob has railed against, and upon revealing them in his songs, it has led to his being attacked, and such attacks has led him to go to a very lonely place. It seems to me, in this verse, Bob doesn’t claim to have prophetic powers for the values that he holds, rather, he tells us, “I just know what I know.”
Here, Bob seems to be saying, “I’m not claiming to be better than anyone else, but I am claiming no one is inherently better than me. And people who do claim to be better than me, are greedy, and when they die and get buried, I prays for their souls.”
My interpretation of these lines is that for those claiming he is a false prophet, they are seeing something that really doesn’t exist. He then tries to cool their anger, and perhaps his own anger as well, with the calming imagery of a cool breeze and some pleasant experiences in a garden.
Give a listen to his tender song, “Girl From the North Country” as an example of Bob expressing feelings that are in utter contrast to the angry fellow we hear in “False Prophet.”
I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person, but please know that I am most definitely with you in spirit and honored to be receiving such a prestigious prize. Being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is something I never could have imagined or seen coming. From an early age, I’ve been familiar with and reading and absorbing the works of those who were deemed worthy of such a distinction: Kipling, Shaw, Thomas Mann, Pearl Buck, Albert Camus, Hemingway. These giants of literature whose works are taught in the schoolroom, housed in libraries around the world and spoken of in reverent tones have always made a deep impression. That I now join the names on such a list is truly beyond words.
People engage in self-promotional behavior because they want others to hold favorable images of them. Self-promotion, however, entails a trade-off between conveying one’s positive attributes and being seen as bragging. We propose that people get this trade-off wrong because they erroneously project their own feelings onto their interaction partners. As a consequence, people overestimate the extent to which recipients of their self-promotion will feel proud of and happy for them, and underestimate the extent to which recipients will feel annoyed (Experiments 1 and 2). Because people tend to promote themselves excessively when trying to make a favorable impression on others, such efforts often backfire, causing targets of self-promotion to view self-promoters as less likeable and as braggarts (Experiment 3).
Because bragging is rarely viewed as a positive characteristic, in general, I recommend that anytime you are tempted to reveal some information about one of your fine accomplishments or attributes, pause for a few seconds. During the pause, ask yourself how your statement might be received.
There are people you will meet who claim everything they do is perfect, even better than perfect, just stupendously superb. This can get pretty tiresome, and if the person doing the bragging is someone you care about, it can be hurting her or his reputation.
I’d be a little nervous trying this one. I’m pretty sure some will see through the subterfuge and recognize I’ve tired of the person blowing her or his own horn.
As regular readers to this blog know, when I want to take a few minutes to enrich a topic, I often look to see if Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan explored this topic on one of his Theme Time Radio Hour shows. This has worked well, for his show is so much fun, and I receive a great deal of positive feedback whenever I do this.
Welcome back to Theme Time Radio Hour. Put the apples away for we’re not trying to keep the doctors away this week. A matter of fact we’re gonna invite them in, ‘cause for the next hour, we’re gonna discuss that noble occupation of the followers of Hippocrates. 
The first song Bob plays for us is “Dear Doctor,” by the Rolling Stones. It’s about a guy none too happy about getting married. Here’s some of the lyrics:
This connection between doctors and God comes about, I think, from the association of both apparently being capable of performing miracles. A “miracle” is a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency. But, is it wise to put doctors on the same level as God? Is that too much respect to put on anyone? Hmmmm.
The first doctors can be seen in ancient cave paintings, some of them thousands of years old. They show men in animal masks performing ritual dances. 
From Bob’s little history, we see that for many centuries, healing was often bound up with religious practices. Healers would seek to draw upon the favors of their God or Gods using a variety of rituals.
I swear by Apollo Healer, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture.
If push comes to shove, and you find yourself wanting to find someone who could do what the doctor couldn’t, here’s “The Five Blind Boys From Mississippi” doing “You Done What the Doctor Couldn’t do.” 
Everyone will give you different medical advice. People tell you what to eat, what medicine to take, how to avoid illness, how to cure illness. But if you want to know the truth for me is that we’re all gonna go. All you can do is try to make it as interesting as possible.
Welcome to From Insults To Respect. Today, Fathers Day, with many of us gathering with family members, it seems an apt time to take a few minutes to think about what family means to us.
Welcome once again to Theme Time Radio Hour. I got nothing to sell, nothing to promote, just a good friend stopping by.
As Thomas Jefferson once said, “The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I rested at home in the bosom of my family.” Old TJ was a smart guy. 
Well, Melody, that’s an interesting question. Parents shouldn’t have favorites among their children, but sometimes they do. You should forget about trying to convince him that he is being unreasonable and instead pose a couple of questions. Do you think his son needs stricter rules than his daughter? Is he perhaps remembering what he did as a child? How is his strictness affecting the children? I think perhaps the best solution is to do more things as a complete family. Don’t break them up into small teams or units. The more things you do together, he will treat both children equally. I’m sure you guys will work it out. And stop giving my shows away. 
Other people have put that tag on him in some otherworldly sense. I say it as any kid who admired his dad and had a great relationship with him. He never missed a single Little League game I had. He’s collected every home-run ball I ever hit. And he’s still affectionate to me.” He paused and smiled. “Maybe he doesn’t want people to know that,” he said. “
But I’ll tell you, because it’s my interview.”…. “Look, he’s the best at what I do. I know that, and so do my heroes. I got to watch my heroes meet him and saw how they reacted, whether it was Joe Strummer or Tom Waits. It was peculiar. I’m so stoked to meet Tom Waits, and he’s so nervous to meet my dad. It’s a head spin.”
These days, many are performing their jobs from home and are missing the camaraderie of their workplace. Such drastic changes in their lives, and that of their families, give us reason to reflect on what work means to us.
Given the main focus of this blog, you might wonder what work has to do with respect. Well, many people achieve a great deal of respect from the work they do, while others are humbled by finding they have had little choice but to take a job far different from what they had aspired to in earlier days. Others, having lost their job and finding themselves falling deep into poverty, may be questioning their own self respect. So, without any further ado, here’s a little meditation on this topic insightfully aided by Bob Dylan’s “work” episode from his Theme Time Radio Hour series, which we can listen to 
Welcome back to Theme Time Radio Hour, and this week we’re talking about work. We’re talkin’ about golden parachutes, poison pills, golden handshakes. We’re talking about workin’ like a dog, work around the clock, workin’ 9 to 5; talking about all the workin’ stiffs who’re workin’ for a livin’, who live to work, labor intensive, doin’ odd jobs, married to their job, them employee of the month hard at work. So this week, no kidding around, no fooling, no goofing off, no hanging around the water cooler, because we’re going to get right down to it, putting in an honest day’s work, for an honest day’s pay, for our subject de jure is work and jobs. 
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
They call it stormy Monday, and, baby, Tuesday’s just as bad
I keep my nose on the grindstone, I work hard every day
Bob then tells us that if he had to have a boss, he would choose Bruce Springsteen.
You may be an ambassador to England or France
I got to get out and find a job
Just whistle while you work
You want to keep in mind that you are going on an interview, not a date. Don’t drown yourself with perfume or cologne. Speak up. Interviewers don’t want to drag words out of you. On the other hand, don’t talk too much, you don’t want to bore them. Stay focused, listen to what the question is and answer it; they don’t want to hear about what your dog did last week. Make eye contact, you don’t want to appear to be some kind of criminal. Poor language skills don’t help. Using “like” every third word or repeatedly saying “um” does not make you a likely candidate. Build trust. Don’t use a lot of little white lies, you’re going to get caught, and then how are they to believe anything you say. Wear a clean shirt, and present the best you possible. And once you get the job, you can do what everyone else does, figure out ways to get the day off. 
“Take me out to the ball game,
Nelly Kelly was sure some fan,
Do you, baby, know what it’s all about,
Grand slam,
Baseball, to me, represents life. It’s about heroes and goats, it’s about success and failure. It’s about individual effort, it’s about team effort. Baseball is about the game within the game. It’s really the only game that is not governed by time. And the thing that makes me insane is the people who say baseball is boring. It’s just playing catch. They don’t understand the game within the game. They don’t understand that how much changes from pitch to pitch. It’s actually fractions of a second that a hitter has to make a decision that he is actually going to swing, and then put it either between guys or hit it over the fence.
From there, Bob plays us a little audio clip of an announcer calling the thrilling, yet poignant, moment when Ted Williams, at his last at bat of his career, hits a long home run. The reaction of the crowd is just heartwarming.
And Juan Marichal comes up,
Say hey, say who?
Jamie, you should do what I used to do. When I was supposed to be asleep, I would take my radio and slip it under my pillow. Then put your ear next to the pillow, which you’re supposed to do with pillows anyway. This way you can hear the second game of a double header without bothering anyone else in the house. Thanks for your email, your private pillow pal.
Listen, guys, this game is only half skill,
A classic illustration comes from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol where we find the unforgettable Ebenezer Scrooge transformed by ghostly experiences from a disrespected miser to a lovable, generous employer. As we delve into our topic, we will draw upon a couple of episodes of Bob Dylan’s 
As Bob introduces the first of his two episodes on money, he tells us, with reggae music in the background,
The first song Bob plays for us is the bluesy “That’s What They Want.” Performed by Jerry McCain and His Upstarts, it tells about a guy grieving about the women he knows who are just interested in finding men who have a lot of money, and a Cadillac too.
Blue money, according to the Urban Dictionary, refers to 100 dollar bills, which got its name from a blue line that goes up and down the bill. But in some circles, it means money from making porn movies. Thus, according to this interpretation, the song is about the singer’s girlfriend making porn movies, which involves engaging in sexual activities for money.
When I was an undergraduate at Brooklyn College, I drove a taxi in Manhattan to cover my expenses. From time to time, as I was driving past the Port Authority, where buses and trains would bring loads of out-of-towners to the city, a few women dressed in very scanty, sexy outfits would jump in my taxi and tell me to drive around the block. As they peeked out the window, I could tell they had spotted some police officers, and they had me keep circling the block until the men in blue were gone.
Later, while a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, I worked at a Juvenile Correctional Facility, where I honed my counseling skills. Several of the female teenagers were in the facility because they had been engaged in prostitution. Here, I got to know what led these young ladies into this path to earn money. All came from extremely stressful financial situations. All were first lured into becoming hooked on drugs, which initially relieved their financially strapped stress. The leaders of the industry provided, at first, the drugs for free, along with other enticing gifts. In time, desperate to feed their addictions, these teenagers found turning tricks were the only way they knew how to survive. Somehow, during the counseling sessions, their humanity came to light, and a more kind and understanding attitude was fostered.
As Bob’s show continues, Bob plays for us, Nic Jones’s “Farewell to the Gold.” It provides a touching story of a man who, with a friend, spends his life hoping to strike it rich by prospecting for gold. In the end, his dream never comes true, and a flood leads to his friend drowning. The story is a metaphor for the real possibility that seeking gold doesn’t always work out well, and it’s important to be aware of this if we are to wisely choose our life’s pursuits.
As this episode winds down, Bob plays us, “You Can’t Take It With You” by Jessie Price. If you like piano, clarinet, and trumpet solos, this number is sure to put a smile on your face. And then, Bob concludes with the following words:
Bob begins part 2 by welcoming us back to the show. And then he says:
After some background remarks about the Drifters, Bob plays their song, “Money, Honey.” With the smooth voice of Clyde McPhatter, and some fine sax solos, the lyrics go,
We spent so much time talking about money, I want to leave you with someone who had an opposing opinion. He’s a smart guy about relativity, and he’s smart about this. We’re talking about Einstein, and he said, “I’m absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can keep humanity from moving forward. Even in the hands of the most devoted worker the examples of great pure individuals is the only thing that can move us to noble thoughts and deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and irresistibly invites abuse. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the bags of money of Carnegie.” We’ll see you next week with all new themes, dreams, and schemes. 
“Blowin’ In The Wind.” “With God On Our Side.” “Masters Of War.” These are songs Bob Dylan has written and performed expressing deep emotions about the wisdom of going to war. As I began to reflect on these songs, to my mind came the pounding of war drums, the cries of vicious insults emanating from a deadly divide, images of fear, pride, disgrace, bombs exploding, and thousands screaming in horror.
And then I found myself pulling up on the internet Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour show, and clicking to hear his specific show on the theme of war. It’s available for free 
The show begins with a series of brief audio clips of the sounds of a country at war–bombs going off as Marine helicopters are approaching a battle field, a news reporter describing the scene of burning tanks, the voice of President Lyndon Johnson committing an additional 20,000 troops to Viet Nam as that war was escalating, etc. Then we hear Bob introducing the show’s theme:
Plato once said, “Only the dead has seen the end of war,” and sadly it is as true today as it was then. 
Today we are going to examine battles and beaches, skirmishes and embroglios, we are going to let loose the dogs of war, pay tribute to Mars in Aries, shed a tear for the widows and orphans. We’re mustering cadets, for Theme Time Radio Hour is going to war!
Why I crossed three thousand miles of rolling waves.
When I was a young man I carried me pack 
When the ship pulled away from the quay 
Some say war is a game that men play using boys as the tools. Truth to tell, you don’t see many men in battle, but you see a lot of boys. Wars used to be fought by men and I think that fairer. Men are the ones waging the war, they ought go out and fight it. 
I’m just a poor ex-soldier that’s broken down and blue,
One staple of songs about war is the letter. Sometimes it’s the letter that the guy writes from the battlefield. Other times it’s from home. But the worse kind of letter of all to receive was one written by a military chaplain. It usually had a line in it, something like, “You would be delighted to know that your son died a hero.” It’s a nice sentiment, but I doubt it was really any solace. 
I close my eyes every night
Is don’t they pray
Peace to the world
An American flag waving in the breeze along with stirring patriotic music; this can be a fitting end to a Hollywood movie, but before we go marching once again into war, there is far more to consider.
Concerned that your romantic partner’s respect for your kissing technique might not be all that you desire? Is it okay to offer a romantic kiss on a first date? Will your date think less of you if you accept a romantic kiss on the first date? A discussion of Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour episode on kissing will enlighten us on these and other related topics.
Does she love me? I wanna know
How long do you think that I can wait
Moreover, if instead of lingering in your arms during the kiss, she or he ends it a little too quickly, well, that may be another signal that something is wrong. Given how popular the song was, spending 12 weeks on the country charts, clearly indicates it touched something pretty sensitive in the heart of many a listener.
Bob goes on from here to songs that bring up such topics as passionate kissing, kissing in the dark, french kissing, finding lipstick on your collar, catching your woman kissing your best friend, making up after an argument kissing, and the fact that you don’t have to be rich to enjoy a wonderful kiss. He eventually gets back to our “romantic kissing” topic, with the Everly Brothers song, “Till I Kissed You.” Here’s a few lines of its romantic lyrics:
Never felt like this until I kissed ya’
Well, Lawrence, kissing is an important part of a relationship. And it’s one of those things that you have to be relaxed to do. So the fact that you are getting anxious about it isn’t helping you one bit. However, I can give you a few tips. Armed with this knowledge you’ll feel a little more confident and be able to set things right. First of all, make sure your lips are moist. Run your tongue over your lips once before you kiss her. No one wants to kiss sandpaper. 
Stand close to your partner, you don’t want her to reach too far. Tilt your head slightly to one side. Close your eyes just before your lips meet. Just close them. Some people like to keep their eyes opened during a kiss, but until you understand your partner’s preference, better to play it safe and close your eyes. Open your lips slightly, not like you are about to swallow her whole head, just a little bit, and don’t hold your breath. Breath through your nose. Press your partner’s lips gently. Move your lips in a slow circular motion. Be gentle but firm. And finally, and I can’t stress this enough, have a pocketful of mints. There is no underestimating the fact of good breath. Good luck and happy kissing. I hope it won’t be long till you hear your girl say, “baby let me kiss ya just one more time.” 
That there is a pretty decent description of a decent kiss, but I would add one more suggestion for helping him. Why not encourage him to ask his girlfriend what she would like him to do differently when they kiss? For example, she might prefer to be held within his arms more firmly while they are kissing, or perhaps a little gentler approach would be more to her liking.
Jerry not only sees Margaret home, but opens the door for her, and then, well, they’ve been going steady for some time now, and there are some customs that are very enjoyable. But now Frank has a new problem, should he try on a first date to kiss his date. He sees her to her door, and thanks her for going out with him. No, he should not try to kiss her good night on a first date. But he does ask her for another date soon. 
I grew up in Brooklyn, and before I was married, and was dating back in the late 1960s and early 70s, when I asked a gal out, I did so because I had some romantic feelings for her. If, by the end of the evening, when we arrived back at her home, if I still felt romantic toward her, I would say I had a very pleasant time, and pause to see if she said something similar. If she did say something similar, I would very slowly and gently lean toward her, observing her reaction as I did so, and if I saw no sign of resistance, my eyes would close and our lips would join for a romantic kiss. If she seemed to get into it, I would feel a wonderful high sensation, not only during the kiss, but all the way home. I never had any sense of disrespect toward the gal for joining me in such a good night kiss.
He introduces the song by inviting us to “listen to one of the old masters, the fountainhead from which all music flows, Louis Armstrong, and a song that was the centerpiece for his live performances in the later period of his life. This is a version that he recorded in 19 and 51, ‘A Kiss to Build a Dream on.'”
Leave me one thing before we part
