Movies, TV, Hell, even my MOTHER always made it seem like roses/flowers in general were the closest I could get to "foolproof".
Now I'm weeeeeell into adulthood, and every once in a while I feel the urge to buy flowers for a woman I'm interested in...
Then I have flashbacks. Some from a veeeeery long time ago and others from the all-too-recent past.
So basically, this is always how it's always gone down ...
Expectation:
Reality:
(lol, yeah I've never tried giving a woman a rose where I didn't end up feeling like this kid!)
You SEEEEEEE, what Movies, TV, Comics, Magazines et cetera never told me/us/men/women was that in order to get reaction one, one kinda has ta know that the other person actually WANTS it.
Not the flower, exactly, but the display of affection. Whether it be the revelation of a shared romantic interest (which is what we're kinda hoping for) or even if they just appreciate having "love" sent their way in the form of the colorful, recently-disembodied sexual organs of plants (it's funny cause it's true) - it's a big risk the giver takes and the moment before we whip out that rose, every pore in our bodies is crying salty tears from past rejections. How scared are we?
Bees can "smell fear" (or so it's been said). If there a bee within a mile it'll full-on kamikaze us. Hell, we're typically panicking so hard that laying down in in the middle of an apiary feels like a safer course of action than trying to hand him/her your wilting plant-phallus.
This will not bee (sorry-not-sorry) the case under only two circumstances: 1) You know they want you're attention in that way or 2) you THINK you know they want your attention in that way, and if that's the case that's not confidence, that's arrogance so you'd better just run along home and play with your own twig-and-berries (WELCOME TO THE PUN-DERDOME!) tonight, Narcissus.
In that way it's a sorta crap-shoot. Personally, it's never worked for me. I mean hey, I'm an artist who makes a living making art and being a super-nerd, so being socially awkward is written in my DNA. My social personality ranges from cartoony to passionately intense. People either like me or they don't. I, however can't ever seem to tell the difference ... ::womp-womp::
In short, that's why I don't give gifts (at all) to show a woman I'm interested.
It may work for different people and those specific people surely fall everywhere along the gender and sexual orientation spectrums and those people probably have a pretty good idea, at least subconsciously, that he/she will simply adore the brilliant plant-pee-pees they'll soon whip out from behind their backs.
D'AAAAAAAWWWWW!!!!! ::smooch::
So if you're currently feelin' the Flower-Power, better make like Mario and snatch those things up before you get to the castle!
-CA/JA
(Ps. I actually LOVE flowers. My grandmother was one of those cool Irish-Pagan Grandmas with an herb garden who arranged/grew flowers from her home.)