Old School "Tweeting"

I do not have a Twitter account, nor do I plan to start "tweeting" anytime soon.  But there was a time long before Twitter when a different kind of tweeting was all the rage in my youth groups.  I should warn you that the following tale is somewhat sexist (in the way that hormone driven teenage boys are almost always sexist!) although that was never the intent of our silliness.  If you must have outrage, then please, enjoy it- along with a good laugh!

For as long as there have been guys gathering in groups, those guys have talked about females (Females talk about guys, too, but it is somehow more civilized- most of the time.).  Guys are forever comparing one female to another using some sort of rating system.  I feel certain the cavemen gave one woman four grunts, and another seven grunts.  For better or for worse, youth groups are no different.  The 1970's and the movie Ten brought into vogue rating females on a scale from 1 to 10.  Ten was spectacular.  One was not.  Among the other issues involved, this scale was well known to everyone, including females, and therefore was often quite insulting.  Other systems rated particular parts of the female anatomy, and those were completely unacceptable.   At some point during my years at Springfield, the guys decided to try a new and better way of communicating to one another when we saw an attractive female. I don't really recall how it all started, but this became known as The Tweet System.

The Tweet System was simple in design and execution.  When a guy saw a female he thought was a cutie, he would simply utter the word "tweet." If friends were nearby, they could look.  If not, he could report back to them later, as in "I just saw a tweet down by the snack bar." If the girl was really attractive, you would hear a "tweet-tweet."  Should she be drop dead gorgeous, you would hear a "tweet-tweet-tweet."  Triple tweets were very rare, and had to be verified by a buddy who saw the same young lady.  The final level was Bald Eagle- the rarest of all birds!  The idea was that no one would ever actually see anyone in this category, but on occasion an over zealous young man would scream "Bald Eagle."  This was almost never confirmed.  In later years, the screaming was replaced by the flapping of arms and screeching an eagle-like noise.  This system was passed from youth group to youth group over a 12 year period.

Tweeting had several advantages over other methods used by males to point out attractive members of the opposite sex.  First, it was subtle by comparison (except for the flapping arms and screeching parts).  A simple "tweet" could be shared to alert the brethren. Gawking was held to a minimum.  You only rated females you found attractive, with no disparaging "low end" of the scale (I realize this is a total rationalization, because giving no tweet was doing the same thing- but we bought it at the time!).  And perhaps most importantly, for a number of years, the girls in our group had no knowledge of it all, so they were not offended.

As with any group of guys making such judgements, the standards varied widely.  Some reserved one tweet for supermodels, while others (I mean you, Todd Farlow and Jerry Hanbery!) walked around chirping like the Bluebird of Happiness!  It was all about personal taste, and that was part of what made it cool.  You couldn't be wrong about a tweet or a tweet-tweet.  Should we, as a group of males trying to follow Jesus, have been judging females based solely on appearance?  Absolutely not!  But "all sin and fall short of the glory of God,"  and we did too- and fortunately, the females being tweeted at had no idea what these crazy boys were up to!

In the last years of old school tweeting, the girls in my group all understood the system, and began to lobby the guys to be labeled a bald eagle.  That was pretty much the end.  But sometimes I wonder if any of the guys, now married with kids of their own in many cases, still see an attractive woman and instinctively think "tweet!"  I don't know if that is such a bad way to channel such thoughts.  Just don't start flapping your arms and screeching...