You Can Be My Wingwoman Anytime

In today's Boston Globe, presumably to celebrate the Dow crossing the 10,000 point threshold, the business section carried an article with the headline:

Tag-team dating can improve success, MIT says

I have yet to find the business angle to an article on wingmen. The reason this article seems to be in the financial section is that a professor at the Management School at MIT came up with the following conclusion:

"Friends will try to help you find partners to your liking, weed out undesirables, and support you in other ways."

Isn't this the only reason people have friends? We've all been there, right? You are sitting at the bar, half watching the game. Behind you, an undesirable lurks ever closer and closer. Then, the undesirable makes her move! Oh no! Who will save our intrepid hero?

Cue the wingman! To a soaring score, he comes back from the bar! And he has two beers in his hand! And he hands one to you, and with a cry of, "Here you go, bro," he banishes the undesirable! As the two of you clink beers in victory, the undesirable, moving its slow thighs, slouches back to its cave, to be forlorn.

By the way, the "support you in other ways" comment foreshadows a scientific study, perhaps co-sponsored by Harvard, in which scientists use science to prove -- finally! -- that "friends with benefits" arrangements never work, even though they make the most sense out of anything ever.

This presumes, of course, that you are using a woman as your wingman -- a strategy which, if used properly, can yield terrific results.

MIT researchers, now compare our behavior to animals, so that men of science may nod approvingly!

The researchers also turned to the animal world. Male wild turkeys cooperate to court a female, they note. And so too do mammals, "including lions and higher primates."

Higher primates, presumably, also includes college students.

Higher primates most definitely does not include college students. In just one night in college, friends and I had a halogen tube fight, took turns chucking a hatchet at several trees, and threw several pieces of old wooden furniture into the gorge, all while wearing full suits.

Incidentally, comparing a time honored courting practice to a mating ritual common to wild turkeys really says something about how men approach women. I suspect that something is really not good.

Take us home, Boston Globe financial section!

"Platonic friends sometimes pretend to be romantic partners to help each other in dating," the press release said. '"If you're a woman, saying someone is your boyfriend creates a barrier," says Ackerman. "If you're a guy, saying someone is your girlfriend makes you more desirable to women."'

This does two things. One, it proves that women are crazy. And two, it goes to prove my prior point, about female wingmen being better than male wingmen.

Once the presence of a woman who -- in the target's eyes -- finds the male attractive has validated the target's own notions of whether the male is attractive or not, the target's natural competitive instinct will kick in. The target will then proceed to actively (and, God willing, literally) fight the female wingman for the male. The male, would of course prefer to remind everyone that Sharing is Caring. Unfortunately, this is not Cinemax.

The female wingman, at an appropriate time, would gracefully bow out. And if she doesn't? Well, hey there. You just opened a whole new can of worms. An awesome can of worms! High five!