Now here’s something you don’t see every day.
As a reporter, I’m pretty used to getting random surveys in my email for this, that and the other – how much Americans spend on Christmas shopping, how much gas prices have gone up over the years, the best cities to live in, and the list goes on.
But my editor, Beth, came across one last week that begged to be written about: a poll regarding International Kissing Day.
Yep.
It appears that in honor of International Kissing Day, which apparently fell on July 6, the folks over at
www.nationaltoday.com have conducted “The National Kiss and Tell Survey.” The survey – which is documented on “America’s favorite online destination to commemorate quirky and fun holidays” – polled 1,000 Americans to find out their best-kept kissing secrets.
So check this out.
According to the survey, 36 percent of Americans got their first kiss in middle school. Twenty-two percent said they started kissing in elementary school, 26 percent started in high school and 8 percent didn’t get down to snogging until they were college-aged.
Now see, to me, “first kiss” all depends. I’m assuming they mean a real kiss – like between a boyfriend and girlfriend – but I would hardly consider the kisses I got from my girlfriends way back in elementary school to be real kisses. But hey, if they were, shout out to the one or two young ladies at Petal Elementary School who put me in that 22 percentile.
Moving on, the survey found that 14 percent of Americans let their pets kiss them on the mouth. I can assure you that I’m not among this group – it just ain’t happening. I don’t let my cats do it, I wouldn’t let a dog do it, and I wouldn’t let any other animals do it – I don’t care how cute they are.
But get this: although 14 out of every 100 Americans let their pets kiss them on the mouth, 11 percent said they’re grossed out when their parents kiss in front of them. Who knew?
In another must-know question, 32 percent of Americans listed their own kissing skills as “good,” 28 percent as “great,” 23 percent as “amazing,” 16 percent as “okay” and 2 percent as “horrible.”
Now how would you know this? I’ve never had a girl tell me I was an “amazing” or thankfully, a “horrible” kisser – it’s just not really something that comes up for scrutinization in my experience. But I’ve been kissing the same girl for 13 years now and as far as I know, she’s never rated my kissing ability, so maybe I’m the one doing something wrong.
On the other hand, here’s how Americans rate their partners’ kissing skills: 27 percent as “amazing,” 27 percent as “great,” 26 percent as “good,” 12 percent as “okay” and 2 percent as “horrible.” So unless I’m looking at those numbers the wrong way, people tend to think they’re better kissers, albeit slightly, than their partners. Inflated egos, perhaps?
Now for the five worst attributes of a bad kisser, in order from first to last: bad breath, too much tongue, teeth, not enough tongue and eye contact. Bad breath I can understand, but as far as eye contact goes, what kind of weirdo stares at you while they’re kissing you?
At any rate, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that there’s an International Kissing Day, with statistics to go along with it. After all, we Americans celebrate holidays day in and day out. Why, just on the National Today website, there are holidays for literally every day in July – sometimes more than one holiday on the same day.
I missed out on Canada Day and International Joke Day on July 1, but I can look forward to National Free Slurpee Day, National Lollipop Day, Be Nice to Jersey Week and National Moth Week later this month.
There’s also National Video Game Day, National Kitten Day and National Bikini Day – now in all honesty, those are some holidays I can get behind.
Haskel and his fiancée, Heather, live in Oak Grove. He has made a vow to get Heather to rate his kissing skills and post the results in a future column, or at least participate in a nationwide poll.
