Bad Dates—We've all had them

Part 1:

 First Date in College
First dates are always extremely exciting.  There's something fantastic about first dates, you're all worried and you don't even like the guy, and you're so excited when he comes to pick you up, and you've tried on twenty different outfits and have pants and shirts littered across your bedroom floor.  Yes, dates.  Wow.

This date surprised me as I wasn't expecting to be asked out.  My friend Mitch called me and I missed the phone call.  So later that night I called him back.

Me: Hey Mitch what's up?

Him: Not much, what have you been up to?

Me: School, homework, school, textbooks, classes.  (Yes, most of what I did as a freshman was study and burn food).

Him: That's cool.

Me, after a long pause: So you called me?



Him: Yup.

Me: Why?

Him, after another long pause: Uh, I wanted to ask you on a date.

After that the conversation got a little fuzzy.  I laughed I talked, I completely forgot the name of the movie he wanted to watch, and then I went and happily told my roommate that I was going on a date.  Yay for me.

At the appointed time Mitch came to my door, knocked, and I answered.  And then we were out on our first date, walking together the two minutes it took us to get back to his apartment where (ahhh) he had homemade dinner for us.

Now the hard part, conversation.  What do you talk about one-on-one for an entire meal?  For a cute little ignorant freshman like me this was a hard question.

Me, sitting at the table staring at his roommate in the living room: So, how's life?

Him: Good.  I'm just finished taking a test today.

Me: Oh, yah.  Cool.  What are you studying again?

Him: Electrical Engineering.

Me: Oh, right.  (small laugh)  You've told me that before.

Another pause.  What I love about dates is that they have the potential to make things soo awkward.  Why can't people just act normal when they're on dates?  In the course of our conversation I'm pretty sure I asked him what his major was three times.  I also asked him where he was from several times (California, in case you were wondering).

The movie was fun, the drive back and forth was filled with not-quite-awkward conversation, and he walked me back to my apartment. 

My ignorant picture of college dating was shattered just a little bit, we kept being friends after that, but he never asked me out again.

Vanentines Day Friends
I'm writing about this date because talking about Mitch reminded me of it.  Me and my roommate (Ashley) would go and hang out with Mitch and his roommate pretty frequently.  One night we decided that we were all bored and we should go do something, after a few activities had been proffered (such as eating chocolate ice-cream and watching chick-flicks, which surprisingly they were not that exuberant about) we decided to go bowling.  Sounds fun, right?

What we all forgot was that there were two boys and two girls and  . . . it was Valentines Day (needless to say none of us had significant others at this point).  When we got to the desk to rent out a bowling ball and shoes the cashier casually asked if we were paying together or separately.  This is when we realized that there were two boys and two girls and that this looked like a date—which suddenly made things more awkward.  We all kind of shuffled our feet and mumbled for a moment before we all decided we were paying for our own shoes.  I think we weirded the poor cashier out.

Yup, we totally got ourselves into that situation.  One good thing, if I'd ever written, "go on an awkward double non-date with someone to a bowling ally on Valentine's Day," I could check it off of my list of things to do.

My Dance Partner
When I was younger I always thought I was just not interesting to anyone and that no one wanted to date me.  Come to find out I am just extremely oblivious.  My freshman year I took a ballroom dance class.  I'd never danced before, but my mother assured me that it was fun, so I decided I'd try it.

There's something just deliciously awkward about 100 level dance classes, especially when most of the students are freshmen.  We can't touch each other, we can hardly look at each other.  Boys, what are those?  Oh, those.  We have to dance with them?  Yup.

And for dancing you have to go the whole way and make physical contact, hand holding—oh yes.

The first boy I ever met dancing had danced all through high-school and was really good.  After a few days he asked me if I'd like to be his dance partner for a 100 level competition that was coming up a few months later (he was very cute about it, bent head, large puppy dog eyes, half smile.  Oh yah.)  I said yes.

We started practicing at least once or twice a week together (so we'd be really good when the competition came up).  We'd hang out on campus sometimes.  Once we just walked around for about forty minutes talking until I had to go to work.

You're probably sitting there reading this and thinking what a cute little romance the two of us made.  What I didn't realize was that this was romantic or cute, or even had that potential, at all.  Oblivious-o to the extreme-o. 


You'd think by the time he asked me to go on a double date with him I would have started putting two and two together, but still no (2+2 = 1.5 right?).  I never thought of him romantically at all until after the dance class was over and he'd stopped talking to me . . .

Yes, the dance competition.  We danced and practiced and laughed and talked right up until the competition.  We coordinated outfits, we drove to the competition together, oh yes, everything was set up beautifully.  If we won we were possibly going to go get ice-cream afterwards. . .

We took fourth place out of the entire 100 level competition on cha-cha.  He was very cute.  I was shy and awkward and I think we probably did so well because he was trying to get me to loosen up.  He'd make faces at me when we danced and I'd smile or laugh.  We were probably a favorite cute couple out on the dance floor (except of course that we weren't actually a couple).

The trouble didn't come until after the competition was over.  We won, he was on a high and I was feeling . . . tired.  We sat together in a dance room for a while and he kept looking at me and smiling, lots of high-fives going on, and I was kind of unresponsive.  It was kind of a turning point in our relationship.  We won the dance, I was cute, he was cute, we'd spent a lot of time together, and . . . nothing.

I drove him home, I dropped him off, I went home.

No ice-cream.

I didn't realize until a few days later when my roommate brought it up that we'd been almost dating without my even knowing about it.

Lets just say that the last few weeks of that dance classes were awkward.

Thus is the life of the college freshman.  You dream about guys, you cry yourself to sleep at night because you don't have a boyfriend—and you never even realize that you are the one scaring them away.  So glad most of us grow out of that stage eventually.

Part 2: Read on if you dare . . .