Friday, January 30, 2009

The Chronicles of Dating, Installment #2: Two for One Deal

That's right, with this post, you get two date stories for the price (or number of blog posts) of one! Lucky you.

Both of these dates happened fairly recently, and both were blind dates.

Date #1:

I tagged along on a Saturday night with some boys (and boys is the appropriate term here) that Laura and Melissa had met the night before and whom invited them country swing dancing.

Melissa was busy for some reason, so it was just Laura and I who went, and got crammed in a sweaty car for the 45 minute drive down to Provo. I don't get motion sick very often, but the drive down was really, really annoying.

Well, I should say the driver, and the guy in the front seat, were REALLY annoying. I'm talking swerving, yelling, turning up the music really loud, and entertaining each other with their 2001: A Space Odyssey monolith scene-esque behavior. The guy in the back seat with us (yes, that's right, they didn't even offer the front seat to either of us girls) was entertaining us with an embarrassing date story that went something like this (clarification and usefully adjectives not added to maintain the original effect of the story):

" I asked a girl out, and when I got to her apartment I had to use the bathroom, so I asked her if I could use her bathroom. She said yes, so I went to the bathroom.

When I was done, the toilet was plugged, and she didn't have a plunger. I didn't know what to do, so I started pulling toilet paper out with my hand. That didn't work, so I didn't know what to do.

I decided that I could either walk out there, act really confident [my thoughs interjected: "Yeah, because girls LOVE it when guys act super-confident] and tell her that I plugged her toilet, or I can pretend nothing happened and just let her find it when she got home from the date.

I decided to act confident, so I went out there and told her I plugged her toilet. She didn't have a plunger, so we had to go knock doors [my thoughts once again interjected: "Gah! Seriously, do they teach missionaries not to use prepositions in the MTC, or is that just the 'cool' way to speak out in the 'field'?"] and ask people if they had a plunger. We knocked a door ["Gah! Gah! Gah! I think I'm hemoraging"] and there was a huge party going on, and we asked for a plunger and the whole room got silent and everyone totally looked at us ["That's right, 'you can't just let people look at you'!"]. It was so embarassing."

I followed up with the story of how I broke a toilet, and when I threw up on a first date.

So we went dancing, and none of the guys we came with us danced with us. Nope, they were spending their time dancing with and getting numbers from all the "cute" 16-year-olds. So Laura and I were subject to dancing with whomever asked us to dance, or to stand on the sides waiting for someone to ask us to dance, like at the 6th grade dance.

My evening included a slow dance to an up-beat line dance, and dancing three times with a guy who kept telling me to "look through the window" so he could see my pretty face.

After the dance, we were driven to a dorm room full of girls to have Better than Sex Cake (which I think has got to be false advertising, or I am going to be really pissed), where we were neither introduced to, nor spoken to by, any of the girls (save one girl's little sister).

The ride home was much like the ride down: vomitous and annoying.

One particular moment culminated in the driver of our car rolling his window down and flipping off a car full of underage boys for drawing hearts in the steam of their windows. "They're gay!" was yelled a few times before I admitted to drawing the same shapes on my window in the back seat (yes, the girls were in the back seat again). I then started to count on my fingers how many times the seemingly hilarious story was retold with full dialogue and gesture before we got home...8.

Date #2:

I have never been more confused on a date...ever.

I was told to dress 80s for the 80s dance at the institute, then to dress like a spy, then to dress like an 80s spy. "Columbo?" I thought, but he's not a spy, so I was once again lost. I ended up wearing a lovely arrangement of:

Pinstripe Fedora (for the spy)
Black turtleneck (to the same effect)
Black ruffle skirt (a bridging of the two themes)
Black leatherette leggings (more bridging)
Grass green stiletto pumps (um...you should get this one)

I arrived at my date, with no date. I didn't think I had a date, at least. I didn't really know. Laura was talking to a guy I didn't know, but Melissa and Sarah were just standing around, so I chose the loitering option as well.

After standing around, going to the bathroom, finding Laura a ribbon, and standing around for about twenty more minutes, I was introduced to my date, Tyler, a 5'3" highschool French teacher who looked like he should be teaching British something or other instead. He was in:

A faded vertical striped shirt (played to the theme of...hmmm...)
Braided leather belt (wrong decade, I think)
Tapered jeans (that's getting closer, I guess)

Twenty more minutes passed and we (the weird 80s spy group who was hanging around at the institute the same night as hundreds of people who came for an 80s dance) were herded upstairs.

Twenty more minutes passed and we started a game of sardines. We played three games of sardines that night.

Half-way through the date, my date found someone he was more interested in, and ended up leaving with her at the end of the night to go watch a movie with the group.

I chose to dance.

Laura's date was, by the end of the dance, the only date who survived the date, and was now with four girls. So naturally, he took us all to that Mexican restaurant that everyone loves, and based on my first experience, wasn't that great.

We played "Blind Date" in the car (with Melissa, Sarah and I giving the commentary that would be in the word bubbles) and "Elimindate" at the restaurant, where I insulted his college major.

I was the first girl eliminated (or elimidated...wakka wakka wakka).

Just One of Many Reasons Why I Hate Twilight:

Monday, January 19, 2009

The Unicorn Blind Date

I can find no better way to kick off my "I Heart Unicorns" blog than with a re-telling of the execution of the thought that started it all: the unicorn blind date.

Though the actual date happened only a few months ago, the idea was spawned probably half a decade ago, sitting in the foyer [foi-ey] of the institute building at the U, where Laura
and I came up with characters for each to play on blind dates:

Hers- pretending to think she was a hunchback
Mine-pretending to be obsessed with unicorns

Jump forward 5-ish years: the night of the amazing unicorn extravaganza arrived when our friends, Amanda and Brandon, set Laura and I up on a double blind date (well, triple date, because Amanda and Brandon came, but they already knew each other because they're married to each other).

Laura had just gotten home from her mission, and opted to forgo being a hunchback for dressing up like a sister missionary and talking A LOT about her mission. I however, stuck to the original plan, and, as per our half-a-century-before agreement, dressed up in every piece of unicorn paraphernalia I own (which is a lot) and became the ultimate unicorn lover. My attire included:

-Unicorn earrings
-"Born to be my Unicorn" t-shirt
-Unicorn bracelet
-Stuffed animal unicorn purse

My date noticed my unicorn ensemble.

The date consisted of dinner and meeting up with other people for a bonfire. My date ignored me through most of the evening, save a few choice moments:

While at dinner, my date broke conversation with Amanda and Brandon for a few moments to talk to Laura, her date, and I, and to question me about my preference for unicorns. Laura jumped in, saying, "why don't you tell us the story about why you feel such a strong connection to them, Andrea...you know, from when you were a kid." I wish we had practiced that part beforehand. Luckily, I think I pulled it off with a story about being rescued by a unicorn in a dream.

The next time my date acknowledged he was actually on a date was in the car between the restaurant and bonfire. After a few references to people who get engaged quickly, he made a humorless joke, asking me to marry him on the first date-ish-kind-of-thingy (which was also the last date-ish-kind-of-thingy). "Sure," I replied, "but I want to get married in the spring, because that is unicorn mating season is, and it has a lot of meaning to me." The response to that was ten-minute long string of more humorless jokes that aren't worthy of repetition, verbal or written...or typed, or calligraphied, or scribbled with a jungle green Crayola crayon.

We had to walk a little ways to get to the bonfire, so we got out the car, and I asked my date to hold my purse while I put my coat on. He rolled his eyes, sighed, took my purse, and disappeared. I waited for the rest of the group and walked to the bonfire with them, where a crowd of snickering people were waiting to awkwardly and soundlessly giggle when my date reappeared to toss my purse at me and say, "Here you go, you unicorn lover!"

I didn't see my obviously-and-overtly-disgusted-with-me date for the rest of the evening until the ride home, which was as equally spectacular as the rest of the evening.