Ugly Christmas Sweaters

Hello everyone,

So, today I was set up on another blind date. This is the 5th one in two weeks. I'm not sure if I just have a pathetic "help me" look about me or something, but I've had a lot of girls come up to me and say "I think you'd really enjoy going on a date with my friend (insert name here)."

I've never really known what to make of girls setting you up on a blind date. Is that a compliment or an insult? I mean, in one way it's a compliment because she trusts you, and she thinks highly enough of you to set you up with a friend (if it is indeed a friend). On the other hand you gotta wonder why they want to set you up with someone else. I mean, if I met a girl I thought was worth dating, I wouldn't try to set her up with one of my friends...I'd try to date her myself. And if a guy tries to set you up with a girl, you gotta wonder the same thing. Why doesn't he want to date her?

The only time when it's a compliment is when the person setting you up is in a relationship or married. Then you understand why they don't want to date you (or date the person they're setting you up with if they're a guy) and all they're really saying is they think highly enough of you to set you up with a friend.

Anyway, blind dates are kinda like tracting on your mission: you never have much success but it's where all your good stories come from. To demonstrate this, here are some silly things that happened during last week's blind dates.

I went on one blind date that was a double. I didn't know either girl. My roommate John knew both of them. We paired off by height and I took the taller girl (she was taller than my roommate John (who I think liked the short girl anyway)). We went dancing and it was pretty fun. After dancing we went to get dinner. Now, one girl had to go to the bathroom, so of course both of them went. The weird thing was they were in there for at least 10 minutes.

I don't know what was going on in there. I think it might have been a mid-date conference or something. Both girls said they were having a lot of fun on the date quite a few times. It was as if they were saying this in surprise...like they expected the date to go bad or something. I'd never met them before (or even heard of them) so I don't know why their expectations seemed low. Maybe John said something to give them the impression it wouldn't be fun.

Anyway, they go off to the bathroom to confer and do whatever it is girls do in the bathroom for 10 minutes. I get bored really easily so I started decorating where my date sat. We went to In N Out so I first took a placemat and set it for her. Then I took her food off the tray and layed it out symmetrically. I put the drink on the right, burger in the middle, fries on the left to balance out the drink (looked sorta like the Mickey Mouse logo). Then I put those little ketchup cups in a pattern surrounding the placemat. This took me about 4 minutes and I had about 6 minutes to go so I kept on working. The next step was to make a ketchup tower. This is accomplished by putting down a ketchup cup, getting two french fried and placing them over the cup to make a platform, then putting another cup on top of the fries. Then more french fries and so on. I was able to make it to about 5 stories before the structure became unstable. Fortunately, about the time my tower began to fall apart the girls came back from their sabbatical and we could finally eat dinner.

As we talked a bit I found out that John's date was only 19. John is 30 so I found this pretty funny. I'm not sure why but I became curious about how many things from my childhood she'd completely missed. I found out the following:

The girl had never seen Star Wars.
She had never watched Goonies.
She had never seen Top Gun.
She didn't know the cartoons Dark Wing Duck, Duck Tales, Talespin, Rescue Rangers etc.
She had never heard of Guns N Roses.
She was too young to pay attention to the OJ trial.
She was in elementary school during the September 11 attacks (I was driving to a music theory class at the local college when it happened).

Basically, this girl is from a different generation. John is older than me so he really must have had age shock. Well, he probably knew this before the date cause he knew who the girls were. Maybe I was the only person shocked by this.

As I was on that date I realized that I frequently do silly things on dates when I'm not interested in the girl. Maybe I just do this cause I want to have fun and I'm not going to have fun because of the relationship between me and them...but for whatever reason, when I'm bored weird things happen. Here are some examples from other dates that happened last week.

On one of them the girl was trying to figure out whether to take a job in San Diego or stay in Utah. She spent a good portion of the date just working over that decision. Now, I'm not against talking about important things, but I really didn't know this girl and I really didn't want to play life coach. But, she kept on talking about it so I joined in. As I listened to more of the details I became interested in the decision.

The funny thing was how easily she changed her mind. I could list some positive things about one choice, make an argument for why it was a good idea and then she'd say "yeah, that's what I'm going to do...I'm certain." Then I'd get bored and switch to the other side and argue for the other view and she'd say "you know what, you're right, I should probably do the other thing." And then once that was done I took the other side....I kept doing this till I realized that she might be going crazy. So, I told her she probably shouldn't listen to anything I said on the matter cause it's totally her choice. She then asked what I would do, she said she'd do that. Now, I really didn't want that kind of responsibility on a blind date, so I deferred, but I did try to help her organize her thoughts and see the strengths of either choice. I guess it was nice to help someone, it just wasn't what I was expecting for that night. But, I guess it went well because she said it was the best advice she'd received (which is kinda weird). Anyway, this was a weird date because I became a career counselor (and a very contrary one at that).

On another blind date we went to an ice cream shop. When I was there I used a maneuver that Garett had taught me. What you do is this.... you drink your shake, but you make sure you get whipped cream on your nose. Then you pretend the whipped cream isn't there and try to have a serious conversation. If you can keep a straight face it's hilarious as you watch the girl's eyes constantly drop down to your nose. Some girls will tell you right out that you have something on your nose. Other girls make a brushing gesture to kind of hint that you should wipe your nose. Other girls straight up tell you. Some girls wait a few minutes and when they realize you're not going to catch on they tell you. Either way it's a pretty fun social experiment, but it should only be done when you really don't care how the date goes and you're just trying to pass the time.

Actually, having food on one's face reminds me of a classic scene in Better Off Dead. To watch the proper scene go into the video about 1 minute 55 seconds (it's a long clip so I don't recommend watching the entire thing).



Anyway, that's about it. The other two dates were relatively normal. On that note, I'm kind of getting sick of dating. I've been doing it for so long and I just don't really try anymore. I think maybe I'm just burnt out from doing a date a week for so long. In the last 4 years I have only met 3 girls I really enjoyed dating--that's really bad odds...that's a lot of dates I didn't want to be on. I really wish it wasn't so rare to find a girl I enjoy dating...it makes it so things fall apart with the girls I do like cause I just don't have any experience with caring. Also, it gives the girls I do like way too much power over me..that whole limited supply high demand thing.

Oh well, I guess things will pick up eventually. I've just had a bad run lately is all. I guess this is partly my fault because the there was one girl who things were going really well with, but I found a personality quirk that I just couldn't tolerate and jumped ship...maybe I'm too picky.

Well, I better stop typing. This is two posts in 2 days...I'm an animal. Oh, and the title of this post is cause I've decided to buy a some really ugly Christmas sweaters. I'm still shopping for the perfect one. I'm gonna wear them everywhere. If anyone knows where they can be purchased please let me know.

Hope you're all having a wonderful day and getting prepped for Christmas!