Male Perspective: Cooking New Stuff

So I thought I would give a different perspective on the whole bad date thing—being a dude, I’ve been the cause of most of the bad dates I’ve been on. But certainly not all of them!

So one time I decided we would make tacos for dinner. I don’t remember what we did afterwards—I just remember the tacos being a fiasco. Never attempt to make something you haven’t made before. We tried to make tortillas from scratch, and they ended up looking and tasting like a giant saltine cracker. My poor date was courteous and ate a bit, but I sure didn’t score too many points there.

Booted for Pizza's Sake

*This date story wins a gold star for badness

As freshmen in college you do stupid things. Or stupid things happen to you. Either way it's one of the well-known, unspoken rules that everyone must (or just plain does unknowingly) follow. Years later when you look back on it all--while some details may slip away--the big, fat, stupid, embarrassing memories seem to only get more pungent with time.

This just so happens to be such a memory.

In Britain they call it the boot to begin with. The trunk I mean. Keep this in mind, or nothing else in this story will seem wondrous... or you'll completely miss the pun in the subject line. One or the other.

*Mr. Beanpole was the crazy, funny, goofy one in his apartment. However, he was also the insincere, immature and somewhat awkward one as well. My roommates thought he liked me for a while. I don't have the slightest notion why they would think that. All he did was come over with his apartment for combined FHE and sing lyrics like "we should be lovers!" at the top of his lungs just three inches from my face. He was a classic flirt, but to me that didn't mean much in my direction. Turns out I was right when I answered the phone to hear this from him.

At first he stumbled along through a hello, mentioning that he wanted to know if one of us in the apartment--and it didn't matter who--would go with him to the planetarium that night. "You could call it a date," he said. He then emphasized again, "Anyone though, it doesn't matter who." (Seriously. If you want a girl to feel like a million bucks, say that you want to go out with her... not any one of the six girls in the house. Already I was not too impressed.)

So I laughed, played along with his flippant tone by saying sarcastically, "Oh, so you'll take anything that moves right?" I thought it a clever adaption of a Runaway Bride line. I mused, "I think there's a cat around here somewhere." He laughed back specifying that it had to be a person--a girl. So, being the kindest person in the entire world (forgive me I was a freshmen), I told him I would call him back when I found one of my roommates to go with him. In my mind I was thinking that was better option than having him hear how none of us wanted to go--me included. Being the clueless, but resilient (or desperate?) type he said that this was a really last minute thing, all his roommates already had dates, so he would be right over. Right over meant I had about thirty seconds to figure this out while he crossed the parking lot. Sure enough though, each of my roommates bailed so I ended up being the bait for the date. I should have bailed too, but instead I felt bad, grabbed my shoes and we left.

The planetarium show was already in progress. They wouldn't let us in since we were two minutes late. So backup plan B (that didn't really exist) kicked in: play "capture the flag" in one of the campus buildings. I hardly saw my date, but when I did he said things that were a little weird like how he liked watching me, wanted to hear me say that he was hot, or that he would be gracious enough to let me accept one of his kisses (appending that they were the chocolate kind of course--riiiiiiiiight). Interesting topics for a first date...

Later I got to talking to his roommate, *Texas, and his date, *Sandy, to avoid Mr. Beanpole's awkwardness. Turns out the others were better company. However that didn't stop me from getting nailed in the face with a pillow by that practically impaled my glasses into my brain later at their apartment. Or in other words, it hurt. The reason for the blow? It was "a game." I think it was because I dethroned Mr. Beanpole from being king in Scum. Take your pick.

As the date came to an end out in the parking lot, Mr. Beanpole's roommate, Texas, told me to stand still. Instantly my mind raced through what he or Mr. Beanpole could possibly be thinking to do. The options not being in my favor, I disapproved, and moved. One look at Sandy told me I had done the right thing. One look at the boys said that they too were quite disappointed. However, in a distracting conversation they spontaneously picked Sandy and I both up, and put us... in the trunk.

Yes. You heard me right. The trunk of the car. So much for chivalry.

Later Mr. Beanpole said he thought it would be a fun thing to do, but might have been a little awkward to have a girl and a boy in the trunk together. How considerate that he was thinking of things he could do that were not awkward. I mean driving around town to go get a pizza on the other side of town is the most natural thing to do… IN A TRUNK. Not comfortable no matter what way you do it. Trust me on this one. Getting out of the trunk in a public parking lot is a little embarrassing. People keep looking at you with wide eyes trying to make sure you're not being abducted or something. The boys graciously (insert a nice big eye roll here) allowed the two of us girls to ride in the back of the car.

Once back safe and sound on solid ground the boys tried to prank us with an empty pizza box or dropping things so that they "had to" bend over right in front of me as I'm walking behind him up the stairs. You know, to be funny. (Not very funny at this point, but at least we did get pizza out of it in the end. Nourishment does wonders when you're desperate to get out of there.)

When Mr. Beanpole finally dropped me off, he did not leave me at the door. Instead he decided that he wanted to come into the apartment to see how my roommates would react to hearing about the date. He wanted to see how girls "talk with their eyes without talking." Most likely our faces were a mixture of "deer in the headlights" and "utter horror" but he didn't seem to catch either sentiment. Honestly, I still don't remember how I described all this to my roommates. I mean, how do you tell people that your date (a FIRST date) locked you in their trunk? It's a little awkward...

The moral of this story for the girls: just say no. Really, letting them down from the start can't be as bad as this.

The moral of this story for the boys: put the pizza in the trunk--not the date. Please!

Sometimes I'm the Problem

Tales from the life of the Keeper of the Blog

Sometimes I do weird things on dates. It can't really be helped, I'm just a weird person.

One Saturday evening, I rushed back to my apartment after spending the day at my parents' house. I was totally late getting ready for my date, so I threw all my stuff--laundry, homework, and groceries--on my bed. I thought the groceries were all non-perishables and would be fine sitting in my room until I got home later. Changed my clothes. Brushed my hair. Boy came over to pick me up.

It was a group date, and we walked up to campus for some kind of performance. Part way through the performance, I remembered the eggs. The eggs that were sitting on my bed with my groceries. The unrefrigerated eggs that were slowly rotting on my bed and would no longer be safe to eat by the time I got home from my date since we were planning to do some stuff at his apartment afterward--ice cream, games/movie, and the like.

I spent the rest of the performance worrying about the eggs.

On the way back to our apartment building, my date was talking about something, and I wasn't paying any attention because I was thinking about eggs.

Finally, I said, "Is it okay if I stop by my apartment really quick?"

The boy looked confused. "Is something wrong?"

"No. I just need to stop by my apartment for a minute, and then I can come back over to your apartment."

He still looked confused. "Okay. But why do you need to go to your apartment?"

"I have eggs on my bed."

"What?"

I said it more slowly: "I have eggs on my bed."

"What?"

"I went shopping, and I didn't have time to put my food away because I was late, so I just put all my food on my bed, and most of it will be okay, but I forgot that I bought eggs, and I left the eggs on my bed, and now they're going to rot, and smell bad, and I'll have to throw them away unless I go home and put them in the refrigerator right now, and it really won't take me very long, and the eggs should be fine still at this point, but by the time I get home later tonight the eggs might not be fine because there's only like a two-hour window for leaving out perishable foods, and I'll come right over to your apartment when I'm done." I said this in one breath.

He responded with,"oh," and then he changed the subject.

A laptop is good for many things

This was a second or third date with *Ryan. The plan was to head up Provo canyon with some of his friends and their dates, cook tin foil dinners, and watch a movie on someone's laptop (because laptops make possible something as cool as watching a movie while up in the canyon).

It's a bit of a drive up the canyon, but we all made it, found a nice spot at one of the park areas, unloaded everything from the cars, and began prepping vegetables, etc. for the tin foil dinners. Then someone discovered that a crucial dinner element had been left behind - the tin foil. So, one couple left to drive all the way back down the canyon to retrieve the foil. By the time they drove all the way back up the canyon, it was dark. Assembling a tin foil dinner by the light of a flashlight was interesting.

I think we started watching the movie while dinner was cooking on the fire. I must say, it was not the most supreme movie-watching experience of my life. A laptop doesn't have great sound-projection abilities, and we were right next to a little stream, so Ryan and I couldn't actually hear the movie. A laptop doesn't generally have a large screen, and we did have a large group on our date, so Ryan and I couldn't actually see the movie, either. I had not previously seen the movie, so I really had no idea what it was that I wasn't able to hear or to see.

Part way through the movie someone checked the dinners (by the most excellent light of a flashlight) and decided they were done enough to eat. Having been raised by an extremely food-safety-conscious mother, I was hesitant about eating what I perceived to be more-raw-than-done meat. So I picked around in my tin foil and ate a few bites of not-so-soft vegetables. Yummy.

About this time the laptop battery ran out, which, of course, meant the movie shut off. Never fear though - the date planners had brought along a back-up laptop. Hooray. Now the movie which I could neither hear nor see could continue. The laptop switch was made and the movie was queued back up.

Shortly thereafter we heard a man speaking loudly into a megaphone, instructing everyone to leave the canyon. What? Yes, you see the canyon parks are closed after 10:00 PM. Lovely. Someone turned on the headlights of one of the cars so we could see enough to pack everything up. We drove back to Provo, to the real home (not the apartment) of one of the girls. I'm sure inside this home we could have found a lovely family room with a DVD player and a normal size television where we could have finished watching the movie (because who could end the date without at least finishing the movie?). But, instead the decision was made to bring out our blankets and watch the end of the movie on the LAPTOP while sitting on her front lawn.

In other news, Ryan and I are now happily married. :)