True Story

So all the posts from this week have been from tales from my own life. And the best part is . . .

they are all part of the same bad date.

The biology major studying fungi who liked linux asked me out via email and dropped me off in front of my house.

Good good times.

How to Win Friends--or Dates: part 2

After the chicken delivery incident, I gave up the "how to win friends" tactics and returned to my own natural, awkward conversation skills . . . until about a year and a half later.

I was at institute and decided to be a nice person and talk to a boy I had been vaguely acquainted with in high school. I didn't actually 'know' him in high school, but we had been in a class or two together. So, anyway, I decided to practice my conversational question asking skills again, and it was chicken delivery all over again.

I started with, "What's your major?"

"Biology." I majored in English. Biology was actually the very last class I took as an undergraduate. But I guess it could be interesting . . . animals, plants, people, they're all interesting . . .

We continued on to discussion of jobs, and it turned out he worked in a biology lab.

"So," I followed up, "what exactly do you study at the lab?"

"Fungus."

Well, I impressed him with my ability to use the correct plural form, 'fungi,' and found out something about world about stopping world hunger, but really, fungi.

A few weeks later we were on a date.

Our ride-to-the-concert conversation was okay. I found out he knew a south east Asian language and wanted to hear all about it. But on the ride home, I searched for a new topic. None of my questions sparked a good conversation, and all I got were brief responses.

Finally, I asked, "So what do you like to do?"

"Biology."

"No, I mean what do you like to outside of school."

"I study fungi."

"So when you're not doing school, or studying the fungus, or doing anything else related to science, what do you do? Like in your spare time?"

I was expecting him to talk about sports or music or books. Even if it were geeky sci-fi books or some weird Star Trek obsession, I could deal with it. His response, "I like Linux."

Long pause from me.

"Oh, what's Linux?"

"It's an operating system."

"Huh."

Another long pause. I recovered from my dismay and asked, "What do you do with Linux?"

"Well, I like to write code and figure different stuff out with it."

Shoot me now.

And that was the end of our conversation. Pretty much for the rest of the ride home.

The end. The end of us being friends or going on dates. And the end of me trying to win friends and influence people.

How to Win Friends--or Dates: part 1

This is the preface to the date. This is a series of events that happened before I even met the boy, but which play an important role in understanding the events of the date. So.

When I was living in the Philippines (as a missionary), my brother read "How to Win Friends and Influence People." He wrote to me about what a great book it was, etc etc and gave me a few suggestions. He said that the key to making people like you is to make them think you're interested in them, and the best way to show interest is to ask people lots of questions about themselves. Then my brother told me that the next time I go to dinner at a Filipino home, I should talk to the father about his work and the mother about her cooking; if they didn't have much to say at first, I should just keep asking questions until they started talking more. He assured me that everyone has something interesting to say.

This sounded like pretty good advice, especially since I'm not a very good conversationalist. And it just so happened that we had been invited to dinner that week by a family I didn't know well.

When we got to the family's home for dinner, I decided to try my brother's suggestions and asked the father what he did for work. I expected him to be a farmer or a taxi driver like everyone else I knew and figured I could discuss those occupations at length. But he was not a farmer or a taxi driver. He delivered chickens.

"You deliver chickens?" I said.

"Yes. I deliver chickens?"

"What do mean, you 'deliver chickens'?" I asked.

"I deliver chickens."

I searched and struggled to find a follow-up question to his response, but this was totally out of my league of question-asking skills.

"Are they live chickens? Or dead?"

"Dead."

"Are they fresh? Or frozen?"

"Frozen. Why are you asking these questions?"

"I just want to get to know you better. So do people pre-order these chickens, or do you sell the chickens door-to-door?" I asked. I kept hoping he would start really talking at some point instead of just answering the questions and being done.

"I just sell them to whoever wants them." He didn't continue on.

So I tried an open-ended prompt. "So on a typical day, what do you do?"

"I sell chickens." (So frustrating.)

"But I mean, tell me about your day, start to finish. What the steps and procedures for selling the chickens."

"I sell chickens. What more can I tell you about it?"

I kind of wanted to die. Worst possible scenario for trying out this "How to Win Friends" business, but eventually I convinced the father to tell me all about his day and about chickens and a bunch of other stuff. After dinner, I decided to talk to the mother--she couldn't possibly be as frustrating. Besides, I love cooking and the dinner had been delicious, so I was happy to discuss it with her.

I went to the kitchen where she was cleaning up, "That arroz caldo was delicious. It really was the best arroz caldo I've had. How did you make it?" My compliments were sincere: it really was the best arroz caldo (sort of a soupy casserole with rice and chicken) I'd ever eaten.

Unlike the father, she was eager to talk, "Well, I start by browning the chicken like this." She showed me the pan and the chicken and made some cooking gestures. Then she showed me seasonings and few other tricks.

"But the key to good arroz caldo," she told me, "is liver."

Wait--what? I hate liver. Liver is pretty much the only weird food I didn't learn to love in the Philippines. The smell, the texture, the taste. Liver is disgusting. I mean, the liver is part of the digestive system. It detoxifies the body. How can you possibly want to eat the part of the body that takes in the all the sludgy stuff that isn't good for the body? Sick.

The mother continued on about the liver. And on and on and on. She showed me how much liver she had used and how she had cooked it and told me again how delicious liver is and how it's like the star of the arroz caldo. I wanted to die then even more than when I was trying to get her husband to tell me about delivering chickens. I cursed my brother for giving me advice. I cursed myself for following his advice. I could have spent the evening commenting on the weather. And I cursed what's-his-name for writing a stupid book about winning friends (who needs friends) and influencing people (so overrated).

Despite my inadequacies (and the whole ridiculousness of the situation), it worked. The whole asking questions to show you're interested in people thing worked: they invited us to come for Christmas.

A Date without a Doorstep Scene

Tales from the life of the Keeper of the Blog

One night, at the end of a date, a boy dropped me off at my house.

And when I say 'dropped off,' I mean he stopped the car and just waited for me to get out. It was like we hadn't even been on a date, like we just happened to be going to the same concert that night and decided to carpool.

I have never been a fan of the doorstep scene, but can I tell you, the 'drop off' is worse. True, you avoid all decisions about whether or not to engage in super awkward post-date physical contact, and you skip the painfully long 'I had a great time' conversation, but walking yourself to the door after a date is just lame--I mean, if you're a girl--I guess guys do it all the time.

At first, I wasn't sure what was going on. He stopped the car in front of my house (not in the completely empty driveway?) and just sat there. So I sat there. I said a few "thank you's" (which I actually did mean because the concert we went to was completely awesome) and then sort of waited. He didn't move. So I put my hand on the door handle. He didn't move. I opened the door part way. He didn't move. I opened the door the rest of the way. I looked at him, waiting for him to say something, do something. He did nothing. I set one foot out the door. Still nothing. I got all the way out of the car. He was a statue.

"Well, goodnight," I said.

"Goodnight."

I shut the car door and walked across my lawn. It was dark outside, and I generally avoid going out by myself in the dark--it totally creeps me out--but apparently a date is no guarantee that you will be safely escorted to your front door. So I got to my porch, pulled out my keys, unlocked my door, and walked inside, still a little stunned. I looked back, and he was already gone.

Email? Seriously?

Tales from the life of the Keeper of the Blog

One day, a boy asked me out via email.

He had my phone number--I had given it to him for non-dating, social purposes. And we saw each other every week at institute--except he didn't show up the week he asked me out.

We were both in our early/mid twenties, not new to the dating scene.

So I gasped in shock--and I mean a gasped audibly and sort jumped away from my desk--when I opened up my email at work on a Friday morning and found an invitation from this boy to go to a thing on the following Saturday (like 8 days later). It took me until Tuesday to recover enough to respond.

Do I even need to tell you that the date did not go very well?

What Happened?!

For those of you who are wondering why there were no new posts on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, and why there is no bad date tip of the week today, let me explain:

I am in graduate school.

Next week, I have a whole set of excellent dating adventures from my own life lined up for your enjoyment.

The end.

Creepy Weird Clueless: Part 2

Friday evening came. I was in my apartment alone and contemplating not answering the door, and leaving my phone on the kitchen table, in view from the front window, and not answering that either while hiding in my room. But I was too nice, and answered the door.

We got in his car and he informed me that he needed to stop at the bank inside Albertsons to make a withdrawal. He parked in the Albertsons parking lot and went in, I stayed in the car - contemplating if I should get out of the car and run like mad. But again, I was too nice to ditch out and I stayed.

Next we went to his apartment and made a cake for the group date, but he didn't have any frosting, so it was plain cake in a metal pan. Actually he made the cake, while I sat in the living room watching TV with his roomate. After that we got in his car and drove to his work. He worked for some medical transportation company, they would drive old people from their home to the hospital and back. He told me that he needed to pick up a patient and take her home. He got the keys to the big work van and we got in. We drove to the hospital where we waited for half an hour for the old lady to finish dialysis. When she was done, he wheeled her out to the van and loaded and buckled her in. He introduced us, slightly awkward. We drove to her house and I sat in the van as he unloaded her and took her in. We drove back to his work to switch back to his car.

Now the date actually begins. We drove to Devin's house, the guy who put together the group date. We brought the cake in, and everyone thought it was so weird and they just put it aside. We ate pizza and played card games, after which we went downstairs to watch a Halloween movie. As soon as the lights went out he was all over me; trying to cuddle with me, laying on my lap, sitting so uncomfortably close. I painstakingly waited for the movie to finish. When we were leaving he noticed no one ate the cake so he cut half of out and left it for everyone to eat later. We got in the car and he proceeded to drive me home.

We get to my apartment, he opens my car door, I step out and he tells me to bring up the cake so we can eat some. We get into my apartment, none of my roommates are home. Steve and I sat at the table talking for a long time. I really wanted him to leave so I stopped talking as much, giving as short as possible answers hoping he would get the hint. Nope. One of my roommates finally came home, but went straight to her room and closed the door. Thanks for the privacy. I stood up and walked towards the door, Steven followed, but then stopped to continue blabbing.

After a while of that I finally opened the door and went outside, he sat on the steps and continued to talk my ear off, forever. Like he was stalling cause he probably wanted to kiss me or something. Sick. Finally I just told him that I had to get up really early the next morning (which was a complete lie). So he hugged me and left.

A few days later he called and invited me to do something, to which I declined and told him I was too busy (complete lie, I learned my lesson the hard way). The next few days he continued to call, all of which I ignored and did not answer. After a few weeks he quit calling. Fast forward to New Years Eve. I was out shopping with my roommate, and guess who calls, Steve. Of course I did not answer. He left a message asking what I was doing and wishing me a Happy New Year. Whatever, he wanted a New Years kiss and he wasn't getting one.

A while later I was talking with Carrie (who knew the whole date story and phone calls). She told me that Steve had talked to Doug saying, "I totally don't understand why she's not answering, I thought our first date went so well". Doug then informed him of his wrongs. Hopfully Steve has learned his lesson.