cottonbro

11 Small Reasons To Get Disproportionately Excited On A First Date

Has it been a while since you’ve had a date?

Do the words “involuntarily single” make you weep uncontrollably?

Are your dreams dominated by attractive people with high IQs and a sense of humor who have zero interest in you?

And then, when you are fortunate enough to go out on a date it fails so spectacularly that the entire restaurant/movie theater/pub stops what they are doing and gives you a standing ovation.

Your track record on first dates is so bad that you are under the illusion that the baseball field is just one single base that is heavily protected by armed tanks (a significant improvement over the current rules of baseball).

My guess is you have a hard time seeing the positives or finding the silver lining and just wish you had a gift horse with a hard-not-to-look-at face.

Well, I am here to help. When you next have a date, no matter how good or bad it goes, there are always positives to be found. 

Such as…

1. As you get ready, your hair behaves itself—even that one wayward curl that usually seems like it is trying to thwart your plans to not remain single your entire life.

2. At no point in the planning of the date does the topic of washing hair come up, even during the part of the conversation where you discuss the best soaps and shampoos on the market.

3. When you first meet, she doesn’t take one look at you and immediately, on the spot, pretend she is an inanimate object like a mannequin or hat rack. Or, if she does opt to pretend to be a hat rack, she does a spectacular job.

4. She says that you remind her of her father, but not in any “weird pseudo-sexual way.” When asked why she used air quotes around the phrase ‘weird pseudo-sexual way,’ as that makes you wonder if it actually is a in a weird sexual way, she says, “Would you believe fighting off arthritis?”

5. While her legs don’t go on forever, she reads your mind and reminds you that from a purely logistical standpoint, that is a positive thing.

6. Choosing a table is easy as she “isn’t worried that the Feds are onto her,” “doesn’t need to have close proximity to the ice machine,” and “loves circles, squares and plenty of other geometric shapes aside from the fucking rhombus.”

7. Your first attempt at humor doesn’t result in a class action lawsuit, out-of-control weeping, or heckling “don’t quit your day job,” as you just stated you were in the process of finding new work and were actually quite sensitive about it.

8. When sipping soup you don’t scald yourself, slurp too loudly, or make any over-the-top offensive statements about religion, politics, or the playfully fun cross section of the two. 

9. While the inevitable silence between you is awkward, you attempt to embrace the awkwardness— literally, only leading to her believing you are a sub-standard mime which is a step up from your high school yearbook committee’s prediction for you of “Worst Mime Ever.”

10. At the end of the evening she allows you to kiss her once on the cheek after first signing a few legally-binding forms she carries with her “just in case”.

11. When you ask “Will I see you again?” she winks before vanishing into the night, allowing you to both interpret her wink as a positive while also appreciating some next level magic.