A Little Bit of Dating Advice

So, I will be the first person to admit that I know very little about dating. I have had one boyfriend (and that relationship went so swimmingly that we decided to break things off and never speak to each other again) and haven't done much hunting around since. However, this weekend I went out to dinner with someone I met and I learned three things which I felt that I should share.

This guy that I met, I met him while I was taking a nap. Well, I wasn't actually sleeping when we met, but I was napping when he knocked on my dorm room door. I opened the door in all of my bed-headed glory and saw a tall and rather attractive boy holding a clipboard. He was registering people to vote and wanted to know if I was interested. Of course, I wasn't, but he was cute and seemed so nice that I took the clipboard from him and filled out the registration paper.

I must have looked pretty hot, because as I'm mindlessly checking boxes (gender: female, citizenship: yes, serial killer: yes no, etc.) he says, "You look like I woke you up from hibernation." Well, thank you, random voter registrar. I like to think of this as my "why did you wake me up, I was peacefully sleeping" look. It comes in a variety of shades, from mildly annoyed to murderous.

After I sent him on his merry way, wishing him luck with getting all the registrations he needed, I crawled back into bed, intent on squeezing every last, lonely minute of sleep that I could out of this Saturday afternoon. It was not to be. Twenty-five minutes later, there is another knock on my door.

Why can't I spend a Saturday holed up in my room like a loser without people interfering??? I thought as I swung down from my ridiculously high bed, feeling something like Tarzan, sans dread locks.

Open the door and imagine my surprise: Mr. Voter Registrar, without the clipboard.

It took him about two minutes to adorably stumble his way through this simple sentence "I think you're pretty cool. Do you want to hang out sometime?" Apparently hibernation looks good on me.

So we exchanged names and numbers, or rather, he gave me his name and number as he already had my information from the registration paper, and we agreed to have dinner that night. And it was that night that I learned these three important things:

1) Don't tell her that you're a communist on your first date. This sounds so ridiculous that I'm sure you think I'm joking. I'm not.

"Let me guess... you checked 'no party affiliation' on your voter's registration?"

"Uh... yes."

2) Don't make fun of her for not understanding your Miami talk. Do not assume that I will know what you mean when you tell me that you are going to "scoop me up" at eight. You don't scoop a girl up, you pick her up. You scoop up dog poop from the backyard.

3) Don't pick an intellectual movie to watch when it's already late and you haven't seen it before. Alright, so this was actually a bad one on me. I picked out the movie that we watched (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows). It happens to be one of my favorites, but he hadn't ever seen it. I ended up having to talk him through most of the movie, not the best way to enjoy it, especially when all of your hard work goes out the window because he falls asleep during the last fifteen minutes when the entire plot climaxes and resolves!

I shake him awake. "Did you catch that whole last bit?"

"What whole last bit?"

Sigh. "I think it's time for you to go home."

"Yeah, I'm pretty cashed*." English, please! I'm begging you.

Not sure this boy will be calling me for another date. Not sure I want him to. Don't get me wrong, he was fun to hang out with and we had a good time, but the night ended on a dull note, not to mention I can't shake the feeling that I had dinner and a movie with Vladimir Lennon. 

*cashed- a term used to mean tired, beat, exhausted. A shortened version of the expression "cashed out". Alternately used to mean done, finished, fed up with.