The Soap Opera of Our Lives

Casey and I stood in the restaurant's bathroom, washing the soap off of our hands and contemplating how we ended up at Venti’s with two unknown guys who responded to our Facebook plea for a Friday night double date. Friends of a friend, the two men were the first set of males we had cajoled into undergoing our little experiment. No, we hadn’t drugged them with Love Potion Number Nine. It was our good looks, quick wit, and sparkling white smiles that had drawn these men out of the dark video game dens that their fellow kind dwell in.
             Before we even met Ryan and Zach* in person, Casey and I were sure to e-mail them our rules. The document read as follows:

Rules
1. Absolutely no kissing.
2. You must actually be single. You can’t be married, engaged, or have a girlfriend.
2. Participants must be at least 21 years of age.
3. We go halvsies. Everyone brings their own wallet.
4. Joelle is allowed to blog about the experience. But she’ll change your name. And your appearance. So if you’re muscly and bald, you’ll end up being scrawny with an afro in the story.
5. No commitment to follow up. You don’t have to call us the next day. We won’t cry our eyes out or text you 5 million times.
            I have to admit, number 4 worried me a bit. I didn’t want people to think I was just out for a good story and that I would write lies about them. But awkward dates make for really great blog posts, and I didn’t want anyone to feel tricked when three days later they read a story about themselves on The Real Pretend.

Not to mention, I thought rule number 4 might attract only self-centered D-bags that wanted to become famous. Because, you know, this blog gets a lot of hits. And not all of them are from my mother. But let’s get back to the date I’m currently in the middle of.

“What do you think Casey? Possibilities or no?”
            “I think it’s going well so far. They’re both really open and relaxed, even though this whole thing is a bit out of the comfort zone.”

“A little bit out of the comfort zone? Try off the charts. The comfort zone for me was sitting at home wearing a snuggie and watching Joshua Lucas on TV.” Because I don’t know about you, but I just don’t go hang out with strangers found on the FB. I pondered the other option. “Case, do you think posting our themed dates on Facebook was a better idea than organizing Spiritual Speed Dating at Broadway Cafe?”

 That had been our original idea/joke. How we wanted to find guys who loved Jesus but weren’t already head over heels for the blond YWAMer who just got back from her mission trip in Ecuador.

Casey and I had discussed spiritual speed dating, and how we’d kind of poke fun at the whole thing, but it could maybe turn out well. In order to make the event spiritual, participants would have to recite Bible verses in order to meet more people. If you only memorized three verses, you only got to meet three people. I figured this strategy would really motivate twenty-somethings to study the Word. Plus, I still remembered most of James chapter 1 from when I was in middle school (also the Gettysburg address, but that won’t count).  And those GT and the Halo Express songs really helped with memorization too.
            After the joking ended, I approached Casey with the idea to get friends of friends of friends to go on dates with us (the friends of friends were mostly already married). We’d advertise on Facebook in a completely non-desperate-I-so-don’t-cry-my-eyes-out-on-Friday-nights sort of way.

“Casey, How does my eye patch look?” I asked.
“Really good. Reminds me of Pirates of the Carribean.”

To launch off our themed dates, we had started with a Blind Date, but we took it literally. This isn’t an episode of The Bachelorette, so there will be no dates to Dollywood, but Casey and I are creative and know how to put together a memorable experience. We had a unique night of braille reading, blind folds**, and trust walks planned. We really needed to get back to the table so as to continue with the trivia game before our food arrived.

***

I sat opposite Ryan and picked up one of the cards we had made. “Okay, for three points, what does a green tipped cane mean?” I looked expectantly around the room, thinking most people would remember this from reading the Oregon Driver’s Manual at age 15.

“Um…the person’s blind?” Zach answered.

“Close.”

“Blind and deaf!” Ryan shouted. The couple from the table next to us looked over.

“Correct,” I said.

Casey picked up the next card. “Who invented glasses?”

“Benjamin Franklin?”

“Name five animals with excellent night vision.”
“Cats, lemurs, wolves, raccoons, and….”

“Owls!” Zach finished.

            Shortly after our round of trivia, the food arrived. I had the falafel pita and Greek salad, which is my usual. I’m a fan of Greek food, but I never tell anyone this because I hate olives and don’t want people serving me food stuffed with kalamata olives. Also, saying you don’t like olives is offensive to Greek people. It’s like not valuing the knowledge of Latin and Greek root words.

            During the meal, Zach winked at me. Or at least I thought he did. It might have just been that his eye patch was irritating him and he needed to blink. But still.  

            When the bill came, we all pulled out our wallets. There wasn’t any of that “Is he paying? Should I offer to pay? Am I making him feel like less of a man for purchasing my own meal?” Rule 3 clearly stated that you pay your own way on this date.

            Casey was pretty excited for the next part of the date. She had thought it up. We were headed over to Bush Park for some trust building activities, because a very important foundation for a relationship is trust. We wanted to put the guys to the test.

            “Alright,” Casey said. “This is what’s going to happen. We are going to blindfold you. Then we are going to lead you through the trees. You will have to follow our directions to stay safe, and trust that we are telling the truth.”

            Guys are forever not wanting to follow the instructions of a woman. Apparently it’s hard for some reason. Smart is the man who just does what his wife asks. Casey and I had plans to open up the vulnerability of these two strangers, testing them out in situations that could cause conflict.

            After the blindfolds were secure, I gave Ryan my first set of directions. “Okay, take five steps forward. Good. Keep walking.”

            Casey had her work cut out for her, having to navigate Zach through a cluster of trees. “Take a left. Okay, go forward until I tell you to stop. Stop. Take a right. We’re going to go up a hill. Lift up your feet.”  

            I am happy to say that both men made it to our end location safely. Nobody tripped on a branch or got attacked by a rosebush. And the blindfolds helped keep the guys from being distracted by the other park-goers who were more attractive than me. For some reason, slender women are always wearing short shorts and running at Bush Park, despite the fact that there are no bears in sight.

Casey and I had our turns next. I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be blindfolded and directed down a path sprawling with roots and rocks. I’ve got a terribly loose knee joint, and if you so much as nudge me at the wrong angle, my patella will pop out and it’s all kinds of gruesome. If you don’t believe me, just Google images of “dislocated knees.” I needed my date to know how very sensitive I was to terrain changes.

“Don’t let me fall in a hole or you’ll be carrying me back to the car.” The last part was a lie. I’m resilient and typically good to walk after my right knee dislocates, provided I get it back in quickly. But I wanted him to know that I’d expect him to carry me if I were injured. I’ve never been carried by a man, unless you count  the time when my brother in law carried me to the river edge to throw me in, or when I was ten and stepped on a rusty tent peg and my foot was bleeding and my friend’s dad carried me into the house—which I don’t. I’d like to be rescued by an attractive prince man at least once in my life. Disney taught me that.

“All set.”

I took baby steps forward as Ryan navigated. I could hear Casey walking a few feet away. Everything was going fine and I totally was keeping all my joints in place until I heard an additional male voice.

“Joelle? Is that you?”

I ripped off my blindfold and took a look. My stomach lurched. It was Evan*, a guy I’ve liked for longer than I care to admit.

“Hey,” I said, as casually as one could.

“What are you guys doing?” he asked.

“Ah, you know. Just some blind games. Trust walk and all that...”

“Oh. How come?” Evan asked.

Men are forever wanting explanations to why single girls wear blindfolds and stroll through the park with near perfect strangers.

Zach, who must be an extrovert, piped in. “We’re on a blind date. And it’s like, literal.”

I could feel my face turn crimson. Now Evan is going to think that I’m signed up for Match.com or something, when really all I did was make a plea offer on the world’s largest social media site. I started to worry. What if Evan started to think that I was unavailable? That I was going to pursue a relationship with a man in an eye patch? He’d never take me on a non-date to Word of Mouth then.

Men are forever fearful of taking women on non-dates. Because sometimes they like the girl and just want to find an excuse to hang out with her, but they are afraid that a breakfast burrito or some French toast will mean that they are saying “I like you.” And guys are terrified of telling girls that they like them (this is what all the articles tell me), because they are just as self-conscious as girls and don’t want to be rejected.

For every guy who secretly likes a girl, there are ten girls who are mad crazy about that guy. But instead of just taking a chance, the guys have to make sure we like them, so they force us to do things like bat our eyelashes or show cleavage to get the message across. I can’t do either of those things. So what I do instead is go silent as a mime every time a guy is around. Then all the guys think I hate them, but really the problem is that I was home schooled for nine years and don’t know how to interact with the opposite sex.

“Well, have fun,” Evan said.

I smiled dumbly.

Turning to Casey I said, “Shall we move on to the last activity?”

Casey nodded.

Some people end dates by getting ice cream or by making out at the top of a hill while in a parked car. Or maybe you get a kiss on the front step while your mother peeks out the curtains at you. That’s what they show on TV anyway, I don’t really know. We did none of those things. Instead, Casey and I had some braille reading for the boys to do. We had created our messages using puffy paint. They were fairly short, because writing in braille by hand is a lot of work and we weren’t that committed.
            “You’ll have to do some research to figure out what these say.” Or, you know, just throw them in the garbage on your way out.

The night ended. If you think there was a rose ceremony and we picked our favorite bachelor, you’re wrong, because this isn’t ABC television and Chris Harrison isn’t telling me what to do. Instead Casey and I went to her house to gossip and plan our next themed double-date.

*not their real names

**if you are thinking something dirty, then shame on you.

Author's note: Just like The Bachelorette, this "reality" story is completely fictional. This did not ever happen. Yet.