met Perez in pilates

It may surprise you to know that I stopped going to the gym in June and traded my daily work out for ice cream and sunshine. Now that it's fall and I can no longer justify a daily bowl of ice cream, I'm trying to get buff again. I opened up a membership at the Kroc center, and so far I have attended pilates/yoga, cardio hip hop, power (weights) and 20-20-20.

Being the new person in group exercise classes is a bit nerve wracking. You don't know how things run, you don't know any of the people, and you don't know what equipment you need. The first class I went to was pilates/yoga. I pride myself on my natural flexibility, but I knew well enough that being able to fold into a pretzel is not going to help with pilates. Pilates takes muscles that are hidden in the depth of your being.

Anyway, so there I am, taking my cues from the others in the room. I roll out a mat and take off my shoes. I do a few stretches and touch my toes. Pretty soon the guy next to me sticks out his arms airplane style and says something to me. I have no idea what he says, but he's pretty serious about his pre-class stretching. "What was that?" I asked. He repeats himself with a Cuban accent. My mat neighbor is what I imagine Perez Hilton would be like in 30 years, only less fabulous. He wants me to move over a bit because apparently I'm cramping his wingspan. I oblige. Clearly this little man is experienced at yoga/pilates. He probably does some very elaborate and advanced moves, what with all the space he needs and everything.

If you don't know who Perez Hilton is, you are a better person than me. Also, when searching for this picture, I found others of him very toned. Probably the results of Pilates.

The class begins. It's easy. I can reach everywhere and touch everything and balance fairly well. We start to do some more moves that requires more muscle work and flexibility. The guy next to me starts making puffing sounds. He starts sweating a bit. Here I am, trying to stretch and relax, and Perez Senior is over here sounding like he's gonna die of lung failure. Clearly he is not an expert. His fancy monogrammed mat and flying airplane stretches mean nothing.

I giggle on the inside, but then immediately sober up at the thought of having to give him mouth-to-mouth when his lungs give out. That's the problem with being CPR/first-aid certified. You're always on the lookout for people who might need saving. And it's never hot, single men.

Clever, sexy headline here

Hi Friends, I need someone to proof my eharmony profile before I post it. I want feedback. Thanks.


Summary
Emotionally independent 26 year old woman seeking man who likes her enough to admit it verbally or in writing. I won’t take up a lot of your time as I am used to being alone. Would like to find someone who enjoys playing Clue and Monopoly and doesn’t judge those who eat ice cream straight out of the carton. I like to take dreams and make them happen. I only give life 97%, because I'm storing the other 3% in reserve to use as a turbo boost when something really needs it.

Hobbies
Knitting, watching Lifetime movie originals, playing with my 12 cats, scrap booking, chatting on IM.

First date
Somewhere picturesque. Dinner. Dancing. Cake. I would feel more comfortable meeting you if I brought my friends, family, and ordained minister along. 

One Word for One Letter

Tell me one word that describes your life right now. In exchange, I will mail a hand-written love letter to you (or to a person of your choosing). These aren’t mushy romantic letters filled with scented stationery. If you think I’m crazy, then check out moreloveletters.com. We’re changing lives.

If you want a letter, I need:
Your name and mailing address
one word that describes your life right now

If you are requesting a letter for a friend, I need:
Their name and address
one word that describes a struggle/hope/need/dream they have
 
Send requests on Facebook or to jjgrossen@gmail.com 
Requests accepted until September 30th.

I don’t sign my name on the letters. So if you request a letter for someone else, it will just show up mysteriously, which I really like.

Names and addresses of letter recipients will not be shared with anyone.

Also, I don’t write mush.

Revolution

My TV viewing frequency has really plummeted, due to the lack of shows that interest me and the increase in shows I like being cancelled. This not watching TV is probably unhealthy, as it obviously shows my lack of interest for life. Thus, I've been on the hunt. I just need one show. I was on Hulu.com last night and think I might have found something a bit interesting. Let me tell you about it:

It's on NBC and is called Revolution. Watch the pilot episode here.

I swear the writers just read The Hunger Games and The City of Ember series and decided to meld the books into a TV show. Because people are tired of vampires and are more interested in female characters who can shoot a bow with accuracy. So True Blood and The Vampire Diaries are out and Revolution is in.

But here's what I have to say. When Charlie stumbled across the guy in the forest that was all "most people just say hello," I thought to myself Is he a part of the Quileute tribe? Because he totally looks Native American and is probably Jacob Black's cousin or something. Maybe it was the forest setting that really set off this thought. So after watching the episode, I Googled actor J.D. Pardo. Turns out he is playing a half-vampire in the next Breaking Dawn installment. My lack of knowledge on vampires and werewolves leads me to question "Can someone be half-vampire and half-wolf? How schizophrenic are Stephanie Myer's characters?"

J.D. Pardo in Revolution. I mean, is this The Hunger Games or Twilight?

Taylor Lautner in Twilight.

While I was watching Revolution, I thought to myself "Why does Miles look so familiar? Who is that guy?" Turns out Charlie's uncle is the same guy (Billy Burke) who plays Bella Swan's father in Twilight. Coincidentally, his character's name is Charlie. Only difference is, Miles doesn't have a dorky mustache like Bella's dad does.

Billy Burke as Miles, pictured here with niece Charlie.

Billy Burke in Twilight as Charlie Swan, with dumb mustache.

After viewing the pilot of Revolution, I realized that I had liked the show, even though it seemed like The Hunger Games and The City of Ember just got together and had a baby. Then I found out the TV show is produced by J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot Productions. After that, I was like "duh, of course I liked it." Because my favorite producer is J.J. Abrams. He's the one who created Alias and Lost, two of my favorite past shows.

I think this show's going to be well received*, because Katniss from The Hunger Games is popular, and the character of Charlie is basically a form of Katniss. Plus, I mean, she wears bad ass leather pants and carries a knife on her hip. Also, boots are really in this season.

*Revolution has not been well received by the scientifically minded. But the whole point so far is that science defied itself when the blackout happened, and nobody knows why.

The Lazy Vegetarian

Recipe for Comida Perezoso

Time to prepare: 4 minutes

Laziness factor: energetic enough to use a can opener
Tasty factor: Yum!
Yields: 3.5 servings

Ingredients:
1 can black beans
1 can corn (not creamed, yuck!)
1 can garbanzo beans
handful of cheddar cheese
your favorite salsa (I like Chachie's mango-peach)
tortilla chips (stale works fine)

good salsa

Directions:
Open up all the cans. Drain them all. Rinse the beans with cold water. Mix black beans, garbanzo beans, and corn in large bowl. Put however much you are going to eat in a smaller bowl. Add in your favorite salsa and a handful of cheese. Microwave for 60 seconds. Eat with tortilla chips. Store the large bowl in the fridge so you can eat your leftovers for tomorrow's lunch.

Clean-up: Recycle the cans. Put your one bowl and one spoon in the dishwasher. Do a little dance.

On why you should not take your sister to Olive Garden

Last Saturday afternoon my mom was in town and she wanted to go to lunch with me and my sister. She let us decide where we wanted to go, and I made the dumb mistake of suggesting we go to the Olive Garden. Based on past experiences, I should have known better.

                I’ll let you see why.

                “Would you like a wine sample?” asks our male server.

                “Yes,” says Jessamy, rather enthusiastically. For how fast she pulled out her ID, you’d think she kept it up her shirt sleeve.

                “No thank you,” says my mother.

                “No thanks, “ I say. I’m not against wine with lunch, I’m really not. I just don’t like many wines. I’m also very uneducated when it comes to vino, so I don’t even know the names of the few wines I do like. Riesling maybe? Chardonnay? I really don’t know. I always do a sniff test before tasting, which is typically very attractive and is how I score most of my Friday night dates.

                The server pours my sister a sample, then goes to get our waters. We debate the menu. Our server comes back to take our orders. “Are you done with this?” he says, reaching for Jessamy’s wine glass.

                “NO.” She reaches out to protect the last swig—so possessive you’d think she stomped those grapes herself and labored to make the drink on her own. I’m feeling a bit embarrassed about this, but to make matters worse, she downs the last sip in record time and then hands the glass to the man. I die a little bit inside.

“You embarrass me every time I take you to the Olive Garden,” I say, once the server is out of earshot.

“Why?” she says.

“Because that just happened.”

“Why do you care?”

“Some of us are trying to find husbands.”

Jess raises an eyebrow, “And it was gonna be that guy?”

“Well not anymore,” I half-laugh.

It’s true. Finding a husband these days is rather difficult. I mean, I have a hard enough time trying to get someone to visit me at my house. You think I’m gonna be able to convince a guy to live here with me too? I don’t even know what the issue is, because I have a very cute, tidy house and the world’s comfiest couch. Maybe I should put that into my match.com profile.

A bit later our salad arrives. This time a woman brings it. She asks if we would like extra cheese on our salad. Sister says yes. Lady begins to grate cheese onto salad. I’m talking to Jess for a minute, then I realize the cheese is still being grated. It’s like a snow blizzard has covered the salad. You know, if snow blizzards were short, stringy, room-temperature, and tasted like parmesan.

“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. That’s enough,” I say to the server.

“Maybe that’s enough for you,” Jess says to me, clearly upset that I interrupted her cheese flow.

“I could put some more on your plate if you’d like,” the woman offers. I think it’s a joke.

“Yes, please,” says my sister.

She just did that. Got cheese grated directly onto her plate. And okay, I get that she loves cheese. Most people in my family do. We have a Swiss heritage. Cheese making used to be the livelihood* of our great-great-great grandfather, Peter-Fred Grossen.  People who are lactose-intolerant practically get smudged out of our family line. If Grossens had been raised Amish instead of Presbyterian, then not having cheese in your fridge would nearly deserve a shunning.  But even if you have a cheese passion, you need to act with propriety. 

These are my actual real-life living cousins. We celebrate our Swiss heritage with a parade every year.

 “You did that on purpose,” I say to Jess. Because clearly now she just wants to do every embarrassing thing she can. And we haven’t even gotten to the breadsticks yet.

Jessamy begins telling stories about work, and of how her new assistant, Elsa, has a very unique personality. Apparently whenever Elsa gets upset, she says “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!” Elsa also recommends that you lay with your head over the side of the bed for at least two minutes a day in order for the blood to rush to your head and stimulate hair growth. I guess one day Elsa bobbed her head back and forth and was all “I think my hair is growing a lot faster because I’m bending over so much at work.” So there’s that.

Our food arrives. I’ve ordered the never ending pasta bowl (fettuccine alfredo) and Jess went for the Zuppa Toscana. My mother decided to get fettuccine as well. We dig in. In case you were wondering, my sister and her husband’s first date together was at the Olive Garden during their never ending pasta bowl promotion. She ate three bowls and took one home. This is how it went down: Jess posted on MySpace (because that used to be a thing, back in 2005)“I need someone to go to Olive Garden with me for the never ending pasta bowl!” And Travis said he’d go. Then it was happily ever after.

You might suggest to me that I try this find-a-date-strategy with Facebook, but whenever I’m looking for someone to go somewhere with me, I usually only hear from the crickets. I guess trying to get a partner to help with my detective work sounds too dangerous. Or maybe it’s the mention of wearing disguises that really puts people off. So instead I’ve learned a better strategy is to post “first person to invite me to dinner gets $100!” Because then not only do you attract the go-getters, but your date is guaranteed to have some cash too.

At this point, we’ve all eaten one breadstick and there’s one remaining in the basket. I look up at Jess and observe her behavior for a while. I look back at the lone breadstick and regard it with the feelings one usually has towards a solar eclipse. See, every other time I’ve been at the Olive Garden, Jess will make sure all the breadsticks make it onto plates immediately, so that way when the server comes by she can ask for more. I was mortified at her 25^th birthday dinner, because I think she asked for 8 breadstick basket refills that night. After that evening, the Olive Garden manager considered starting a policy where people get their wrists Xed out if they’ve had too many breadsticks. But then my sister started an Occupy Olive Garden movement, where she encouraged all the patrons to stay as long as they could, peacefully ordering breadstick refills.

Despite my sisters attempt to embarrass me completely, I’m in a good mood. I start to joke around, but then pretty soon the joke becomes a serious plan.

“You know. I could order some more pasta for you, and you could order a bowl of minestrone for me, and then we could eat each other’s food.” Because I mean really. Does it make sense to you? Should I eat three pounds of pasta, salad, and breadsticks, when instead I could eat a bowl of pasta, a bowl of soup, salad, and breadsticks? Either way, Olive Garden is out the same amount of food. It’s just different people would eat it. But rule breaking must be done discreetly. I slide a few noodles onto Jessy’s breadstick plate, telling her to eat them immediately, then I’ll give her more.

It’s kind of like feeding a toddler, really. Only you have to do it when no one is watching.

“We should keep ordering bowls and bowls of pasta, then we can both take some home and I can have enough to last until I am gainfully employed again**.”

My mother interjects. “They only bring you one bowl at a time, so you can only ever leave with one bowl.” Such a realist.

“Then this is what we do. Mom, you keep ordering more fettuccine, and we’ll dump it all into my bowl,” I break into laughter. I usually laugh the most at my own jokes, which apparently is a really annoying attribute. “Then we’ll get a mountain of pasta this high,” I raise my hand up to the hanging lamp, “and I’ll just be sitting here, eating pasta and acting like nothing happened. Then we ask for a to-go container.”

Only we didn’t carry out our brilliant plan. Instead I had a few bites of Jessy’s third bowl of soup, and she had a few bites of my second dish of pasta, and we asked for just one more basket of breadsticks. No one left with Mount Fettuccine. Also, no one left with a date either.

*Actually, I’m pretty sure his livelihood was dairy cows, not just the cheese.      

**Don’t worry. I have a savings account and can afford to buy groceries.

Choices Suck

Oh crap, I don't want to answer, it's probably a job offer. That's what I thought the day after my interview. So I didn't answer the phone; I let it go to voice mail. And then today when a 399 number came in, I knew it was the school district. So I didn't answer. I knew why they were calling: an interview.

I've got a fear; it's apparent now. If you had asked me when I applied to those jobs "Joelle, will you ignore the calls for interviews when they come?" I would've said no. But now we know something about my heart. It's terrified.

I hate making big decisions. I'm a person who commits long term, so I take things seriously.  Even though I have been offered zero jobs so far, I'm freaking out. I want to choose the right thing. I hate choices.

I used to have a five year plan. Now I barely have five week plans. But I have Things I'm Meant To Do. Which is why I get all twisted up inside when I think about how other life choices may hinder the Things I'm Meant To Do. What I'd really like is a 20 page document from God detailing the specifics for the next few years. I hate being unsure. This isn't like buying shoes from Target. You can't return them if you decide you don't want them.

Saying Yes is a big deal. I only want to say Yes to what God is asking of me, and that's why I hate that he let's us decide. I feel like I'm being really vague. Or just plain weird. Basically, if you are the praying kind, pray for me. For clarity.

Behind the coats: Narnia?

Sometimes I write clever stories or really deep thoughts about life. This contains neither. Instead, I'm going to tell you about my latest petty dilemma that matters not at all. In fact, you probably shouldn't waste your time here.

I just found out my brilliant roommate who is a chemist just got a job with a pharmaceutical company and now she will get to make drugs. So in a few weeks, I'll have an empty room. These are my thoughts about said room:

1) I could find another roommate to pay 1/3 of the rent, as before.
2) I could turn the room into an office, because Lord knows I've got enough books and office supplies and files and whatnot to fill one.
3) I could turn the room into a wardrobe closet.

My life is tough, I know. I've wanted to turn one of my other rooms into a closet for just about ever, but I'm really not into fashion and hardly spend more than 20 minutes getting ready, so dedicating a 10 by 10 foot space just to my clothes seems really outside my personality. Maybe my imagination just wants to play Jessica Simpson for a while. You know, pretend like I'm glamorous and don't buy most of my clothes at Target.

In case you are wondering, (which I know you weren't) I actually do have a lot of clothes, mostly because I never get rid of anything and still have shirts from my high school years. So really what I need is an intervention from TLC's What Not to Wear. Then again, my sense of style might improve if I'm able to more easily see the options I have available. Or not.

The illogical part of my brain says "when will you ever again have a chance to dedicate an entire room just to your clothes? It's every girl's dream. Do it." But then the logical part of my brain says "Actually, you'll probably have this chance for a real long time. Because it's not like you have kids yet. Or a husband. Or even a date, for that matter."

During the times when my extra rooms have not been filled with rent-paying roommates, I've thought about other kinds of uses for them. Once, I thought about getting a dog for a roommate, and he could have had his very own space. Another time I thought about turning my house into a private school/tutoring center. I also thought about becoming a foster mom, but then realized yeah right am I ready for that right now. So the only thing my spare room has actually been is a mock drug lab.

 My question for you is, if you had an extra room, what would you do with it?

Shortest Story I've Told

When I was 11 years old, I had six teeth pulled out all at once by an oral surgeon. He retired the next day, and I ate yogurt for like three months. Also, I didn't have to floss for a year.

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.