Speed Dating

I first signed up for a speed dating thing about 18 months ago. Why did I? I thought that it would be a good way to meet girls.

I first canceled a speed dating thing about 17.75 months ago. Why did I? I was sort of busy already and I got cold feet about it.

When a couple of friends mentioned that they were going to sign up for it a month or two back, I decided to join them. Unlike the first time I signed up, I wasn't expecting or even hoping to meet a girl or girls. And also unlike the first time I signed up, I did not cancel.

As far as I'm concerned, there are three main good things that might come from a speed dating event. Well... four, but I'm going to bullet the three and address the fourth on its own.

1. Hot chicks.
2. Crazy chicks.
3. Post-mortem.

Hot Chicks

Even though I wasn't going to speed dating to meet a girl or girls, there was still a curious part of me that wondered what the females were going to look like. If there was one beautiful woman there, it would make for a good/better time. If there were a nice solid batch of attractive ladies, that would be good, too.

Unfortunately, there was neither the quality nor quantity effect that would have made the experience more entertaining.

There were 13 girls in our group (there was a second group upstairs... our group was 25-35, with upstairs being 35-45) and two of those (we'll call them "LOL" and "...") were females that I came with and who are unavailable to me.

Of those 13, there were three women that I would consider to be attractive... and two of them were ... and LOL. So that left one woman who, if I saw her in a bar, I might talk to in the hopes of getting her number. That woman lives an hour outside of Seattle. Awesome.

So, yeah. Attractive women? No offense to the remaining 10, but... I didn't see that.

Crazy Chicks

Since I've been dating, the most memorable experiences I've had have been with very attractive women and slightly (or greatly) unhinged women. Maybe it makes sense, then, that I see speed dating as a microcosm of dating and "Crazy Chicks" is my second possibility for a good time.

Fortunately for them, but unfortunately for me, there were no patently insane women in the group. Maybe it was the six minute conversation limit, but I am usually pretty good at sniffing out madness, and I saw none of it.

Well, other than ... . But I won't go there. (Oh, snap!)

A potential substitute to "crazy" is "naughty". For SOME reason, no women were at all naughty in the mini-dates. What was their problem?

I actually thought that I'd stumbled across some inappropriate attitude, but upon reflection I think I was giving her too much (or too little) credit. To wit:

Me: You having a good time tonight?
Her: Yes, although I think I'm going to be getting the same questions all night.
Me: Really?
Her: Yep.
Me: Well...
Her: What?
Me: Before I came here I was joking around with my friends about questions that I could ask, but won't because they're inappropriate...
Her: Like what?
Me: Are you sure you want to hear one?
Her: Uh... sure.
Me: OK. When was the last time you had sex?
Her: ...
Me: (waiting it out)
Her: I'll tell you at the end of the night.

Now, if you read that the way I heard it, that's pretty naughty. Talking with her at the end of the event, though, she didn't mean what I thought she meant... she meant that she was going to tell me before the event was over. Boooo!

(The answer: three months. I also told her the rest of my question was that I would interrupt the woman within five seconds and say, "It's been almost six hours for me!" Understandably, she didn't quite get the "humor" in that...)

Post-mortem

No matter what the girls are like, and no matter how the conversation goes, there's always the post-mort, right? Looking at how things went, comparing notes, etc.

The speed dating setup was actually well suited for this, in that we literally had notecards where we could enter the person's name and notes about them, along with a yes/no indication of whether we were interested (to put into the Web site later).

My post-mort fun was spoiled on two fronts.

First of all, both of the people I went with were female. They could tell me, potentially, about the guys, but there were no male buddies to share notes with about the different girls and their impressions of them.

Secondly, both of my companions were some combination of disorganized/disinterested/drunk... I had my first "date" with ... (and yes, she put out) and as I moved to the next table, I was writing down notes and working my way to the next table, and I looked over at her. She hadn't TOUCHED the notecard nor the pen, both of which were sitting right in front of her. I hollered something about it to her, but she is a professional at tuning me out and evidently I wasn't clear and/or convincing.

Of course, I didn't know this until I met with LOL, who was my last date of the night. She had been writing down names, but she didn't understand how the columns worked, so she had put things in a different order and she was hopelessly confused. When we looked over at ... , she had still left her note card in a pristine mint form.

So not only could I not discuss chicks, because my friends didn't meet any, but I couldn't even discuss the guys because neither of them could really remember the guys very well.

Overall/finally/fourthly, the experience was good. It wasn't that expensive and I got some "free" food (LOL commandeered an entire container of french fries, and I was able to take advantage of that). I learned that women tend to attend in pairs (there were four pairs of women among the 13 total). And I learned that I'm not terribly eager to do another round of speed dating any time soon...