Valentine’s Day is over. No more annoying “Every kiss begins with Kay” or pink heart overload. However, if you were disappointed this year because you didn’t have someone to share the holiday with, why not try something a little crazy next year?
As I learned from my experience last week at the speed “friend” dating event put on by the Campus Programming Board in the Otterbein Campus Center, the game of speed dating can be a lot of fun. You just have to know what you’re getting yourself into.
Pregame:
After it was decided (more by my friends and supporters than myself) that I was going speed dating, I wanted to get a little research and background on what was about to unfold.
I asked a couple of my friends for any tips or advice they could offer. While they told me to be honest and be my usual self, all that a few of them could give me was a nice “Remember the Alamo.” (I’ve been known to randomly say this.)
Remember the Alamo? A 13-day long failed negotiation that ended in roughly 600 casualties. Normally I’m all for violence, but on this occasion I’m going to have to take a pass.
So after going online and seeing some tips, I decided that it’d be best to just go into this thing with an open mind and a relaxed attitude with no expectations, and that mindset would get me through it just fine.
I’ve got to be totally honest: I was a little anxious for the event. Not nervous, but I was generally curious as to what would happen.And I wasn’t let down.
The Game:
Speed dating started a little later than it was intended to, mostly because it had a rather small turnout. There were only a handful of students at first, but later on it ballooned to around a dozen or so.
Meeting the first person was somewhat strange, kind of like seeing a polar bear run on a treadmill. Everyone has to get through that awkward “What the hell am I doing here?” phase and find his or her comfort zone, which for some is a made-up character or some other version of themselves.
T
This is something that interested me. I’m generally not a conspiracy theorist, except for, say, JFK’s assassination, but I wondered if the people I was talking to were being generally honest. I didn’t know them, and the chances were that after this thing was over I would probably never talk to them again.
So, I turned on the BS alarm in my head and just talked. I was completely honest with everyone that I met in the short amount of time that we had together. I talked about my love of baseball and the Reds, how I make a pretty good spaghetti sauce and about the time I saw Aaron Boone, my favorite baseball player of all time, go for the cycle in the final year of Cinergy Field. (I’ll always call it Riverfront Stadium.)
With so few people there, I got the opportunity to have about 10 minutes with just about everyone. Who I was talking to didn’t matter; I discovered that it was really more about trying something different and wanting to open up than it was about finding a connection.
Postgame:
So did I hit anyone up on Facebook after speed dating? Nope. There is something to the gamesmanship that says you don’t call the other team after a big game. If I’m Obi-Wan, I’m not calling Darth Vader to congratulate him after he defeats me on the Death Star. But I didn’t really expect anything to come of going speed dating anyway.
Overall, I have to say that it was a lot of fun and I would suggest looking around the city for some speed dating events. You never know what could happen. Who knows, you might just find next year’s valentine.
