Yesterday I had a First Date.
It’s been a while since I’ve been on a first date with a person. I haven’t been on any with the male persuasion since long before Zack and I started dating. Zack and I never went on a first date, because by the time we began a committed relationship to each other, we had already been best friends for seven years. You can’t take seven years of friendship, sprinkled with forever untimely crushes, and then start over with a first date. That fact, coupled with the simple fact that Zack hates the word, and idea, of “dates,” resulted in us never going on a date. Sounds funny, but it’s true. I mean, we went to dinners and sometimes to movies, but it wasn’t really a date. There wasn’t the dressing up, followed by the awkward exchanges. There wasn’t ever the moment on my door stoop when he had to decide if he was going to implement Hitch’s 90%/10% kiss rule.
All that being said, I feel that I should clarify that this “date” was with a girl. Spring and I have known each other via the blogosphere and mutual friends for about 2 years now. I’ve been flowing her writing since we were both xanga’s darlings, and vice versa. We finally met face-to-face at an impromptu pseudo-reunion of JBU folks (Zack JBU’ed for one semester, but his brother, Jared, JBU’ed for his entire college career). Spring and I hit it off right away, and decided that Best Friendom was in our future. She was the slightest bit intoxicated at the time, but, turns out, she was rather serious.
First dates with new friends is also something that I hadn’t done in a long time, or maybe ever. I suppose I haven’t made a new friend in quite a number of years. SarahI is one of my newest friends, and she’s my sister-in-law. We didn’t have to get to know each other, cause we were tossed into a family together, and we clicked. No first dates, just family meals that resulted in an incredible friendship that is served with egregious amounts of baby kissing and, usually, shopping. Jennifer and I kind of went on a first date, but it was to the grocery store, and we’d long since been chatting endlessly on gmail. Our first date was less a date and more like a Central Market How-To session, for which I am forever indebted to her service. Mostly, Jennifer and I were 6 years friends-in-the-making that finally materialized when we became neighbors. Mary Pat and I are newish friends as a result of camp, too. (“New” meaning we’ve been friends for 4 years now.) In fact, I remember pointedly the moment when I knew Mary Pat and I were going to be friends. Our friendship was created because of our mutual love for girly items like makeup and heels. She and Josh had invited Zack and me over to dinner at their place and, on a whim, I dressed up. Zack asked me why I was dressing up, and I said that I didn’t know, I just thought it was the thing to do if we were going to dinner at someone’s house, regardless of whether we were going to walk from three houses over, through Camp Eagle dirt. When we arrived, I found Mary Pat dressed to the nine’s, wearing heels and make up, and maybe even eyeliner. As we stepped through the door, she said, “SEE JOSH? SARAH DRESSED UP, TOO. IT IS NOT THAT WEIRD. IT’S DINNER. YOU DRESS UP FOR DINNER.” At that moment I knew that I had an cohort, someone with whom I could discuss fashion trends, and drool over J.Crew catalogues and not be mocked for my overt girlyness.
So that’s my case. All my friends are old & dear friends, and my husband doesn’t take me on ‘dates.’ You could say that I’m out of practice. So when Spring started saying that we were going on a ‘date,’ I was thrilled. Dates! With people! Where you do things! And other stuff as well! I’ve read in many a forward (very scientific source there, right?) about the differences between men and women. One factoid that I’ve heard repeatedly is that Men say about 3,000 words a day, and women say about 10,000 words a day. I thought before I picked up Spring about that fact. If women usually say 10,000 words a day, and we’re both women, we’ll probably split it down the middle, and each of us will dish about 5,000, right? I mean, who has time for 20,000 words? What I didn’t realize, is that when you get two girls together with their 10,000 words each, it doesn’t add to 20,000 words. It multiplies. We didn’t have a plan laid out before us when we started the date. (dangerous, I know.) We set no time limit, either. We just knew that we were going to do some hanging out, some ingesting of some alcohol, and a lot of talking. I swear, I wouldn’t be surprised if we spit out over a million words yesterday. We talked in a solid stream of conversation from 2:30 p.m. until 9:15 when I dropped her off on her front stoup. To say that we ‘clicked’ would be, in my estimation, a gross understatement. On the way home, I wondered to myself how it was even possible to talk non-stop for almost 7 hours. I’m not sure. All I knew for sure was that I had hit my word limit for the day, and I was done talking.
When I crawled into bed with Zack last night, he asked what we did. I informed him of our physical path, and all the places we stopped along the way. Considering the hours we spent together, it’s a shockingly small number of places.
After we completed his tour ala Family Circus footprints, he said, “Oh. Cool. What’d you talk about?”
EVERYTHING.
