When it comes to speed dating, four minutes is an eternity

Well, I went and did it, I finally tried speed dating. I convinced Maureen and Jason to come with me, and the experience was... interesting. If you don't know what speed dating is, basically what they do is line up a bunch of men and women, facing each other, and then ring a bell. You have four minutes to launch into inane small talk with the person across from you before the bell rings again and you move to the next person.

It sounded fun, but in real life it was actually a little too intense. You meet 15 different people, so you're doing this for an hour straight, which is tiring, even for yours truly, who can ordinarily talk about herself until the sun comes up. Besides that, many of these are not the ones you'd ordinarily approach or let yourself be approached by in a normal social setting, if you know what I mean. That really makes me sound shallow. Actually, I don't mean that they were ugly per se, my main problem with it was that the men were too old. I'm pretty immature; seriously, an older guy is the last thing I need. But worst of all, they weren't funny. I told Maureen going in, "The most important thing here is that we laugh." But I don't remember finding any of them witty. From the guy taking copious notes; to the guy staring at the women on both sides of me, longing to talk to them instead; to the several guys twice my age; I found myself wishing for the four minute bell on more than one occasion.

Oh, I just remembered one funny part. When we first got there, the three of us got a drink and were chatting near the front. This old guy (natch) started hovering. And I mean old, balding, in his 40s if not 50s, OLD. I could feel him looking at me and ignored him. That is, until he started tap-tap-tapping on my elbow. I turned to look at him, and he said, "Oh, I'm sorry, you're in a conversation," fully expecting me to ask him to join it. I did not, I just turned right back around and started talking to my friends again. A minute or so later, I get another tap-tap-tap on my elbow. Same guy. (OK, quick word to the wise, unless I'm obviously showing an interest in you, in the words of Clark Griswold in National Lampoon's Vacation, DON'T TOUCH.) "Do you know where I can get a ginger ale?" he asks. "At the bar." "Oh, uh, heh, I was making a joke because your name is Ginger." (We had on name tags.) I said, "I know, I get jokes like that quite a bit." Awkward moment. "Well, I was talking to my friends," and I turned back around again. I realize I could possibly have been a bit kinder, but I really was a bit annoyed at the interruption and the unsolicited tapping. Anyway, soon thereafter the dating began (he was not in the line of guys I dated), and then another mingling session. During this second mingling session, another guy was talking to Maureen, and says to me, "Oh, there must be two Gingers here, because one was really bitchy to my friend over at the bar earlier." "No, I don't think there are two Gingers here, I believe that was me." He felt kind of bad for sticking his foot in his mouth, but we all found it pretty funny.

Here are the three speed daters, right after I got called the "bitchy Ginger":

Yay us! At least we got out there and tried something new.