Speed Dating

A year or so ago I tried speed dating. While I could say that it was really a friend of mine who wanted to try speed dating and wanted a wingchick, which is true, I’m not going to hide behind that excuse. I wanted to try speed dating.

So here’s how it worked: all of us girls sat at numbered tables, and the guys rotated around the room. We had six minutes to talk, a little bell rang, and the guys had one minute to get to the next table. We all had little sheets to write down the names of the people that we met and check yes or no. A couple days later, for each match was made (meaning both people checked yes), both people got emailed each others’ contact information.

Immediately I discovered one of the downfalls of speed dating: the age range. I decided to go on the 20-somethings night, thinking that most people, like myself, would be on the far end of that spectrum. No 21 year-old in this college town is going to find it difficult to meet women and resort to speed dating.

Wrong.

I found myself sitting across from an undergraduate. An undergraduate! This guy was living in the dorms, no doubt his high school graduation only a slightly dimmed memory. Okay…four and a half minutes to go.

Which was my first discovery of the benefits of speed dating: you can talk to anyone for six minutes. Someone with terrible conversation skills? Tell them a five-minute story. Someone droning on about themselves? Don’t worry: a bell is going to ring soon and they have to go away. I wanted to take that bell with me.

The night I went there were a few more women than men, so occasionally I was left to twiddle my thumbs. Or go to the bathroom. Or chat with the guy who plans these events.

I asked him if he ever did same-sex speed dating events. He said not yet, which led me to momentarily dream of the first bisexuals-only speed dating service. (Everybody gets six minutes with everybody!) He also told me that most of the guys that participate will check yes for every girl.

“Really? The majority?” I asked. “About 60 percent,” he answered. Which means that 60 percent of guys want to know how many women said yes to them, or thought it was worth at least a date with anyone they met, or their standards were really that low. Or some combination thereof.

If I wasn’t already picky, this made me extremely so. In fact, as counter-intuitive as it sounds, I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone I connected with.

Wrong again.

I found myself in a very interesting conversation with a cute, spiky-haired, much more appropriately aged guy. We seemed to have skipped over introductory conversations and went straight to discussing where we’re at with our lives and what we hope to accomplish. The conversation was so interesting that even though our six minutes ended, we happened to be at the halfway point in the evening and had a ten minute break, which we continued to talk straight through. In fact, by the time we had reconvened, I had to tell him that as much as I enjoyed talking to him there was someone waiting for his seat. He hadn’t heard the bell.

As he got up he smiled and said that it was nice talking to me, and as he walked to the next table he did the “one last look over the shoulder” move and locked eyes with me for a moment.

“Yahtzee,” I thought. “Huh. I guess I will check yes for one of the guys after all.”

So you can imagine my surprise when I got the email a couple days later that said I had made no matches. I was stunned. I thought there must have been a mistake. I considered emailing the event planner and telling him that he was wrong. I mean, I got the one last look over the shoulder!

A bunch of possible scenarios leapt to mind, aided by friends who agreed this made no sense. But I will never know and he was lost to the dating ether. Turns out that knowing someone’s first name and their views on life doesn’t make them google-able.

So after all of that, why am I considering going speed dating again? Eh, why not? It’s just another way to put myself out there. And I can talk to anyone for six minutes.