Dating Advice-Share yours!

My friend has a family member that is about to turn 16. She is thinking of ideas of stuff to give him in a Dating/driving kit. I gave her a bunch of ideas, but one that intrigued me was to put together a bunch of people's stories of their best and worst dates and compile them into a sort of dos and don'ts of dating thing using the stories. So, here is yet another chance to participate on my blog. Please, PLEASE share your best and worst dates here as a comment. Maybe if we get some good participation here, we can do a poll to vote on who had the worst date ever-that would be fun! I will think about this for a while and add my best and worst dates on the end of this post...check back soon for it!, and in the mean time-comment with your best and worst-feel free to write as long of comments as it takes!!!

Ok-a few bad dates (I actually have more bad kissing stories than bad date stories-and no, those bad kisses generally did not happen on dates...weird, but true).

1-My first date ever was to my school's Homecoming just a few days after I turned 16-my date was like 3 or so hours late picking me up and we hardly spent any time at the dance at all.

2-"The infamous 20-minute-date" I had a guy ask me out to go to the Manti pageant (pretty extensive date fyi-like a 2 hour drive or so to get there, then you watch a big pageant and drive 2-3 hour back.) I knew I didn't want to spend that much time alone with this guy as I had already been out with him a couple times, but he assured me that it wasn't just us-it was a whole group of our friends from the U going and it was more of a group date thing. So I agreed. He picked me up that night, said he had a great surprise for me, but wouldn't tell me. As we got just about 10 minutes from my house he tried to hold my hand which if you knew me, you know that was not a big deal, so I was ok with that, but I did make sure he knew it did not mean anything. He said "really, it doesn't? Cause if you don't like that, you won't like your surprise." I was like, "um...ok, what's this surprise?" He said "Well, it actually is just going to be the 2 of us, none of our friends are coming!" I was ticked and told him to take me home, and he did.

3-Once I had a guy trick me into going out with him by telling me it was a double date with my awesome friends Kirsten and Scot (who were married by then). I was ok with that, and would have gone out with the guy anyway if he had just asked, but the funny thing about this date is that he told me that Kirsten and Scot were just running late throughout the date and kept calling them and faking calls from them through the whole night, finally saying that he thought they would not make it altogether and that we should just go to the movies (after the dinner was over) without them. We did, the date was ok until the next day when I asked Kirsten and Scot what happened last night and they had no idea what I was talking about, they had never even talked to my date and they were at a wedding reception all night.

4-Once, actually ended up being the last date I went on before I started dating my Wesley, 2 guys from high school asked me out, one I had dated a lot before his mission and one I had never been out with. I said yes to the one I had never gone out with and told the other one I wasn't feeling well and rescheduled for later in the week. I was on my date, and the first half of the night went well, then we met up with some other people for a movie and the other guy was there alone. He ended up being the only one of the "other people" we were meeting that showed up, so I ended up in an awkward movie situation with my date, and the guy I had told I was too sick to go out with. Needless to say-the other date never happened...Yeah-does that story show karma slapping me in the face or what?!

One of my funniest dates was when Spencer tried to make me and Jon Woodbury (who were really just friends-I was already dating Wes at this point) kiss by holding our heads in his hands at the dinner table and yelling "Kiss boy and girl, Kiss" over and over again.

It is hard to pick a best date as I loved dating and count many many dates as great dates! I will say that I never have had a bad date with Wes and I think it is because we were both genuinely interested in each other and we are awesomely fun people anyway! I will type at least one specific great date after I go pick up Sol at the bus stop!

Thoughts from a former dater...Freshman year of college examined...

So, as mentioned in the last blog I just posted, my friend Laura wrote about her embarrassing moments this week. One of her embarrassing moments was about a blind date, and it got me thinking of the blunders of my dating life. There were a number of funny dating stories that came to mind. I just thought I would share a few for those of you that might be interested (this might be one of those long blogs...)



First I would like to just start out by explaining that my dating philosophy was simple: Date a LOT! And I shamelessly flirted and schemed to get asked out a lot. Most of my dating life, from when I turned 16 until I married Wes was spent dating a LOT-at least 2 dates a week I would say-no joke. SO, this basically just means that I have a plethora of dating stories to pull from. Those of you that are reading this that were in my Young Women's group on Omaha are already aware of the extensive pool of dating stories I have as you heard about a different one each and every dating lesson...That being said, enjoy some of my favorite dating blunders & funny stories. And those of you that I dated, or that double dated with me, or that know any other stories, feel free to mention them in comment form (I know this is opening a can of worms for Heidi, Andrea, Kirsten, and probably many others, but oh well).



Blunder 1: Not recognizing excellence?!



As a freshman in college, I was clueless sometimes. I was a small fish in a big pond. Nonetheless, my crazy tactics seemed to get me attention. I was taking a lot of generals that year and had huge classes with people from lots of different majors! In one history class, I sat down one day and this huge tall guy sat right next to me (no one sits right next to someone they don't know in a huge lecture hall). I kinda looked at him funny, and moved over a seat. He followed me and said in a thickly accented voice, "Hi!" Again I looked at him funny and said in my most annoyed voice "Um...hi." and moved over again. Again he moved over and said, "I play basketball." I looked at him and said, "That is a sad line! Does that seriously work?" Then I stood up and walked to the next row. He again followed and said "Really I play basketball! It's not a line. DO you like basketball?" At this point I was dumbfounded at this guys persistence in trying to use this retarded, obvious line on me and I kinds lit into him about how bad that line was and how he was going to have to try it on dumber girls to get it to work, then I told him I was going to be moving and that he should not follow me. He looked shocked and dumbfounded as I left. The next time we had class the teacher had the guy come up so he could congratulate him on the great job he had done over the weekend in helping the Utes win the big game. Turns out the guy was Hanno Möttölä ( a huge star that year, google him if you wonder who he is!). This is particularly mortifying if you know what a HUGE Utes fan I am , and if you know that I actually attended and was a fan of the basketball team. Whoops...



Blunder 2: Yet another Freshman moment...



SO, after the Hanno Möttölä incident, I took a LOT of harassment from my dad (if you know my dad, you can imagine...). Later in the basketball season, the Utes made it to the Final Four, and I got ticket to the games. My dad and I went to San Antonio to watch out Utes play, and had a blast. We were total nerd super fans and even went to the team hotel and hung out and went to the parties with the team and all that crazy fan stuff. We immersed ourselves in Utah Final Four madness and loved every minute. Fast forward about a week to me being back on campus. I was walking from a theatre class to my car. As I walked past the bookstore, I noticed this guy come out and he looked at me and I noticed he started following me in the parking lot. This freaked me out a bit as I was sure this was not someone I knew. About halfway across the parking lot, this guy kinda catches up with me and was like"Hey-didn't I see you in San Antonio?" I said snottily, "Um...no, I don't think so." He said, "I was sure I saw you there. Weren't you in San Antonio?" I said basically blew him off at that point. Then a friend of mine caught up with me and said "Wow, I had no idea you were friends with Andre Miller! That is awesome!" Yeah, Turns out that guy was, in fact, Andre Miller (THE superstar of the basketball team that year). Google him-he's still pretty famous...

Blunder 3: Missing the REAL Excellence

This is a true story! I have decided my life, in particular the story of me and Wes is a big romantic comedy of errors. It is one of those ones where the boy and girl keep almost meeting over and over until the end when they FINALLY bump into each other and eventually things work out ant they live happily ever after. Just a few near misses from our lives...

Miss one...Wes and I both lived in the University of Utah Village as small children, though we never crossed paths somehow. In my movie visions, I see us as toddlers, barely missing each other on the playground, I see his mom calling him in for lunch right as I walk out my door to play and things like that-I see me going to the same church house, but I am leaving as he is arriving...things like that.

Miss two...and this is the big one, Wes and I were in the SAME institute choir freshman year of college and never knew it. (Does anyone else notice that this blog makes me look like freshman year was a total bomb for dating?! No offense to Tim, Kevin, or anyone else I might have dated that year...) We went to practice at noon everyday together, hung out at the institute and performed together and NEVER noticed one another. I seriously did not believe Wes when he told me he was in choir with me, I thought i knew everyone. So, I pulled out my choir contact book, and sure enough, there he was...And another crazy part of that story was that at the end of the year, people did "last will and testaments" to leave to each other-usually funny little inside jokes and stuff. No joke, Wes and I are mentioned in the same sentence, our names right next to each other for dying our hair goofy colors that year...Evidently we had all the same friends and everything...NUTS!!

Miss three...meeting and not realizing the cosmic connection...OK, well, maybe we did notice the attraction, but it took us both a few months and a relationship each between meeting officially and our first date. I guess we just were distracted by other people momentarily, but thank goodness we fixed that!!

SO, this blog took a total turn, and ended up not getting in as many of my blunder of dating as I expected. It also only covers a small portion of my Freshman year and ignores all my other years of dating completely. It is also too long, so that being said, I will have to save this dating storied for a later segment. Feel free to comment and if there are anymore particular stories you feel should be aired on my blog in my next dating segment, feel free to comment and let me know...seriously, I could write a book about my dating life-it was fun, and crazy, and insane...