Ready, set...don't date

The bad news is it's Valentine's Day. The good news? You probably don't have a date.\nI could console you by reminding you of the freedom of being single -- that tonight, you can go out with friends, catch up on homework or finish writing that "Stargate: SG-1" fan-fiction piece. \nBut when you're lonely, none of that matters. Instead, you lapse into nostalgia about an obnoxious activity known as dating.\nIf you're being nostalgic, it's probably because you don't remember what dating is really like. Here's a refresher: It's comprised of a lot of sappy movies, slow restaurants and awkward conversations you can't wait to get out of. \nLast week, I went on a mission to cheer everyone up for Valentine's Day by collecting bad dating stories. I put an ad in the IDS asking for them, created an event on Facebook and went to downtown bars and asked IU students who were hanging out if they had any horrible dating experiences to share with WEEKEND.\nAt the bars, my requests were met with a mix of baffled looks and stories about hook-up attempts turned sour or "dates" with people they thought they were seeing who turned out to be seeing someone else. \nNot that there weren't plenty of tales worth retelling. Apparently, Bloomington is a great place for romance as long as your idea of it is poorly communicated one-nighters and plenty of alcohol.\nThe best story of my bar crawl, though, was told to me by Mitch Olsen, a 2007 IU alumnus who recently moved to St. Louis.\nHe and his friends have been trying to find women by hitting up the St. Louis bar scene. On one such venture, they went out to a bar where a band they wanted to see was playing,. Olsen convinced one of his friends to go near the stage and talk to a woman who looked "extremely attractive."\nOlsen explained: "The first thing he said was innocent enough -- 'Hey, you like the band? They're pretty good, huh?' And she ... said, 'Yes, they are really good. In fact, they play for my terminally ill son.'"\nOlsen said his friend followed the remark with an awkward silence, before responding, "Wow, that's a really nice band."\n"And then we left in shame," Olsen said. "St. Louis has been great with the co-eds so far."\nWe may not know how to make romantic connections with our fellow students, but hey, at least we have them. And of course, by mathematical law, every so often someone on this campus manages to figure out what a date is and go on one. \nOne of these students is senior James Broeker, who responded to my IDS ad with a story from last winter, when he had finally worked up the courage to ask a girl he had been talking to out on a date.\n"I was extremely excited and couldn't wait until that Friday," Broeker said in the e-mail. "This was not an ordinary date -- it required a good deal of my time, for I am at IU and she goes to school at the University of Evansville."  \n"I was finally en route to rendezvous with my date when disaster struck -- a phone call from the girl.  I hesitantly answered, and to my dismay she informed me she was not yet ready ...  half an hour later, I arrive at the University of Evansville and call her for directions to her place.  She replies she is still not ready to go, and that I should come up to her room."\nWhen he arrived at her room, she had just gotten out of the shower but said it wouldn't be much longer and kept getting ready.  \n"My first 'high maintenance' alarm goes off (at this point), but I shrug it off," Broeker said.\nWhile waiting for her, her ex-boyfriend called. He had been filling up her car at the gas station.\n"Her ex-boyfriend was still taking care of her. At this point, my second 'high maintenance' alarm goes off," Broeker said.\nFinally, an hour after Broeker arrived, she was ready to spend several hours talking about herself.\n"We leave for the restaurant, and for the entire trip she talks about how she thinks she is so cute and so smart, how everyone, even people she doesn't know, thinks she is so cute, and how even her professors think she is so cute.  She never once asked how I was or how my classes were going.\n" ... My final 'high maintenance' alarm was going off, and the abort foghorn was wailing at maximum capacity," Broeker said.\nBroeker called her later to tell her he wouldn't be seeing her again, only to have her respond that it wasn't a real date and they should pretend it didn't happen.\nOK, so that might not be the best example. But I swear, someone at IU has, in fact, been on a real date.\nSenior Kelli Claybourn told of the time she went to the house of a boy she was seeing her senior year of high school. His father was Iranian and served her Iranian food. Her digestive system wasn't taking well to the cultural diversity.\n"After I start to eat a little, his little sister says something like 'Good! I'm glad you're eating the food, his ex-girlfriend would never eat; we hate her.' Well obviously now I felt obligated to eat more."\nIn a great symbolic gesture about the value of dating, she soon found herself vomiting all over the bathroom, which was without toilet paper, and then vomiting again and again.\n"He promised me he wouldn't tell his family. But the next time they had dinner (something other than Iranian, thank God), his sister said, 'Hopefully you won't throw up this food.'"\nMaybe dating is dead. But if it is, we're mostly missing out on bad conversations and embarrassing situations. Happy date-free Valentine's Day.