- The Archer
Doing My Taxes
As the old saying goes, there are two things you cannot avoid in life: death and taxes.
Luckily at my most recent speed dating experience I got to experience both of these.
I joined a speed dating event from a dating website that I have been using on and off since the Obama administration.
That's two administrations ago.
The event was for singles ages 24-37 which seems like a really wide range to me. Hashkafically we were defined as "Sabbath Observant."
Also, a very vague term.
So, in this event I could meet a 28 year old lawyer who shares my hashkafic beliefs, but, more likely I would meet a 37 year old father of two who observes shabbos the way I observe animals at the zoo: they're there. They're cute. When can I sit down?
The two shadchans who made this event sent us all the protocols ahead of time. This included the time of the event, the zoom link and password (the password was "Love" because as Jason Derulo (JASOOOOOOON DERUUUUULO) once said "Everybody's lookin for love wahh ohhhh.") They also told us we would be split into two breakout rooms and that we would each be asked a series of questions which everyone else in the breakout room would watch us answer and then see if they could imagine themselves brushing their teeth next to us.
I think if you need the questions ahead of time you should probably spend some time discovering yourself before you start dating. In high school I often had a hard time falling asleep because I had slept through the first four periods of the day so by 10 pm (my self imposed bedtime I made in an effort not to sleep through periods 1-4) I was WIRED. To calm myself enough to fall asleep I would go through all my top 5s in my head. I had a very rational fear at the time that someone would ask me my top my favorite films of all time and I wouldn't be able to immediately answer them. This has never been a problem in my real life. However, as I began to attend dating events I realized that I could answer basic questions about myself rather easily because I know myself. I know my stories, I know my likes and dislikes and I have found socially appropriate ways to share. I can't tell you if my old bedtime routine helped but it certainly didn't hurt. Now my bedtime routine is COLLAPSE IMMEDIATELY.
There are people out there who do not know themselves well and have issues with questions. For some people you can be like "name a food" and they'll scream "ARMPIT!" and have an anxiety attack that lasts for 6 weeks.
Silly people. Don't you know there are far better things to have anxiety over? For example, EVERYONE SECRETLY HATES YOU.
Anyway, I was given the questions ahead of time in order to dread the event going in.
They included things like: If you won the lottery what is the first thing you would buy and where would you give your meiser? What is the craziest job you've ever had or the craziest part of your current job? Who is your favorite living Rabbi and why? What's on your bucket list? What's your most valuable possession?
As you can see there are two general themes:
Asking a real question (what do you do to make money so that we don't starve to death, do you have daas torah in your life, etc.) in a backwards way. I am not a backwards girl, I would prefer that before each date I get a summary of the person, where they are in life, what they do, almost like a resume. Wait....
Mitzvah Baiting-a term I coined for when a question/situation is posed that allows the answerer to show how many mitzvos they do. I am all for mitzvos, I just think they should come out naturally. Rather than asking my date "Do you give meiser and where and do you round up or down?" I simply see if he says thank you to the waitress, if he leaves a tip, if he talks about going home a few days early for Pesach to help out. This event instead asks us to brag about the charities we day dream about and how many hours a week we spend listening to shiurim.
Also-bad year to ask our favorite living Rabbi since everybody's favorite living Rabbi died this year (not that one. No, the other one. No not him. Getting warmer. Jeez this has been a terrible year.)
With all of our answers prepared the 15 guys and girls entered the Zoom at 9 pm EST.
Here is what the guys looked like:
(I wanted a GIF of Jonah Hill in Megamind but there aren't any. He basically plays himself so imagine this last GIF animated in the style of the first two and you get the idea.)
Megamind is a fabulous and hilarious film. But never while watching it did I think "I just want to marry a guy who looks like these animated characters-who are supposed to be hideous-coming to life."
But, it seems that's who is left.
The girls obviously looked like this:
One girl had technical issues with her computer so both shadchans took about 5 minutes to help her while we all watched. It was my dream Tuesday night.
Then, we went around and said a fun fact about ourselves. One guy said "I don't know how fun this is, but I used to be a mechanic." the Shadchan responded "That is a fun fact for a Jewish man." I sense some Jewboy emasculation going on here.
One guy said his fun fact is he likes to make analogies. The Shadchan says she hopes to hear some. Here is one I made up:
The SATs and blank are both torturous but at least the SATs get you somewhere.
If you guessed the blank is this event you get a 1600.
One Shadchan warned us to be aware of brain confusion when meeting someone on Zoom.
Is there another type of confusion?
Oh, gender confusion. Yeah, that might be a problem in this group.
We also went around and said our favorite thing to drink on an airplane.
Guys I had such a great dirty answer for this one and I didn't say it so Hashem called and said I can go to heaven now but also email me separately if you guessed it and I will let you know if you are right.
Did you know if you are 24-37 and still single it is because you haven't spent enough time caring about what others drink on planes and if they like Coke, Diet Coke or Sprite? That 19 year old on SimchaSpot spent the entire flight back from seminary watching what other people drank. That's why she's married.
Then, they split us off into our two Kindergarten classrooms to answer the questions.
I was quickly able to eliminate the 8 boys in my breakout room for a few reasons: already dated (2), kept interrupting other people to add more to his answer when his answer wasn't that interesting to begin with though it made him laugh like a 5 year old who just heard the word poop, lisped so badly I couldn't actually understand them (3), wore a too tight white shirt with the buttons open to his breast bone so we could see all his chest hair and then closed the buttons while answering his question so we could all watch, works as a teacher, works as a nurse, works as a social worker, said he would give all the lottery money to charity, has been a baalei teshuva for three weeks and counting, mentioned his yeshiva/rebbe 18 times in 30 seconds, has not stopped grinning at the camera for 45 minutes and is making me wonder-oh gosh. He's right behind me isn't he?
One guy said for his favorite charity he would either give to the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty towards Animals and Yeshiva Bochurs who have the same brain power as zoo animals) or the NSA (those guys that track our phones. I didn't know they took donations. If you give them a donation do you think they let you hack into my phone camera and watch me shower? Because newsflash: unless you want to hear Taylor Swift's entire discography in falsetto you do not want to watch me shower.)
You may not know this about me, but occasionally I lack a drop of self control. I have been working very hard to insert more self control into my life and to be really, really sure that it is time to blow up a date before I mention Panda Sex. Like, at least waiting until I'm at the restaurant to say Panda Sex.
I had prepared myself for this event, writing down some goals and talking it out with mental health professionals before. I wanted to take the opportunity to work on myself.
But the guys....the idea that this was my selection pool hurt me in my core. I could make fun of all of them to their faces as I am usually wont to do, or I could distract myself by doing something else on the side while still semi participating.
Luckily, my W-2 had arrived that day along with 400 helpful emails from different online tax filing companies offering to help me file my taxes. I clicked on my favorite email (the one that included my username and password from last year because G-D knows I don't remember) and began to fill out my taxes.
By the end of the night I had received 6$ back from the government (IM RICH!!!!!) and had crossed that off of my to-do list.
Who says you don't accomplish anything while single?
The next day I was sent the profiles of all the guys to see if there was any I was interested in. I discovered one of them had a profile picture with his ten year old daughter.
You guys, I'M STILL SOMEBODY'S TEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER (though, don't worry, on my taxes I did not mark myself as a dependent.) I can't marry someone with a ten year old and then raise that ten year old when I am still ten! What will happen when we go to my parents and I make my mom make me toast because I don't understand how our new toaster works and I refuse to learn-will my step daughter just lose all respect for me? She won't understand that you still get to be ten until you are thirty because SHE IS ACTUALLY TEN.
I couldn't avoid doing my taxes this year, that was inevitable. I'm just glad I had a little entertainment while I did them.
I wish I could avoid the feeling like death that comes after these things-that there's no one left for me, that I will die alone or with a very charitable niece or nephew at my side, that I am just as bad/nerdy/ugly/socially awkward as these guys and that's why I'm not married.
Feeling those things is not productive for me. So I am going to stop the speed dating. If Hashem has someone out there for me, He'll have to find another way to send him. Maybe call Amazon, they're good at delivery.
And for those of you wondering, I made up nice appropriate answers to the questions. But here are my fun answers that I also thought of:
If you won the lottery what is the first thing you would buy and where would you give your meiser?
A New York City apartment where I could live alone so I could be naked 24/7 and very good blinds for the windows. I would give my meiser to the government on the condition that they go back to being quiet so I don't have to think about them.
What is the craziest job you've ever had or the craziest part of your current job?
The part of my job where I sit in my bed for an hour and have anxiety that I'm going to get fired-since it's part of my workday I get paid for it and then I get taxed for it.
Who is your favorite living Rabbi and why?
The Rebbe because since he never died (or so I have heard) he is the only Rabbi we could actually call living. Also the Kosher Sex rabbi because LOL. He's really living it up.
What's on your bucket list?
Two major things:
Ask a current or ex-president what the sexual tradition for inauguration night is (you know they have one and you know it's super secret.)
Touch Mila Kunis's hair. I've wanted to do this since I watched Black Swan because it looks SO SOFT. She did a commercial for Tresemme so I started using Tresemme and I can guarantee you that Mila Kunis does not use Tresemme.
What's your most valuable possession?
Probably my body. My kidneys could do well on the black market. I used to research how much a night with a virgin went for on the black market in case I was ever unemployed (10-25K) but turns out they only want virgins 25 and younger so that's not valuable anymore. But I still have a nice heart and lungs BH and those are worth a ton.