Harry Potter and the First Date

Back when I was a young woman, as opposed to now when my knees hurt constantly, I figured I would marry one of the first guys I ever dated. Little did I know, I would get a lot more than that. I'd discover my love for travel and planning, learn to help friends make their weddings and begin living out the romcom 27 Dresses, find new hobbies that would become like air to me, and write a dating blog that has helped me to transform my woes into opportunities. I'm going to start examining some of my past dates in a more in depth way. I have loads and loads of fodder for this and I think it will help me to learn a few things. Hopefully it will help you to laugh a bit. Mostly, I want my anecdotes to be quick, well thought, and funny when people ask me for crazy date stories at shabbos tables. Writing them out will help with this. That is also why I have memorized all the Royal, Kardashian, and Trump grandchildren*. Shabbos table discussions.

I'm taking you way back in time to when I was 2 days shy of my twentieth birthday and still believed that because I fit some of the standards of modern beauty and have a great personality (please refer to my love of Panda sex facts and being able to name all the grandchildren listed below to affirm this) that I would be married off pretty quickly. Logic! The fallacy of anyone in the world of shidduchim.

A friend suggested to me at an event we were both staffing that she thought I may be a good match for the boy she had recently gone out with on her very first date. I had my shidduch resume ready (I love resumes, I think they are fascinating. All types of resumes. I made a resume for my seventeen your old brother because I was bored. I had a shidduch resume ready since I graduated high school) and sent her off to make the match calling upon the friend who had set her up in the first place to help her.

The reason we played telephone so much as children was to prepare us for dating.

But then, why did we play belts?

Gulp.

Eventually when both sides had telephoned their friend to tell her friend a yes, the boy (we'll call him #1) called me up. We were deciding where to go on our date and he asked if I was a Harry Potter fan.

Do I breathe oxygen?

He told me there was a Harry Potter discussion group focusing on the second book, Chamber of Secrets, this time no pun intended, at a bar near my dorm. I asked him if we could meet away from my dorm, because, at the time, I thought that if my peers were to see me on a date I would get swallowed up by a firey pit in the sidewalk. He agreed and said we would meet by the OHB. I was too shy to ask what that was and hung up.

Oh shoot. I had no idea where we were supposed to meet. That could be potentially problematic. Frantic googling of nearby NYC landmarks commenced with 3 of my roommates until I realized he meant to say the globe by the 60th street subway stop.

If we were going for communication in our relationship, we were off to a great start.

I learned a few things from this date

1. Never take a date somewhere where the event will far outshine the date itself. #1 tried to talk to me, quite a few times. I told him to be quiet cause I wanted to hear the nerds talk about Harry Potter more

2. Do we think Snape encouraged Malfoy to shoot a snake at Harry so that Snape could see if Malfoy was the heir of Slytherin, and then was surprised when Harry seemed to be the one? Or do we think Snape figured that Harry could speak Parsletongue? Or did he think it was someone else in the room and Harry vs Malfoy was just Snape using Malfoy to bully Harry and get the snake out there simultaneously? How did the snake know to go for Justin, the next one to be petrified? Did the basilisk mark Justin with its pee?

3. #1 was quite tall and I had to jog to keep up. That's about when I decided I needed to date in sensible shoes or I could die.

4. Saying no after one date is such a feeling of relief it's like when you pee after hours and hours of holding it in

5. Sometimes you will tell a person something about yourself and they will immediately forget it because they are focusing so hard on being a good listener. I told #1 I hate when people offer me their coats because I knew exactly how cold it was before I left the house and I chose what to wear and I want to live with that choice. Not two minutes later a gust of wind blew and he offered me his coat.

I'm glad it didn't work out, and I'm glad I heard the following summer (1.5 years later) that he got engaged. I learned some things about how I wanted to date and eventually I became a person who could date confidently no matter who was watching, occasionally turning to wave at my roommates gathered in the window. I learned that someone suggesting a Harry Potter discussion for the first date is nice, but there is no such thing as serendipity. I learned to assert my needs and never, ever be quiet so as not to cause bother. Honestly? I'm going to cause some bother either way. Eventually I would learn to drop the long games of telephone and just text men directly to arrange things.

But mostly I learned that I was on a roller coaster, one I wouldn't see the exit to for awhile. Buckle up, it's all up then down then up then down then up then down then up then down from here.

*Royal grandchildren are in age order: Peter, Zara, William, Harry, Beatrice, Eugenie, Louise, James Great grandchildren are Savanna, Isla, Mia, George, Charlotte, Lena, Louis, Archie, Fetus in Eugenie's tummy

*Kardashian grandchildren by mother/Rob: Mason, Reign, Penelope, North, Saint, Chicago, Psalm, True, Dream, Stormi

*Trump grandchildren by Trump parent: Kai, Donald III, Spencer, Tristan, Chloe, Arabella, Joseph, Theodore, Eric II, Carolina

I am working on the Biden grandchildren but Hunter has 3 baby mamas so it is confusing.