Phone Tag

Phone dates. I used to consider those first dates. Now the rule is you haven't dated me unless I have been able to smell you (and you me of course. Equality.) Before the age of Zoom and Facetime we out-of-towners used to just do an hour or two on the phone and see how that went before either side would commit to a "real" first date.

I had this twice in 2016. Boy #13 was out west and Boy #15 was down south. I was out of town for Boy #13 as well, but had moved back to New York for Boy #15, so I was doing a nice thing by considering an "out-of-town-guy."

You may remember that these were not my first phone dates-learn more in Minion Conclusion https://thearcher13.wixsite.com/mysite/post/minion-conclusion .

Boy #13 I call Hyper Squirrel. Have you ever seen Over the Hedge?

What about Ice Age?

That was the energy this guy gave off on the phone. He. Would. Not. Stop. Talking. I'm not sure if he ever learned my name. I learned about the trip to Japan he took with his non Jewish college friends though. Sounded nice but also insane.

Mostly I learned about the floor of my closet where I was sitting to talk to him. Have you ever sat on the floor of a closet? It is fascinating. There are bits of carpeting that aren't laid down properly. There are perfectly preserved dead bugs. There are buttons from dresses you wore in 2007. It is like a museum.

Or at least that's how it felt while Hyper Squirrel blabbed on and on.

So, I didn't feel the need to fly five hours to his location and experience him in real life. But, due to the lack of dates I had that year and the amount of time I invested into this date, Hyper Squirrel gets to be #13.

I'll skip #14 for now. #15 was also a phone date, this time because he was in a southern state and I was in New York. Having been on two hour long phone dates, I assumed this would only be an hour.

It was two.

I was so bored. I just remember staring at the ceiling thinking "how did I get here?" And we will call this guy Despacito for two reasons

1. It means slowly and our date was slowwww

2. That summer, Justin Bieber's song Despacito was everywhere. This boy thought he might impress me by telling me he knew spanish and could translate the song. I told him it was pretty obvious what the song meant. He told me a very literal translation-that Despacito means slowly.

I said "You might know how to translate that literally, but I don't think you have any idea what you are actually saying."

That's how we do it down in Puerto Rico, correct?

After two hours of being badly mansplained song lyrics, I told the boy that I shared the room with my roommate and she had just gotten home so I had to go because of privacy.

I had my own room. My apartment-mate had been home all day as she was job hunting. Sometimes you need to escape.

So that was the end of my phone date era as I was now properly esconed in New York where I could date all the New York boys again.

Oh goodie.

I don't count the phone dates that don't go anywhere anymore. In Corona times there were just too many. I've also learned better how to end them-gymnastics didn't work on Despacito so I developed Panda Sex.

I stopped caring as much about each individual date. Before this point they all felt really important. Now it started to feel like a mass, when you ad a teaspoon to a mass, no one notices.

This helped me not to hurt as much. But it also made me harder, more archer, less prey.

l've seen both of these guys resumes still floating around. We are all out here, waiting for our turns.

But I don't think my turn starts with a game of phone tag.