(Mis)Adventures in Dating

Dear friends,

This post is dedicated to my most recent (mis) adventures in dating...well...lack thereof. You'll see why in a moment if you don't already follow me on Twitter ...

Let's begin at...well...the beginning.  I am a very socially awkward person. I have been for a while.  Some of you are saying "TRUTH!" and some of you don't know me like that...but trust me...I'm mostly awkward in my life. This is not a problem normally because I have learned to adapt in a variety of situations.  Much thanks to my parents for putting me in leadership camps and sports my whole life so I could learn to interact with people, learn to carry on a conversation, work with others and most importantly--learn when to stop talking after I've made things more weird.

This coping mechanism I have developed along the way has not been easy.  Many, many uncomfortable moments have been had.  The only way I learn is by making mistakes, though, so there is always an initial REALLY (painfully) unfortunate moment and then I learn how I should react the next time.  But....thanks to my mostly "vanilla" lifestyle--where I don't put myself in that many "brand new" situations by this point in my life--I have gotten away with not making as many awkward things happen in my adult life.

Which brings us to this current post.  I've been making a more conscious effort to step outside of the norm lately.  Be it the new year, or me realizing that I feel stuck in a rut, or whatever...but I have been stretching myself a little more than I have in the past.  I think that's the only way to truly grow. But man, it's been uncomfortable.

There were 3 weekends in a row that I went out every night to a different place downtown. I was trying new things and being around different people.  I saw people that I hadn't seen in a while, reconnected with some friends, and had strange conversations with new guys.  These conversations started fairly normal--where'd you go to undergrad, how did you get to Columbia, the usual.  Then, about 5 minutes into the conversation...it's just like I ran out of things to say. I should rephrase that.  I had PLENTY of things to say.  Just none of them would be socially acceptable to yell out into a crowded bar when you first meet someone.  For example, here is a transcript (almost verbatim) of this one dude's conversation with me:

Dude: Hey, just wanted to come introduce myself.  I saw you from across the bar. That's it, no line. Just wanted to come say hi.  (fairly normal, honest way to say hello)

Me: Hey, I'm Kathryn.  Do you live here in Columbia?

Dude: No, I actually graduated from Chapel Hill. The "Real Carolina"..but I live in another part of NC now.

Me: (insert joke about the "real Carolina" thing) I have a lot of friends that went to UNC! It's beautiful there.

Dude: So what do you do?

Me: I'm a teacher, I teach 4th grade. What about you?

Dude: That's awesome.  I actually went to pharmacy school and work at CVS now.

****here's where the whole back and forth, complimenting and feeding off comments gets weirdddddd****

Me: Really? Cool. (silence for about 10 seconds while the band blares in the background)  You know...I actually went to CVS this week.  I'm on antibiotics!

This would be the moment in a movie where the whole crowd is silent and you are the only one screaming out loud. Except, thankfully, that didn't happen.

The sweet guy continued to talk to me and we had very interesting (and somewhat ridiculous) witty banter back and forth for a few minutes, we danced a while, we had a drink....until...my weirdness took over.  We were dancing and I stopped the booty-dancing that he was trying to make happen and said out:

"SOMETIMES...I JUST WANT TO AIR GUITAR!" and inserted an air guitar motion as I proceeded to rock out to an air guitar.

Yeahhhhhhhh. Trainwreck. That's what happened from that moment forward. If I were watching this on TV I would be saying "No, no, no, NO NO NOOOO don't do it. You were doing so well!"

Things that I have learned from this? Well, for one... learning things about someone brand new (like I would do in a normal situation) become harder with a band and 50 people crowding around. So, skip the small talk and just enjoy dancing..NORMALLY..if the situation is right.  And another thing...perhaps unleashing all of my craziness at once is a little intense.  My true friends do think I'm a nut.  They do think I say awkward and strange things, but they know the heart behind it.  Strangers don't.  So rocking out to a fake air guitar might not be the smoothest way to attract a guy.

But you want to know the most important thing I learned that night?  I learned that I WANT a guy to not look at me and be thrown off by that...but to jump in, join me and rock out, too.  Or to pick up fake drumsticks and do some work on a fake drumset.  At this point, I'd settle for a tambourine or a harmonica.  Just..I want someone to enjoy not taking themselves too seriously.  And if that means I have to have misadventures in meeting guys, then I'll do it to find the right one.  Thankfully for me, the Lord has a good and perfect plan that I cannot see. But I guarantee one thing---there will be sweet music.

Potty Training and Disney.

When I was going through potty training, I was motivated under false advertisement.

One of the motivational tools my parents used was getting down on my level, looking me in the eyes and saying "When you get potty trained, we'll take you to Disney World!"

Somewhere deep down inside me this phrase must have made an impression, because this memory was triggered years later as my friends began sharing about their Disney experiences.  I asked my mom multiple times why we had not gone, and then one day she told the story of how they coaxed me into potty training.

This had become the run-on family joke for years when we got together--anytime we discussed Disney trips in my teenage years someone would always throw out the "We have to wait until Kathryn is potty trained" joke. Ha. Ha. Ha. It would be funny, except for the fact that we kept reusing that joke over and over and I HAD STILL NOT GONE TO DISNEY! Fail.

When I brought up the fact that I had, indeed, mastered the skill of using the facilities whenever I felt the urge, my parents and I could never find a suitable time to go.  Either I had soccer or cheerleading, or we were travelling for my brother's baseball games all summer, or my dad had to coach at some point.... and all this leads to me being a 24 year old fully functional toilet user who has yet to step foot in the happiest place on Earth.

My parents have gotten off the hook a little bit by sending me on Teens Westward Bound the summer after my Junior year of high school (where one day is spent in Anaheim, CA at DisneyLAND) but there are times when I still ask "So, when are we going to Disney World???"

All this leads up to me being able to say: WE ARE GOING TO DISNEY! This Spring Break, they are planning a 3 night, 4 day trip to Orlando where we will split our time between Disney World and Harry Potter World. And you want to know the FIRST thing I plan on doing upon entrance to the gates of this magical place? Find a restroom and prove once and for all that I am, indeed, a potty trained adult. Then...I'll go play all day like a child.

(photo cred: Google Images)