The Dating Age Formula

Every year it's the same story. Around August I start looking forward to when school starts and I can increase my dating pool with new college hotties. And like every year, I swear there are only freshman girls to be found. Even though there were like a bajillion the year before, those girls(now sophmores, aka, optimal dating age) are nowhere to be found. It's like they all decided to go on study abroad to the moon and  leave only a few girls behind on earth to prepare the current freshmen class for their own space voyage.

The weirder thing is that freshman girls aren't looking any younger, unlike their boy counterparts, who I swear come shorter and scrawnier every year. It's deceiving when freshman girls come fully developed physically when they're not anywhere close maturity wise. They need that first year of college life before they're experienced enough to be integrated into the dating pool.

Ok, so I lied. I don't necessarily agree with the above paragraph. I really do believe there are many mature  frosh girls out there ready and waiting to be dated. But sadly, I'm terrified to death of what that might do to my social life.

Last year I was 22 and really had no qualms about dating freshman girls. The only downside I could see was that none of them seemed to have a car, therefore, always needing me to come pick them up. After turning 23, I really didn't notice anything had changed until Jaron, our youngest roommate, decided to bring over a few froshes for a game night. I didn't mind, due to the fact that all five girls were attractive and flirtatious. One of the cuter brunettes, Lindsey, caught my attention immediately with her five star smile and it wasn't long before our witty banter turned into cuddling on the couch watching the movie "Hitch." After the girls left, Lindsey started texting me. I decided to take a leap of faith and invited her over to my parents' house for an extended family BBQ for the following day. She quickly said yes, so the next morning, I  picked her up and drove to my parents house for the festivities.

Now before I continue, let me explain a few things. My family is usually pretty cool when I bring a girl home, but they do like to give me a hard time every once in a while when the oppertunity presents itself. Especially my sister Kelli, who had just graduated from high school and was headed up to UVU. A few day prior, I had given her the older brother talk about how freshmen girls should date freshmen guys and to hold off on dating RM's till the next year. Upon arrival, I quickly introduced Lindsey to the fam, and then founds seats by Kelli. I listened to the girls chat away while I dug into my hotdog and only froze when Kelli asked Lindsey where she was going to school. Choking on my hot dog, I tried grabbing Lindsey's attention by....... choking on my hot dog, but to no avail. It was too late. All I could do was close my eyes in terror while wishing I knew how to make louder choking noises. Lindsey explained how she had just finished high school was about to start college. My sister Kelli's face lit up with pure, mischevious delight and exclaimed, "Oh my word, me too!" And though she was still talking to Lindsey, she turned to me meaningfully and said,"We're the same age!"

That's when it finally hit me. I had just crossed an invisible, yet very apparent social barrier. I had never felt so.....weird. As I drove Lindsey back to her house, I started to mull over in my mind what  made this age gap socially unacceptable, along with, how could I keep this same faux pas from happening to me again.

After getting home, I went whimpering to El Conquistador and Chase and explained my dilemma hoping to gain some wisdom and comfort. After a lengthy discussion, we stumbled upon this brilliant piece of dogma:
The Dating Age Formula (DAF)

(His Age/2)+7=Her Minimum Age 

or if you're a girl,

(Her Age-7)x2=His Maximum Age


Besides being a brilliant equation, 16 is the lowest number you can use and still have the formula make sense, which also happens to be the recommended minimum Mormon dating age.  If you plug my age, 23, into the equation, you get (23/2)+7=18 and a half. Rounding up you get 19. That's probably why my girl blunder wasn't obvious at first. Lindsey was just out of my range since she had barely turned 18.

Although extremely accurate, I'm sure there are people out there who have found exceptions to this formula. Take my good friend Rianna for example. Our freshman year of college, she went off and married a 29 year old by the end of her first semester. To be honest, I'm still creeped out by that; but heck, they made it work. All in all, this equation functions as a strong guideline for those who want to avoid the phrase "robbing the cradle." And although I stand firmly behind this dating code and have no intentions of breaking it, it won't stop me from facebook stalking the crap out of a couple of hot freshman girls I've seen walking around campus. This also happens to raise the question: why does every female freshman create a photo album labeled, "College Life"....? Really girls........

Plastic Girl Syndrome

I ended up going out to lunch with my new "best friend" Kristie. The words-- hell, soggy bread, and stale urine, all bring back fonder memories to me than this lunch date does. I picked her up and decided that we should go eat at Apollo Burger because neither one of us had tried it yet. Right from the first it was awkward. Since technically it wasn't a "date," due to the fact that we are "best friends," I felt absolutely no obligation to pay for her burger. I quickly ordered, paid with plastic and then stepped aside. She also ordered, paid with plastic, and then got DENIED.(Hey that rhymes!) Her credit card wasn't accepted. She then played the whole, "What? It got denied?" routine that everyone does when they don't want the person by them to know how poor they really are. I know the routine better than most due to the multiple times I've had to do it myself. So trying to save us from anymore theatrics I quickly just gave the cashier my card while listening to Kristie's choruses of , "That's so weird" "Why does my bank always do this?" And "Don't worry, I'll buy next time."

After finding an empty booth, I casually asked her how life was going. Just one of those things you say out of common courtesy/reflex to which you just want the response, "good." Oddly, She took it as, "Please, please tell me all your drama from the last 3 years of your life." So with much fervor, she gave me the complete drama and break-up story with each of her last FIVE boyfriends. Maybe it's just me, but listening to a girl talk about SEVEN of the THIRTEEN break-ups with her last boyfriend isn't exactly a turn-on. I mean, wow, talk about a slow learner.

It's like one of those cliche jokes about screwing in light bulbs.

 "How many break-ups does it take for Kristie to learn some common sense?"

"I dunnno, how many?"

"Well, at least 12, because I'm still dating her!"

And though I tried listening for the course of an hour, I could not for the life of me find any of what she was saying interesting, and started to wonder how could ANYONE find this garbage interesting.

So rather than listen to her babble on, I tuned her out and started having a fun little conversation with myself.

Matt: Why am I still allowing her to go on like this?

Matt: Because she's hot.

Matt: How did she ever get any of those boys to stick with her when she is always rambling on like this?

Matt: Because she's hot.

Matt: Yeah.... She is pretty hot, isn't she...

Matt: Yeah.....

Matt: Damn

Then it clicked. Kristie has probably been hot for most of her eligible life and has always had guys fawning over her for no other reason than her good looks. Thus, She was never forced to develop the necessary skills that are required to have a good, intelligent conversation. On the other hand, as a gangly high schooler, I had to practice and refine, develop and master, what would later become disarming social weapons when I finally grew into a more proportionate body. Maybe, later on in life, Kristie will get the opportunity to learn these crucial skills. But until that car crash happens, She's a victim of what I call, "Plastic Girl Syndrome."(PGS)

My own extensive studies have shown that cheerleaders, models, and even some male athletes are the most susceptible to PGS. Symptoms include but are not limited to, mindless conversation, a confused look when the conversation isn't about her, and the driving need to turn everything into a dramatic soap opera("Like OMG!")

It's a difficult thing to cure due to the fact that,

a) The victim is usually unaware of her condition
b) Unless she has some scarring incident, their condition only worsens
3) People often do not want to cure them due to the fact  they are a great source for dumb blonde jokes

There you have it folks. PGS is everywhere and ruining proper social interaction every day. It's time to rise up and help those we love.... (to look at) and get rid of PGS for once and for all. How? I don't have the slightest idea. But if any of you have any techniques, please, please tell me. That way I can cure Kristie-- because dang that girl is hot....

Thank you, Dictionary.com App. Thank you.

El Conquistador

So we went for a walk, and after a couple blocks of small talk, she suggested we get to talking about what she requested the talk for in the first place.

I was expecting her to say something like, "I like you. Are you interested?" And then I'd say no, and she'd try to convince me that I was, bringing up plenty of examples of that time I texted her or that time I told her she was fun, or whatever.

But instead, she turned to me and said, "You are so rude to me."

Whaaaaat???

That's actually what I said in real life, too. "Whaaaaaaat?" Kind of like the minion in Despicable Me.



Ha ha ha! That's hilarious.

Anyway, she follows it up telling me she was serious, and that she's never met anyone who has been so rude to her, and that she feels like I'm nice to everyone else but am a total jerk to her.

As evidence, she cited the text I sent her to reschedule our date and the following conversation.

I was totally taken aback by that, and defended myself adamantly.

It was a crazy long conversation so I won't go into all of it here, but I do want to share something I thought was funny.

Throughout the entire conversation, she was super negative about everything, telling me she thought Happy Valley was a big fake bubble where everyone is naive (Even though she's from here. Psh.) and how her boss is an unethical idiot and this and that, and it was just not fun to listen to.

So once I'd had enough I told her to stop being so pessimistic. Then she looked at me with almost hatred in her eyes and said, "I'm not pessimistic. I'm jaded."

I told her they were synonyms, and she put her hands on her hips and disagreed. I wasn't about to give into her so I told her they were basically the same thing again, to which she again said she wasn't unpleasant and negative, just jaded.

So I pulled out my phone and opened up the Dictionary.com app to settle it. I typed in jaded, scrolled through the definitions, and saw these beautiful, beautiful words:

Jaded
[jey-did]

1. a worn-out, broken-down, worthless, or vicious horse.
2. a disreputable or ill-tempered woman.

I could not have engineered a better set of definitions for that very moment in time. Thank you, Dicionary.com. Thank you so so much.

Confessions from a Mormon Bachelor Pad

While I'm at it, I want to address something that many people reading this will ponder deeply and often, especially while enduring long commutes, taking showers, or riding horses through the golden plains of the Midwest at sunset.

We are aware of and are semi-admirers of the Mormon Bachelor Pad blog. We've patterned Datenomics after MBP to some extent, though we differ astronomically in our approaches to dating.

For our fellow Mormon Bachelor Pad admirers and semi-admirers, we hope to provide entertainment in their absence.

For our non-MBP admirers... we hope to provide entertainment and masculine insight into the world of dating.

Welcome to Datenomics.

You ackst me to acks you out!

El Conquistador

One of the side effects of incessantly flirting with everyone is that girls get frustrated with me fairly often.

Occasionally, one will get so frustrated that she'll say something like, "El Conquistador, maybe you've noticed, or maybe you're stupid, but I really like you. Are you interested or not." (I know that was a question and should end with a question mark, but the way they always say it sounds more like a period-terminated sentence.)

And then I laugh and say something like, "I haven't given it much thought, to be honest. I've always thought of you as a friend... but you shouldn't feel bad. This happens all the time." And then I laugh some more (because I think I'm hilarious), and she experiences major cognitive dissonance because even though I just told her I wasn't interested, she can't help but think I was cute while I was doing it.

A few weeks ago, I got a text from a girl that said something like, "Jeff, you should ask me out. But don't do it if you're not interested. I'm done playing the game, so if you don't want to just tell me and we can be friends."

First of all, she's a liar. Everyone knows that it's nearly impossible to "just be friends" after a girl goes out on a limb to tell you she's interested and you climb up the tree and chainsaw the limb off while she's still on it.

Second of all... I said Ok.

So we planned a date for Tuesday night. I wan't particularly interested, but I wanted to get to know her better and thought it would be fun to take her out.

Tuesday rolls around and like four hours before the date, I find out I have to be at a meeting. Have to. One of those meetings. So I texted her these words:

Me: Hey Jen, I have a super mandatory meeting tonight for my calling - we're going to have to reschedule

I was kind of expecting her to respond something like, "Ok" or, "Sounds good" but instead she didn't text back at all.

So about a week later I sent her a text to follow up and this rather entertaining conversation happened:

Me: Jen, where'd you disappear to?

Her: Really?

Me: Yeah

Her: I don't know what u r talking about

Me: Well I don't know what you're talking about. Actually I'm not talking about anything, I asked you a question

Her: It was a weird question.

Me: Ok... So are you going to answer it?

Her: How can i if i dont even know what u r talking abt?

Me: Ok, this isn't going anywhere. How's life?

Her: Fine, busy hows urs?

(I fell asleep)

Her: Well for being so demanding that i answer ur quesiotn ur not very good at answering mine...

Me: Ha ha ha sorry. Life rocks! Where do you live now?

(Blah blah blah small talk small talk, then this)

Her: Yesterday i didnt undertand why 8 days after blowing me off you were A. Bothering to text me, B. Asking y I disappeared, when u were the one that vanished tues. & C. Just candidly think that everything is dandy when the last text i had recieved was not nice.

(Here it comes!!!)


Her: Can i talk w/ u face to face? I just really need to get some stuff cleared up.

Whoa. This is crazy. Seriously, you should have been there. We set a time to talk and then the really good stuff started. I'll write a different post about it soon, because one piece of it is hilarious.

But how crazy that after I'm trying to be a nice guy, asking her out, trying to reschedule instead of just blowing her off, and continuing to talk to her even though sometimes it feels like someone's giving me a sponge bath with steel wool, she's so unhappy?!

So I think we have three options for the moral of this story:

1. Never ask out girls that ask you to ask them out
2. If you wind up with a schedule conflict, just disappear instead of trying to work out a different time
3. Hakuna matata

Personally, I like number three.

This... Is a Really Bad Idea

El Conquistador

I was unfolding the mysteries of dating to a couple girls yesterday in our apartment when my roommate walks in the room and says,

"You are so dumb. Your dating strategies don't work! I'll bet that if you spent a few days observing the girls you know, then picked 10 of them and went on three or four dates with each one, you'd find your wife."


Oh. It's on.

So I'm now making my preliminary list, from which I'll choose 10 girls to ask out at least three times each. My guess is that this will get very volatile very quickly, because most of the 17 girls on my current list are all in my ward, and some are even roommates.

But I'm a bit torn. On the one hand, I love dating experiments and winning roommate debates.

On the other, I'm setting myself up to be the most hated man in the ward within a matter of weeks.

I don't know. Leave me a comment and tell me what you think. Right now I'm planning on it, in  fact my first date is tonight, but I'm not 100% convinced that this is a good idea...

Girls just wanna have fun.....at my expense

So, even though Kaylee is definitely the girl that is currently making my heart do somersaults in my chest, I wouldn't be a man if I didn't have a few other women on my mind.


Kristie

• Blonde
• Amazing body
• Likes Indie/accoustic music(my favorite too)
• Did competitive cheer for 10 years
• Amazing body
• Goes to school far up north but is down here working till January
• Amanda's new roommate
• Overall score: 8.

Because I am interested in dating this girl, or at the very least, making out with this girl, I've been trying my best to make this girl fall madly infatuated with me. And for awhile, I thought I had succeeded. She quickly said yes to any date I asked her on and would always text me first. When she added me on Heytell, I figured things were getting serious. So imagine my disappointment, while trying to get a better feel of how to go about my next move, I was quickly stopped by Amanda.
This is the gist of our conversation.

Me: So, is it just me or is Kristie pretty much into me?

Amanda: We actually talked about you today.

Me: And?

Amanda: And she said that you're like her best friend down here.

Me: Oh crap, like non-dateable best friend?

Amanda: Yeah.... I just don't want you to get the wrong impression when she starts calling or texting you all the time....

Me: Crap, crap, crap.

Then, to add insult to injury, I got a heytell message from her today on my way to work.

Kristie: Matt! I'm on my way home from work and realized I haven't seen you for like a day. We need to change that. Let's go grab lunch or something if you're free

Me: Dang it! I wish I could but I'm on my way to work. How's tomorrow?

Kristie: Wide open, so if you're down, let's do it.

Me: Sweet, I'm down. I have go to work later but we can do something before that like breakfast or.... oh wait, I forgot you like to sleep in. Yeah, we can do lunch.

Kristie: Ok....if you want me to get up, I will get up for you. Because I have a feeling we're going to be best friends by the time I leave to go up to school.

Me: Wow, I'm just all aglow at the thought of this friendship. K, let's do lunch at 12 tomorrow

Kristie: Sounds good.

Ewwww! She made me her bestfriend! I already have too many girl "best friends" and don't want anymore. No guy wants to be "just friends!" And girls, if he uses the line, "I'm so glad we're friends" on you, it means that he's not interested and is only you're friend so that he doesn't feel like a complete jerk. I hang out with tons of girls in groups and even occasionally one on one, but not every other day. Talk about torturing yourself--regardless if you like the person or not. If you do like the person, its like dangling a carrot in front of you that you can't ever eat. If you aren't interested, you're wasting valuable time you could be spending with someone else.
Anyway, although chances aren't looking great, I'm still gonna try to work the situation to my favor. If anything, maybe she'll set me up with one of her hot friends.
Always a silver lining.
Doc (Matt)