A Real Life Mr. Collins

Well, nothing exciting has happened in the past few weeks as far as dating goes, so I will tell you a little story from last year. It's not romantic. It's not cute. It's not frustrating. It's not even sad. It's just awkward.

Sometime at the beginning of December I went on a group blind date. I had never met anyone in my group prior to this evening and they were all pretty strange. All the boys, except one, were freshman--really obnoxious, immature, incredibly awkward freshman.When I look back on pictures I honestly don't remember who my date was out of these awkward boys or his name. Woops. All I remember about him is that he was a philosophy major, and let's be honest, that's all you really need to know to understand how my night went. Anyway, compared to these awkward, strange freshman, there was one boy in the group who seemed relatively normal. We will call him Mr. Collins. I ended up spending most of the night talking to him and left my date to happily flaunt his opinions about philosophy, politics, and religion to some other girl. When the night was over, Mr. Collins walked me across campus to my car and got my number. I drove away thinking he was pretty cute and that I wouldn't mind if he asked me out. A couple weeks later, he did! We went to lunch, and let's just say it was not exactly what I expected. He was nice, but it felt awkward...really awkward. The conversation was forced and choppy. With an awkward hug and a goodbye, we parted ways for Christmas break and I figured I would never hear from him again. To my surprise he texted me almost every day of the break! This was fine...but kind of overwhelming. Some days I didn't even text him back, but apparently that did not dampen his spirits. When we got back from break he asked me out again. At this point I was conflicted about the whole situation. I didn't really enjoy our date, but apparently he did! And he was really nice when we talked over the break, kind of awkward, but nice. I decided to chalk up his awkwardness to the fact that we'd only spent an hour together and some people are just a little awkward at first. So we went on a couple more dates that week. He made me lunch one afternoon at his apartment. It was actually more of a full course dinner- drinks, a main dish, 3 sides, and dessert. It was all terrible cooking, poor kid, but it was sweet of him to put all that effort in. But yet again, the date was awkward. However, everyone told me to give him a chance and look over the fact that he was kinda nerdy and wore huge New Balance white grandpa tennis shoes. Our next date we doubled with his best friend and his best friend's fiance. Yeah. I don't need to go into anymore details, you get the picture-awkward. Another night we went bowling and to get ice cream. This time I decided to have fun, so I did. Looking back on that night, I realized that I only had fun because I wanted to, Mr. Collins honestly had nothing to do with it. However, I couldn't see this at the time, so I finally thought things might be getting less awkward! Wrong. The next date was hands down one of the most awkward nights of my life. I was utterly confused about my feelings for Mr. Collins and of course needed some back up from my friends- The Heartbreaker and The One Timer. So I invited him to go get some frozen yogurt and to a game night with my friends. The night went pretty well for the most part. I have some pretty awesome friends, so we had a lot of fun! We ended up watching a movie, holding hands, and cuddling. Then came the 20 minute drive home. Just me and Mr. Collins. I can't remember exactly what happened, but I do remember it was the most awkward conversation we'd had yet...mostly because he didn't really talk much. I had to ask all the questions and his answers made me like Mr. Collins less and less. He made some women jokes (huge pet peeve of mine) and then told me about a hilarious time when he made fun of a disabled kid. Please note that at this time, I was a Special Ed major. This kid was losing points fast. By the time I dropped him off I had decided that I didn't ever care to see him again. One more awkward side hug goodbye and Mr. Collins would be out of my life, I thought. Well, apparently that's not what he was thinking. When I went in for the side hug, he went in for a kiss! Luckily, I have extremely fast reflexes so I dodged his face and continued on with the original plan of the awkward side hug. Whew! That was close. I told him goodbye, but Mr. Collins just sat there staring at me from the passenger seat. I must have done a really good job pretending I didn't notice that he tried to kiss me, cause Mr. Collins went in for a kiss AGAIN. There was no dodging this one. I decided I had three options. 1) Kiss him. 2) Cower in the corner of my car in the fetal position or 3) Say something to stop him. I refused to have my first kiss be a rape kiss from this awkward kid, so #1 was not an option. Although #2 was tempting, I decided it probably wouldn't go over well, so that left #3. I can't remember what I said, but whatever it was, it successfully got Mr. Collins out of my car and away from my face. By the time I got home, I had received a text from Mr. Collins. This is roughly what it said. "Hey, don't make plans for this weekend, because I'm gonna take you out." Umm excuse me??? I just rejected kissing him TWICE. What makes this guy so sure I would agree that he would A) not even ask and B) do this over text. Some people just can't take a hint. So the next day I decided I had to talk to him. I can't remember exactly what I said, but I tried to tell him as nicely as I could that I thought it would be better if we were just friends. He disagreed and tried to convince me otherwise, but I knew I could never date him. Moral of the story- Dating Rule #13) Never force yourself to try to have feelings for someone, no matter how flattering it is to have someone like you. and Dating Rule #44) If it starts out awkward, it's going to stay awkward.

-The Cautious Charmer