Tales from the Nice Side

A few weeks ago, over brunch, aforementioned BFF asked me a simple enough question, “What do you think of Mormons?” Now of course when my mind hears a simple enough question, it immediately goes into overdrive to sort out the real line of questioning. I correctly deduced that Ev was attempting to prep me for a set up. This is what is known as the pre-interview, your friend will generally put you through this as a means of presenting information about the prospect to you, while also checking your reactions to see whether this is something you’d want to do or not.

The guy sounded nice enough so I agreed to the next step, meeting him. This did not go so smoothly, there was something about getting in touch with him, seeing when he was free and this went on for a while, to the point where I was starting to think I just shouldn’t ask or bother anymore. See, here’s the thing, I think I’ve mentioned this to a few people so I know I’m repeating myself to you, get over it…

It is a great thing to meet single people through parties and chance meetings with friends, it can be pretty rare, but when it happens, that’s fantastic. However when you find someone that rings that little bell in your head, “They would be perfect for…” then go about your planning to get those two people together, but from the moment you tell one person or the other about it?… there should be a little running timer counting down no more than 5-10 days, maybe 2 weeks tops, in which you get those people to meet, barring extreme circumstances.

Why? Because in my case, I got excited. I was thrilled that Ev was thinking of me and looking out for me. And I’m a big sappy romantic at heart, so the prospect of a blind date, especially one set up by a best friend was really something to look forward to. And the longer you think about it, the more the scenario builds up in your mind, much the same way that in online dating, you shouldn’t spend too long e-mailing each other back and forth, but should move ahead to meeting each other once you’ve determined the other isn’t insane.

So finally the date was set up, I had tried to be nice in the meantime and not push Ev one way or the other, in fact the only prodding I did was to ask for clarity on whether I should fish or cut bait, since I’d rather know honestly if it wasn’t gonna happen rather than a friend skirt the issue to save my feelings. And a previous setup didn’t necessarily go so well, so I could certainly understand if there was some trepidation about the whole thing. Still, I did bring it up more than a little because, hey, it’s Spring/Summer, I’m single and well good men are hard to find.

Now, if you’ve been reading, the lack of entries about this blind date do indeed confirm that the setup/meeting never took place. Apparently when Ev asked him about the date/time, he said yes, but was drunk and forgot that he was already booked for a, in my opinion, rather dry and totally skippable seminar that evening. This is about when it started to seem more like an omen in my mind that 1: This really wasn’t gonna happen and 2: Maybe it really isn’t meant to happen. But I was… nice about it. Trying to meet up after his event would have meant being out too late for my taste on a work night, but I sent a pretty polite (IMHO) e-mail to say that hopefully we could arrange a time the following week to all meet up and even implied in my message that even if Ev was unavailable over the weekend this guy and I might meet anyway.

No immediate response, which was odd since the three of us were e-mailing around, but I figure, maybe he’s busy. Then the weekend approached and still nothing. Nothing after the weekend… and now it’s been over a week since I suggested we try to find some other time and still no response.

So once again, off the list. I was expending (or storing, depending on how you look at it) a great deal of energy not blowing up in the first place because unless it was a life or death occasion, I’d much rather hang out with my friends and meet someone new instead of go to a seminar containing information that wasn’t likely to be very deep and could have been obtained with about a 1/2 hour of concentrated study via Google. I had a long IM conversation with about my Rational forum and my Diva forum arguing over the exact response to give and find a suitable compromise for my Press Secretary to deliver.

I certainly can’t fault Ev for most of what took place, I can’t blame a friend for trying, right? Just another little tale about boys, their antics and how sometimes it sucks to be the nice guy.