How Speed Dating Should Be, Part 3 - The Results

So I am not entirely sure what I was expecting in the results. Well, that’s not true. I knew exactly what I was expecting - 29-for-29. And that previous estimate of 16 to 18? That was obligatory modesty, like when rich people say, “There’s more to life than money.”

Having known myself for 24 years now, I can’t imagine why any reasonable, rational woman wouldn’t jump at a chance to go out with me. According to my daily affirmations, I am devilishly charming, fashionable, suave, unbearably handsome, etc. I sing in the mellifluous tenor of an angel, I am a high-powered public relations executive, I can juggle, I literally could go on for hours.

But I won’t. Instead, I will outline the results. To warn you, they are a bit unsettling:

Total number of girls with whom I met: 29
Total number of girls in whom I was interested: 7
Total number of girls who yesed me: 18
Total number of girls who yesed me that I was interested in: 3

So yes, I hit the modest estimate of 18 yeses. That leaves, however, 11 girls unaccounted for, and, more importantly, 4 girls that I was interested in that were mysteriously omitted from my list. As I said before, unsettling. “Maybe you just weren’t their type” is an empty excuse made for and by people who aren’t yet ready to face reality.

The truth is that most of these 11 girls were omitted from my list due to clerical and administrative errors. I mean the event was well organized, but off the top of my head I can think of three rudimentary organizational oversights.

1. The importance of writing legibly on our name tags was not made clear at the outset. When we wrote our names and numbers on our name tags, we were not told, “Please write in such a manner that people will be able to read them.” I was somewhat careless and let the 3 in my 63 spill over the edge, which meant that it was easily mistaken for a 65 or even a 68. Since my number was really the only way that my yeses were registered, I imagine 10% of my dates were lost to lucky numbers 65 and 68. You’re welcome. We’ll say this accounts for 3 of my non-yeses.
2. The boxes were not in the most-convenient locations. At the end of the event, we were instructed to help ourselves to food and drink, and to put our lists in the boxes. However, no specific instruction was given on the location of these boxes, nor if there were boy boxes and girl boxes. I did notice a considerable confusion as we left the dating arena as people tried to locate the proper receptacles. I would estimate that an additional 10% of all attendees were not able to find the ballot boxes, or threw their lists in the garbage by mistake. Garbage cans are, after all, just large boxes. Another 3 non-yeses accounted for.
3. How to mark “yes” on the lists was ambiguous. The lists that we received has a box above which was written “Yes/no.” I wrote in mine either C or D, which was a code I used to keep track without having to risk my dates seeing my actual number of yeses or nos. (The inside scoop: C was for cat, D was for dog. Before you pass judgment, D was “yes” because I like dogs better than cats.) I saw many people who were just making a check mark or slash in each box. However, a slash is neither a yes nor a no. It is just an annotation. So what if I put slashes through every person I was not interested in, but the organizers thought the opposite was true – that slashes were affirmative responses? An innocent mistake with disastrous results. I would say, in fact, that this confusion spread as far as an additional 10% of participants, accounting for 3 more non-yeses.

In sum, we can reasonably blame 9 of the 11 non-yeses on simple clerical and human error. The other two? Come to think of it, there was one “date” that had me sitting in front of an empty chair, which I did put on my list as “Empty Chair.” The empty chair could not say yes, clearly. And the last one? The last one may have been a girl with such egregiously poor taste in men that she consciously, deliberately marked “no.” Her loss, I assure you.

I look forward to many weekends rich with dates from my yes list. That is to say weekends starting in April after the conclusion of March Madness. I have to keep my priorities straight.

How Speed Dating Should Be, Part 2

So I am now back from the speed dating night hosted by the Manhattan 3rd Ward, and I have to say that overall I was impressed. There were at least 200 people there, split almost evenly between men and women. In fact, there were a few more men than women, which, by Mormon standards, is nothing short of a miracle. My props to the organizers, although my props unfortunately have no cash value.

Each microdate was 3 minutes or 90 seconds long, depending on the flight and fancy of the guy with the whistle. 90 seconds is, consequently, my attention span. Convenient. It is also just about enough time to decide if you like a girl's lips, eyes, and accent. Which are, consequently, all I really care about.

We were given a paper with a number (mine was 63), and a grid with about 30 spaces in which we wrote the name and number of your "date," and whether you would consider to go on a real date with her in the future. At the end, they collected the sheets, compared them go each other, and advised each party of any yes-yes matches. A simple, smart system. That's why I feel kind of bad for abusing it.

There is only one way to find out what each girl thought of me if I "yes" only those I was interested in - 8 of 30, as a point of reference. I would essentially only have a sample size of 8, because only those 8 would be "yes-yes" candidates. In order to increase the sample size to 30, I would have to "yes" all 30, which could make it hard to sort through those who were actual yeses. Unless, of course, I recorded all the genuine yeses separately on a list I kept privately. And that's exactly what I did.

Of course, this was a clear abuse of the system, which probably makes me a bad person. Or just a sucker for data.

I will not go into details about the microdates specifically in order to protect their privacy. Sufficient to say, intimate details changed hands. What I would like to do, however, is make some predictions on a few key outcomes. These predictions are fairly indicative of the evening in general.

L - She will say yes because I wear hipster glasses that make me look cooler than I really am. She would not dare say yes to anyone who was not a cool hipster, or at least had glasses that played the part.

J - She will say no because she knows me well enough to know that she couldn't stand to spend more than 90 seconds with me.

M - She will say no because she was the most attractive girl there, by a wide margin. If she says yes, I have been grossly underestimating how attractive I am to the opposite sex.

R - She will say no because I asked her what she did for a living twice in a 90-second span. Asking someone what they do for a living says, "I am a boring conversationalist." Asking them twice says, "I am a boring conversationalist, and I don't listen to you."

Overall - I estimate that 18 of the 30 will be interested in a date. That may seem high, but I am an optimist. I might as well be an optimist now before I get the results and find out that only 3 could bear me for a real date and be forced into pessimism.

Even if no real dates materialize from this activity, I will at least learn that being rejected hurts, but it hurts like getting hit in the head with a kickball. It stings and leaves a big red mark on your face, but it doesn't do any permanent damage. That's a good lesson, one that most people learn in grade school.

How Speed Dating Should Be, Part 1

I am going speed dating this evening, which is hosted by one of the Manhattan singles' ward. I have never speed dated, although I have seen it done on TV, never with remarkable results. Although I will withhold judgment until later tonight after I am all speed-dated up, I would like to propose a model for fool-proof (read "Tony-proof") speed dates.

The advantage to speed dating over conventional dating is its efficiency. With that in mind, the key has to be total transparency. Going into each micro-date, both man and woman should know everything about each other. So instead of being forced to slowly find out their talents and eccentricities through months of expensive and time-consuming dating, they can cut right to the chase.

I am not just talking about likes and dislikes. Who really cares if my favorite color is green and if I like ponies? The kind of woman that I would never be interested in, that's who. I'm talking about medical records, academic transcripts and bank statements. How many pushups can you do? Does anyone in your family have a history of glaucoma? Do you have weak ankles (which Mark refers to lovingly as "wankles")?

It would, of course, also cover uncomfortable questions that would potentially emerge in the developmental stages of a budding romance. It makes no sense to wait until 6 months in to address these kinds of deal-breakers when you could address them up front. How many children do you want to have? Do you want a TV in the bedroom? Would you ever consider naming your son Tiger Woods Sheehan? In terms of toothpaste tubes, are you a squeezer or a roller?

Each party would be given five minutes to review their documents, then they would be given five minutes to converse, and then they would move on. Based on their impressions from the quantitative and qualitative analyses, they would decide jointly to further pursue a relationship, and whether it would on a long-term or just-for-fun basis.

They would each be required to attend speed dating sessions at a predetermined interval - every three months, for example - to confirm that they are really not interested in pursuing other options. So they would sit through the session, and if they still are most compatible with their current girl/boyfriend, then the relationship can continue. If not, they should try other candidates that they are better matched with. No hard feelings, no tears.

It is undoubtedly the best way. Or so I say prior to my speed dating rendezvous. I'll let you know how I feel in a few hours afterward. My gut tells me it will be something like, "Speed dating is stupid. And girls are stupid. Where's my Xbox?"

If this type of speed dating were common, or even mandatory, time could be spent more productively