Dating Life at BYU

To those of you who have never had the experience of going to college at BYU, and who have never had to subject themselves to the absurdities of the dating life at this college, let me just give you a little glimpse of how things are going for me right now.

I'm sitting on my couch doing just about nothing, when suddenly there's a knock at my door.

(Knock, knock, knock.)

It's this girl. And she slowly looks around the apartment while standing in my doorway, and then she says,
"Hello, um, do you know if...Andrew...is here?"

I point to my face.

"Oh! Andrew! Hi! I'm from the ward. I'm so sorry that I didn't know exactly who you were..."

I invite her in. She's holding a bunch of papers and stuff in her arms, and it looks like it's some sort of "Activities Committee" assignment that she was put in charge of delegating, and she wants me to do something about it. I get this a lot, it seems, and I don't know why. I begin searching for excuses for not being able to volunteer this week.

She sits on my couch.
"So, um, Hello! Um, I was wondering...are you busy this Friday?"

I nod with a completely forced look of regret on my face, and tell her that my dad is coming into town that evening. Which is actually the truth.

"Well, that's a real bummer, um, because, do you know who Rachel Kirkwood is?"

I shake my head and quickly grab the ward directory from the table behind me to find out who this girl is that I'm supposed to know. I know very few people from my ward, and it's always a little awkward not knowing whom people are referring to when they drop somebody's name in the conversation. The girl's picture looks vaguely familiar. Vaguely.

"Well, um, so a bunch of us are going on a date this Friday up the canyon, and we're roasting marshmallows and starbursts and stuff, and it's going to be a lot of fun."

Few things taste better than starbursts roasted over a campfire. She has my full and complete attention.

"Rachel, my roommate, still needs a date. It's too bad you can't come. It will be a lot of fun."

Wait a minute--this is a date??
Remember that only a couple of seconds ago this girl admitted to having never actually seen me in person.

Then she says,
"Oh! But make sure you don't tell Rachel about it--that it's a date, I mean--because she said she didn't want to go if it was going to be a date."

Now I'm totally confused. Some girl knocks on my door, she has no idea who I am or what I look like, she sits on my couch, and she tries to set me up on a blind date with some other girl who also has never spoken a word to me, and who apparently doesn't even want to go on a date with anybody at all.

"So, if we tried to do this another weekend, do you think you might be interested in going on a blind date?"

I laugh, she laughs, we both laugh, and then I show her to the door.

And that pretty much sums up my dating life here at BYU right now. There's a reason why I haven't asked any girls on dates lately. At this point I think celibacy sounds like a better deal.