Some thoughts on creatine and dating

I don’t like to talk about dating. Most of the time, it is just the worst. My mother always told me that any guy who has the courage to ask me out deserves at least one date. I know it takes a lot to approach a girl and put yourself out there like that, so I have conceded to a first date pretty much every time. When I think about it, I shouldn’t complain. After all, I am on the easy end of things. I don’t have to drive or open the door for myself, and I usually get a free meal out of the evening.

On the other hand, poor boys. Sorry, there’s not much I can do about that one (except maybe offer to pay for your dinner on a date in the future if somehow miraculously this whole first date thing goes well).

Most of my first dates haven’t been all that memorable. We usually just grab dinner and ask/answer those dull, boring questions that somehow everyone deems necessary for a first date but that everyone actually hates talking/hearing about.

Where are you from? What is your major? What do you do/want to do when you graduate? How many siblings do you have? What kind of toothpaste do you use?

So where am I going with all of this?

Yes, most first dates are not memorable. But some are. 

Some are memorable because they are wonderful. Conversation flows naturally, you genuinely enjoy the time you spend with your date, and (maybe) sparks fly.

Then there are those that are memorable because they are awful. While I am not usually a pessimist, I am choosing today to focus on my worst first date. 

My worst date wasn’t bad because of the actual date activities. It was pretty basic: dinner and gelato. It wasn’t bad because the guy was ugly; he was actually a tall, handsome, well-dressed, guy. And he was FIT. How do I know he was fit, you ask? I will get there.

For anonymity, we will call my date Larry (mostly because Larry is not a name I have ever heard for guys my age, so I will not blow this guy’s cover…Not that I’m even concerned whether his cover gets blown or not. Maybe it’s better if he is aware so this doesn’t happen to any other poor girl in the future).

I was impressed with Larry when he first picked me up. He was dressed in a collared shirt and cardigan and I’m pretty sure he was wearing desert boots (I am a sucker for a well-dressed man). And he was CUTE.

Ok so fast forward to dinner. We had already skipped over the superficial questions I spoke about earlier and we were getting to the nitty gritty “What do you do for work?” and “How did you like growing up in _______?”

Well, it turns out that Larry was from Utah Valley (I won’t give a specific city, again, for anonymity) and when I asked him how he liked growing up there, I think he took it as a personal blow. I did not mean it as such. Anybody who has gone on a date with me has probably been asked this question.

Anyway, Larry starts GOING OFF. Seriously, these are some of the things he mentioned:

Everybody from outside of Utah has this completely false idea that Utahans are all sheltered and don’t know what the world is really like. (Ok SOME people DO have this idea. But that’s because SOME Utahans ARE sheltered and unrealistic about things.)

I’ve traveled around and seen the world and I know how it is. (Tell me how the real world is, Larry).

I have friends who drink and do drugs. (Oh, so that’s what you meant by the real world. I totally brag about my acquaintances that do drugs too… because that makes you cool, right?)

etc. etc.

Ok, so apparently he didn’t like that question. So we move on to the ever popular “What do you like to do in your free time?”

Like a broken record, I talked about running. Well, if you aren’t a runner, you only want to talk about running for .2 seconds. I get that. Running isn’t for everybody. So naturally the conversation shifted to what Larry likes to do in his free time. This would have been totally fine in any other situation, but…

Larry’s free time is spent in the GYM. Oh boy does he spend a lot of time at the gym. And the man loves his creatine. If you guys want to see me squirm, try to have a serious conversation with me about creatine and workout supplements. 

I think right now is the time to mention that I majored in exercise science. Larry majored in business. Nothing pains me more than listening to people pretend to know about things they don’t actually know about. Ok, back to the conversation.

So, Larry the business major, continues to tell me how he can only gain muscle by using protein supplements and creatine. He has “bulked up” over the past year, gaining 50 pounds or something like that (I will be honest, I started only half listening once he first mentioned his daily dose of creatine). He talked about his pre-workout routine, his workout routine, and his post-workout routine. 

Now maybe there are some girls who are really into this kind of thing. I see girls holding the sausage-fingered hands of meat-heads all the time. Said girls typically have fake hair (actual fake hair… and usually the real hair it is attached to is either dyed a very unnatural blonde or a very dark brown) acrylic nails, heavy black eyeliner, and yarn jeans (yes, yarn jeans. You know exactly what I am talking about).

Maybe Larry mistook me for one of the girls who would be into that kind of thing. 

Maybe, because I am a relatively fit individual, he felt the need to show off how “fit” he is. By the way, I don’t care if you can bench twelve of me. If you can’t run half a mile, you are not fit. Can Larry run half a mile? I don’t even know. I didn’t bother asking because I couldn’t get a word in for the entire half hour that he was talking about his Muscle Milk milkshakes.

*Side note: I ran the Phoenix half marathon not too long ago. At the finish, they handed out Muscle Milk. Runners don’t want Muscle Milk at the finish. They want fatty chocolatey whole milk. Not Muscle Milk. Blechh.

At one point, I channeled my annoyed-ness into boldness, and I said:

“You know, a lot of supplements just come out in your pee. You would be better off with a balanced diet” (something I learned in multiple nutrition and exercise science classes. Did you take any nutrition or exercise physiology classes, Larry the business major?)

Larry wasn’t having that. According to Larry, he could not get big until he started using creatine.

I’m confused… Even if that is true, is that something you actually want other people knowing?

Whatever. I can’t even write about this anymore because the whole situation was so annoying. Literally, the workout conversation took up half the time at dinner. At least my food was good.

Gelato was actually uneventful. Larry talked about more normal things, like his roommates and his house. Although, he did make a big deal out of the fact that he OWNS the house. If there is one thing I love, it is a meat head who is showy with his money.

So then, it comes time to drive me home and we almost get in a car accident. In all fairness, it wasn’t actually Larry’s fault. Some girl decided it was a good idea to try to make a U-turn on an ON RAMP and we almost T-boned her. The fact that he almost crashed his car just added to the hilarity of the entire evening.

I hesitate to even tell the next part. Partially because I know my mother reads my blog, I never told her about this, and I know she will be slightly horrified when she hears; also partially because writing it will be painful.

BUT in the spirit of bad dates, it must be told.

Rewind just a bit so I can explain how I ended up on this date. I had a minor lapse of judgment for about 2 weeks when I first moved to Salt Lake, and I’m embarrassed to say that I downloaded the app, Tinder.

For those of you who don’t know what Tinder is: It is an app on your phone that allows you to create a basic profile. You can put up to 6 photos of yourself, and a short sentence or two as your tagline. The basic tagline of a guy in Utah usually consists of his height, whether or not he is LDS, and something manly that he enjoys doing (examples include: hunting, going to the gym, or riding motorcycles).

Tinder is very easy to use. You say whether you are interested in men or women, set an age range, and allow the app to locate what city you are in. Then you can choose a radius of how far you would like your Tinder choices to extend. I think I set mine to 50 miles just to keep things interesting. Provo is within 50 miles of Salt Lake City, and you better believe I came across plenty of guys I knew in Provo who I had no idea were on Tinder.

So basically, I then get to scroll through the profiles of guys on Tinder who are in the age range I chose and within a 50 mile radius of me.  If I think a guy is attractive, then I can swipe right for him. If I am not interested in a guy, I can swipe him left. Meanwhile, guys are doing the same with girls’ profiles. If a guy swipes right on me, and I swipe right on him, then we can start a conversation.

Yes, Tinder is sketchy. And in any place other than Provo or Salt Lake City, I would not recommend using it. ESPECIALLY because I looked “Tinder” up on Urban Dictionary. You can probably guess what everyone outside of the Mormon church uses Tinder for. However, in a city of celibate people, Tinder is a relatively safe way to meet new people and skip the games of whether you find each other attractive or not.

Also, you can see if you share any mutual friends with your matches on Facebook. I never swiped right on anybody who didn’t have at least a few mutual friends with me. That way, I figured I at least had a couple people who could vouch for the stranger.

Oh, and by the way, my tagline said something to this effect: “I’m not that into pictures of freshly-killed animals or selfies at the gym.”

I hoped this would immediately deter the 75% of guys on Tinder who have a picture of them with the big deer, mountain lion, bear, etc. that they just killed and/or a gym selfie of them flexing their biceps or abs.

Seriously, barf and a half.

As you might have guessed, I met Larry on Tinder. (This means that YES he saw my tagline about selfies at the gym and YES he still felt ok going on and on about workouts and protein shakes).

But back to what I was saying before. Larry was a Facebook friend of my good friend, Audrey’s! Naturally, Audrey had also downloaded Tinder around the same time (we justified it with the excuse that we had just moved to SLC and were trying to meet people, but really, any use of Tinder is inexcusable). And let me just tell you, most of my time on Tinder was actually spent taking screenshots of weirdos who were into video games or anime, or people who just had funny tag lines, and sending those screenshots to Audrey while we were at work.

Aaaaaand then AFTER work, we got down to business showing each other our ACTUAL matches with guys we might ACTUALLY be interested in going on dates with.

Cue Larry. Audrey told me she didn’t really see me being interested, but she said he is a nice guy and if he was willing to take me to dinner, why not go? 

Wise words from my mother: “A girl’s gotta eat.”

Naturally, I asked Audrey to tell me a little bit about Larry. The one and only thing she said is that he was funny and he liked when girls wore leggings. She said he called them “push pants.”

‘What a silly name for leggings,’ I thought. I actually hate the word leggings, so I just thought the phrase was funny.

Fast forward— We are on our date and Larry is driving me home from gelato.  Here is our conversation:

Larry- “So I know you are pretty good friends with Audrey. What did she have to say about me?”

Me- “Honestly, the only thing she told me was that you like leggings and you call them ‘push pants.’”

Larry- “Oh, yeah, push pants! Haha.”

Me- “She said that was the most memorable conversation she has had with you.”

Larry- “So, I have a really good friend named Little J (name borrowed from the popular television series, Gossip Girl) and she loves to wear push pants. One time she asked me if I would ever kiss a girl on the first date. I told her it has happened, but usually when I really like a girl, I respect her more than that (I don’t believe that one bit), so I will wait until the third or fourth date or even later. Little J said that she needed a guy like me, a guy who was respectable. I told her, ‘Well, Little J, if you want a guy who is respectable, then you gotta stop wearing push pants! They get this false image of you when you wear push pants.’ 

Me- * silence because I am finally beginning to understand what he means by the term “push pants”… What have I done??*

Larry- “There is a reason guys like to wear basketball shorts when they make out. It is the same reason girls like to wear leggings. It’s called the Provo push!”

Me- * more silence * Thinking- ‘Wahhhhh get me out of this car!!!’

Luckily we are pulling up to my house right as that last phrase pops out of his mouth. Although inwardly disgusted, I managed a small forced laugh. He gets out to walk me to my door and ASKS FOR A TOUR OF MY HOUSE (because he likes old houses, he says).

Now, I’m not proud to admit that I was a total coward and told him that he could have a tour. However, the tour lasted approximately 30 seconds and ended with me practically shooing him out the door. As I said bye he said “You’ll have to come down to Provo sometime so I can show you my house.”

I smiled, nodding an awkward “uh huh” in an attempt to get him off my doorstep as fast as possible, all the while thinking “There is no way in hell I will ever come visit you in Provo.”

Buh bye, Larry.

Things that we can all take away from this:

If you have Tinder, get rid of it ASAP. I mean, I know you know people who have met from it and gotten married. But seriously, they are the exception, not the rule.

If you have not had the misfortune of downloading it, DO NOT DO SO.

If any of your friends mention the phrase “push pants” and you think it is just a funny name for a pair of leggings, realize that IT IS NOT. If they are your good friend, ask them explicitly what that means. If they are not your good friend, make a mental note to call a good friend later and ask them what that means. Or, you can just look here.

DO NOT EVER talk about the “Provo push” on your first date. I encourage you not to participate in the “Provo push” either (see my stance on pre-marital sex here). This probably doesn’t need mentioning, but mentioning the terms “zipper-sparking,” “Levi-loving,” and “DH-ing” are all off-limits too.

I will not pretend that I am the perfect dater. Clearly, I am not, or I would have tricked someone into thinking they were my soulmate by now. I accidentally lit my date on fire once…and that date was probably the best first date I’ve been on, so that’s saying something.

Dating is important. I have learned so much from those I have dated in the past, and I’ve become really good friends with a lot of them (somehow the date I almost lit on fire is now one of my closest friends).

I think of two of my good friends, whose first date definitely had some mishaps. He may or may not have accidentally sent her rolling down a hill and told her she was like a raccoon because she had dark circles around her eyes and liked to eat trash (neither of which are true about that gorgeous gal). 

Yes, their first date was a bit rocky, but they found each other and, having been married just under a year, they could not be happier.

And hey, even if you don’t find your soulmate after years and years of dating, I’m sure you, like me, will have some delightful stories to tell from your dating experiences. 

Actually, I know this is true, because I have been secretly gathering dating horror stories from friends and acquaintances of mine, and plan to post them on the blog very soon for all the world to see. Muahaha. Stay tuned.