Tinder Tales

Now from the title of this post you might think that I'm here to disclose all the crazy people/dates/experiences that have happened to me becasue of experimenting (for blogging purposes only of course) with the dating app Tinder. You might expect a story about the guy who was super awkward when we went to get smoothies because he needed an insulin shot and didn't know how to do it in front of me in a non-awkward way or you might expect a story about that one guy where the date only lasted for 45 minutes and he drove an hour to get to the date in the first place or maybe the guy I shot some hoops with and never saw again or maybe that one relationship that actually turned out okay for a little while and we are still friends.

But no, this story isn't about Tinder and I.

It's about that one time I got passed up for a bikini model that a guy I was interested in met on Tinder. Leaving me to sit at my table of computers all alone, never to be spoken to or acknowledged again.

Let me splain...


Once upon a time there was a boy who sat next to me in Digital Imaging. He wasn't bad looking, had a beard (which I'm usually not a fan of, but in this case he could pull it off), was tall, and looked to be LDS. At first we sat by each other by chance, but by the next couple of weeks it was habit. We would exchange small talk about our weekend, complain about being tired, help each other out on in class assignments and were slowly getting to know each other. Or so I thought.

One day I glanced over at him and saw Tinder pulled up on his phone (I have this awful habit of looking at what people are doing on their phones when they sit next to me. It's even worse when I'm at church because then I feel the urge to read their texts to see if it is in any way related to the meeting. I'm a creepy stalker guys. It's like eavesdropping but somehow worse because it's not vocal).  The first thing that went through my mind was "Seriously kid? A cute, nice, relatively normal girl is sitting right next to you and you would rather sit on Tinder?", but seeing as how I never really saw anything between us going anywhere anyways, I let it go. I mean, what else was I suppose to do? Reveal that I was stalking his phone activity over his shoulder and tell him that he should totally date me instead? No. Plus, guy friends are good too right?

I didn't think much about the incident until the next class period after class. He packed up his stuff really quick (which was new-he usually took his sweet time) and bee-lined it towards another girl in the class. As I walked out the door all I heard was, "Hey, I thought we should probably meet in person since we are in the same class rather than just on social media and stuff."

He had totally met her on Tinder.

I could hardly contain my laughter at the awkward scene.

The next week I thought I might at least have the entertainment of being able to witness the guy I had been somewhat interested in exchange some more awkward conversations with Tinder girl, but no. He sat by me like normal. I thought maybe things had gone south until my teacher mentioned she had emailed saying she would be in Cancun for the next week. And that is when it hit me:

This was the girl the that when we went around saying what we liked to do the first day of class shyly admitted that she did "physique competitions". When my teacher asked in his adult innocence what that was, someone else blurted out "she's a bikini model!"

As soon as she was back in class, my "friend" was latched to her side, trying harder and saying more to her in a class period than he had to me the entire semester combined. I'm not even sure if he's made eye contact with me since changing tables and leaving me all alone in my little corner.

I guess when faced with a normal looking, tall, kind of awkward girl like me, the tiny little freshman, sorority sweater wearing bikini model might look like the better choice.

I wish him all the luck he deserves, which isn't much, because really, things like this only work out in the movies. The ugly bearded duckling hardly ever gets the bikini wearing swan.

xoxo
C.R.M.

Boys Boys Boys

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a music junkie. I've been to many a concert (but still not enough), my Spotify account has at least 30 playlists on it (in a certain mood you want a playlist for? I can probably hook you up), and I can sing all the words to most of the songs on the radio. Music has always defined me and my life in a way nothing else can.

Boys and music must have been on the brain this morning because as I was getting ready I realized that I could list at least one or more songs for every guy I've dated or almost dated, or dreamed about dating. Now I know most people can do this for the boyfriends they had in high school and college, but I realized I have songs for some guys that I only went on a couple dates with and it never turned into anything more than that. Or ones I never went out with at all. Creepy? Probably. But hey, a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do when it comes to the dating scene. And wallowing in my tunes is my way of coping (and let me tell you, I've been around the block more than once and I've been told multiple times my dating stories should be made into a book or a movie or something ridiculous like that. They are that good (bad?). I think it will be time to share some of them on the blog someday. They are too fantastic to keep to myself and the pages of my journal).

After making this somewhat creepy realization, I decided a new playlist was in order. Because who doesn't want to torture themselves with the memories that these sort of songs invoke again and again? Isn't it funny how we do this to ourselves? We keep these songs around even when they still hurt after several years have gone by. We keep that t-shirt he gave us and we still sleep in it at night even though he's engaged now and we were the one to do the breaking up. It's like Goteye said, "You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness" or Lady Antebellum: "It's like I love this pain a little too much, love my heart all busted up". You wouldn't think we would like these things that make us sad or a little too reminiscent. But we do. Maybe it's to help remind ourselves that we can still feel. Maybe it's to remind our hearts of how much we've learned since that time in our lives. Or maybe we are just all cynical, sadistic creatures that have a strange desire to hurt. I guess that could be it too. (Cue Evenesence emo punk rock).

I may not know the exact reason why we (or at least I) do this to ourselves, but we do. So enjoy this little piece of me and my life through the tunes that shaped my heart (can I get anymore sappy than that? I submit that I cannot!)

xoxo
C.R.M.