Singles Mixers. I'm Bad at Them.

A good friend of mine took me to a singles mixer event last Friday night. Normally mixers of any sort aren't really my thing. I identify strongly as an introvert. My ideal evening is staying in and working on an arts and crafts project, writing, drawing, reading, binging on Netflix, or just spending time with my marvelous cat, Magellan (pictured below).

 

However, this time I figured that I would give it a go. After all, almost everything is worth trying once, right? Plus, it's always better when you go with a friend.

The beginning of the event started off well enough. There seemed to be a good number of people there and a nice mix of genders, preferences, and ages. I've done speed dating before (again, almost everything is worth trying once) and it was fairly exhausting. I'd compare it to a round-robin of job interviews, but for dating purposes. This was, thankfully, different.

At first there was a little bit of mingling and then we were asked to break up into small groups. The person orchestrating the event had a number of prompts that they picked from and had each group share their answers with one another. After you answered the first question and talked with your group mates, we were told to mix it up and find a new group. Topics ranged from "what's one thing that someone should know about you before hanging out?" (my favorite answer came from a guy who said, "if I could be anything, I'd want to be a connoisseur of french fries. You want to know anything about any french fries anywhere in town, I'm your man.") to "tell someone about one of your favorite people" (I talked about my brother because he's smart and talented and rad).

Unfortunately, I discovered that I'm not very good at following mixer instructions.

Question: "What's your favorite feeling?"

My group stared awkwardly at each other for a few breaths and so I just jumped in with, "I like feeling full. Not to the point where you're stuffed and one more bite may rupture something, but, you know, just perfectly full."

Cue group looking at me like I'm a lunatic before the next person said, "I like when I'm extremely happy about something, like when I find a perfect gift for someone for their birthday." The following person jumped in with, "I like that feeling of joy when you've done something good for someone without expecting anything in return."

It was at this point where I realized that perhaps we were supposed to talk about EMOTIONS feelings, not physical sensations. My bad.

I swore I would do better the next time.

Question: "If you were a season, what season would you be?"

This one got me pretty excited. Once more, my group wasn't saying anything, but I knew better than to go first. I'd already made that mistake. Finally, someone pointed at me and said, "How about you go first?"

Here goes nothing, I thought as I proudly said, "I'd be soccer season." I glanced around at a circle of blank faces. "Uh," I stammered, "but I would definitely be EPL season because Liverpool is my favorite team and I love playing soccer." More blank expressions.

I finished weakly with, "EPL? English Premier League? Anyone? No? Just me? Okay, someone else please go."

Everyone else in the group agreed that they would be fall/autumn because of the smell of fresh rain and the feeling of great unbridled potential when fall came around. I wanted to slink away in embarrassment.

I tried to play it safe with my answers for the rest of the evening and I think I did a decent job. There were no other incidents that made me want to crawl underneath something and hide. At least not for a little while.

The end of the evening was approaching and we were told to get a piece of paper out.  We were going to do a stream of consciousness exercise. For those of you that aren't familiar with this concept, when you write stream of consciousness, you kinda write whatever pops into your mind. To start us off, we were told that our first words would be "here's what I love..."

After three minutes of writing we were told to underline three of our favorite sentences because we would be reading them out loud to the whole group from the stage at the front of the room. I chuckled, fully expecting to hear some hilarious material. I was wrong. Pretty much everyone said something like, "I love going on adventures and experiencing new things. I want to cook new and exciting dishes and to fully embrace life." I dunno. It was all very grownup-ish and responsible.

This is what I wrote (I underlined the three sentences that I read on stage):

Here's what I love...about circles: They are round. Like, super duper round. The roundest. The most roundful. Is 'roundful' a word? You won't find anything more round-like than a circle. Also, hula hoops are circles and you haven't known true joy until you've seen a soccer dad try to keep up with his eight or nine year old child in a viral hula hoop video. You know what else you find in viral videos? Cats. Lots of them. Cats make up about 93% of the internet and they love it. You know what else cats love? Circles. There are lots of viral videos about cats sitting in circles drawn on the floor. Look it up. Cats like circles almost as much as boxes. I don't think cats like anything more than a box. Maybe using their little murder mitts (otherwise known as stabby/pokey toe beans) to try to chase and kill the little red dot.

I'm pretty sure there were a few chuckles throughout the room, but I felt more than a little ridiculous for not having put something more mature or something like everyone else had. Of course, this may also go a long way towards explaining why I'm still single. So there you have it. My very own spectacular singles mixer Hindenburg. Not sure if there will be a next time, but at least I have another funny story that I can blog about.

Have some more pictures of Magellan because she's a great cat. Not great at hiding, but a great cat.