Stones

Recently, I went on a date. Actually, I went on lots of dates, but this blog post is concerned with only one of them. Some of you may recall my blog of bygone years, coffeespoon300. In it, I chronicled my trek through graduate school with Leila, Dana, and Jessica, amongst other things. You may recall reading about the many men who took up our thoughts at the time. Chief amongst those was a guy we'll call Derek. Leila was crazy about him and the rest of us listened to and dissected his every move from a distance as Leila reported them all to us.

"He asked me to come over and watch the game! What do you think that means?"

or

"He gave me flowers! I think this is it!"

Alas, nothing ever came of the games or the flowers. Leila graduated and moved off to New Jersey with someone else and none of us ever heard from her again. I forgot all about Derek.

Until 3 Sundays ago when I ran into him at a church I was visiting with my friend and her husband. As we walked past him on our way out, I called out a friendly hello. He seemed taken aback when I said his name. All right, so it has been 4 years since we met.

As Ava, Rick and I stood chatting in the church foyer before going our separate ways, Derek walked up to us and boldly interruped.

"Excuse me. You said hello to me just now by name, but I don't know your name. Have we met?"

That was ballsy, blog readers. Most guys wouldn't interrupt a princess talking with her friends just to say that he didn't know her name. Derek gained back some of the respectability points he lost when he was non-dating Leila.

"Sure. I'm Elle, Leila's friend. I also know your mother."

By the time I'd gotten home, I had a friend request from Derek. In a matter of days, he asked me out.

He gained several more respectability points at that juncture. Most of the guys I know don't have the stones to just ask a girl out, especially right after they meet her. It's a subject frequently discussed by the single women I know. In fact, even as I type this, I'm reminded of one man who has been flirting with me for the past 5 or 6 weeks and is still no closer to asking me out because, "I don't know if I like you!" Grow some balls, brother. That's the point of a date. Now cowboy up and ask for it (date, not balls).