Date Two

Friday, May 7, 2010 - Totally High School!

AMANDA

When we first drew this card, I was pretty excited. It sounded like a lot of fun, reliving high school a little bit. I had some fun in high school, and made memories I won't ever forget. However, this card said to relive a high school date...and my high school dates weren't anything to re-live. It's not that I had bad dates, but they weren't very eventful. I had a lot more fun going out with my friends than I did on dates. When it came to dating in high school, all I could recall was going to the movies and out to eat....how exciting to re-live....The more I started thinking about this card, the more I started to hate it because we would be doing what we were trying to get away from: the typical date. We both graduated high school awhile ago, but not so long ago that dates were completely different, like they would be if we were, say, 50 or so. I tried and tried to think of a creative way to take this date, instead of just re-living a date that we would have had. Justin's memories weren't much different than mine. His consisted of about the same thing. My first thought for this date was to go to the $2 movie theater (older new releases) and then walk next door to sonic for some dinner. I used to go to the $2 movies a lot when I was in high school, but again, there wasn't anything exciting about this. We would come home and blog about how we went to see Avatar and ate a cheeseburger. What fun! So, I came up with an idea to maybe have my mom drop us off at the movie and pick us up from Sonic, pretending that we were in high school and not able to drive. I thought it would be a funny idea!! Spoiler alert: we didn't end up doing this for the sake of my mom's Friday night. I'm pretty sure my mom didn't want to re-live me being in high school, so I didn't want to make her. Well, the days went by and we still weren't coming up with any good ideas. We threw some ideas around, and nothing was working out. In high school my weekends consisted of: mall on Friday, movies on Saturday. If I had a date, my plans wouldn't change much. Friday afternoon rolled around and we started thinking in different terms. I had an idea to think along the lines of dating in the 1950's. Maybe we could go to a diner for dinner, then my mom gave us the idea of laying out under the stars on the hood of the car. How much fun does that sound?! Except that it started to rain, so that idea was out. I think our problem would have been solved if Justin would have just went with my idea I got while eating lunch with my sister. I am pure genius, if only my boyfriend was more willing! My idea was to get all dressed up and re-create prom night, by having dinner and dancing outside like it was prom...maybe drink some vodka out of a water bottle, and grind on the dance floor. This idea was quickly turned down by Justin, without even a second thought (although I tried to get him to do it, again and again). In the end, we decided to go with the original plan: eat somewhere we used to eat a lot in high school, and end the night hanging out in the mall. We started thinking about places we used to eat, and Chinese buffet came up. I don't think it was a big 'date spot' for me, but I definitely went there probably one or two times a month with my friends, maybe more. Almost every single half day was spent at the Chinese buffet, sitting there for hours to wait for time to pass and clear up stomach room for just one more plate. We decided that would be a fun place to re-visit. So, Justin 'picked me up' (as best as he could, since we live in the same house), and drove me to our dinner destination. Nowadays, I prefer a new Chinese buffet, but for old times sake, we went to the one I used to go to with my friends. Besides a little remodel, it was almost exactly the same as before. Same delicious, greasy food. I loaded my plate with all my favorites: General Tsao's chicken, Lo Mein noodles, crab rangoon, white rice with an overload of soy sauce, egg rolls, and egg drop soup. YUM! I had my usual two plates with dessert, and if you're curious, I got the worst fortune of all time. When did these things stop being fortunes and start being words of wisdom? I want a fortune!! I want it to actually tell me something. "Politeness costs nothing and gains everything" helps me with NOTHING. I want to know if I'm going to fall into some money soon, or if things might take an unusual twist soon. I was pretty disappointed in my fortune. Anyway, moving on...we then had to take a detour away from our date because Justin just absolutely positively HAD to stop at Home Depot for some screws. It was getting a little late and I was getting nervous because the mall would be closing within the hour. Once we finally made it there, I knew the first stop was going to be Hot Topic. Oh the days of Hot Topic! No, I wasn't one of 'those teenagers', but my friends were. If you knew me in high school, you would have wondered how I made the friends that I did. I never fit in. I was always a normal-looking girl, wearing normal-looking clothes, listening to normal-sounding music, but my friends were nearly the opposite. Therefore, I was constantly going to Hot Topic with them. I even had a friend that worked there that we would visit on our Friday nights. I found a really awesome bracelet and some sunglasses that would totally rock with my leggings and zip up tank top I just got there last week. Once we left Hot Topic, we did what all high schoolers do and walked around acting stupid. I knew we were in the right place on a Friday night because they were EVERYWHERE! In hindsight, I realized we should have made our date a group date, and brought all our friends to the mall with us to just hang out there for a few hours. Then we could hang out outside and wait for our moms to pick us up. Lesson learned! If I ever want to go on another high school date, I will be sure and make this my #1 plan. And maybe the prom idea too, because you have to admit that was a really good idea. We ended our mall visit by listening to music in the music store. We drove home and sat in miserable fullness the rest of the night. The downside of the night was that I didn't get a kiss goodnight. He must not have liked me...maybe I'm too fat, or my breath stinks, or maybe my friends told him something embarrassing about me...or maybe he likes his new lab partner...

JUSTIN

I knew this was gonna be a weak one. Not because the card didn't sound fun or anything, but because we didn't plan anything at all. We waited until the last minute and the date completely reflected that. Now I know Amanda tried to make me seem like "the bad guy" by not agreeing to go to the "prom" again, but thats not a typical high school "date" (they call me quote man). A high school date is basically going to a movie, getting dinner, and then trying to get lucky at the end of the night. Spoiler Alert - this is our typical date haha. We didn't want to relive the same old date we used to do all the time. That's why we got these cards, to switch things up.

One of my favorite things about high school was skipping the pep rally at the end of school and hitting the China Buffet up with my friends (and I might even have taken a date or two there). So we decided we would eat there and I was a little dissapointed. The food was good, but it didn't feel like a date. I definitely enjoyed my ladies company, but it just didn't seem right. The next thing we decided to do was to hit up the mall. We just walked around the entire mall which took a total of five minutes to accomplish. We even went to Hot Topic (gross) to relive our more awesome times.

And that's pretty much where the night ended. We were both pretty exhausted from my 24th birthday the night before and from some furniture building activities earlier in the day. I don't think either of us were that dissappointed when we decided to call it a night. Although this date was a little uninspired, I still enjoyed being with Amanda. We should have definitely involved other people in our date because that's the way things were back then. If we had used our brains a little more, the night could have been a much greater success. Here's hoping the next card isn't so blah.

My fortune from China Buffet - We all live under the same sky, but we don't see the same light.


TOTAL COST OF DATE: $20...too much...we had no idea Chinese buffet was going to be so expensive! How did we afford that in high school?! Oh yeah...moms :)