Dating Lesson Number 1

You know when they say that before you die, you see your life flash before your eyes? Lately my mind has been flooded by the lessons learned from past relationships. You could say it’s flashing before my eyes. Hopefully that’s a sign that my single life is soon to be over.

But in honor of my recent flashbacks, and due to the fact that I found out some friends need their frequent rule19 fix, I’m going to start blogging more diligently again. I will be blogging about the lessons learned from past relationships. I feel like I've changed and become better with each one. Hopefully that's true.

Now as I speak about past relationships, I don’t want anyone to feel defamed. So some names have been changed where appropriate. When it’s not appropriate (such as the guy will never read this blog, I kind of want to use actual names; you know…to keep it real.) I also want to make it entertaining so I'm going to diligently reflect on each relationship and compare my relationship with a character in popular culture, mostly from TV or movies.

So here we go with installment one: first boyfriend, Sam.

With Sam, I was April from Parks and Recreation.



Why April? Because she likes to create drama. She dates a boy who is sometimes gay, who also has a boyfriend who's always gay. If things weren't so weird, she probably wouldn't be involved in this relationship.

So Dating Lesson Number One: Relationships are more fun when you can have them without drama.

I met Sam in my high school video tech class. He was the class clown. He was also extremely smart. So right when I first started dating, I knew generally what I was attracted to (funny genius boys). But what I loved most about Sam was that he was Jewish. I thought it would create a stir. I was the stereotypical "Mormon girl" in my school and I thought it would create a buzz if we started dating. We started dating around Christmas time (or Hanukkah I guess) when school was almost out so we didn't have time for people to see that we were dating. When we came back from break, I tried to spread it around in a very controversial way--spread my own salacious rumor about my own relationship.

Unfortunately for Sam it didn't work. People kind of thought it was weird but when they'd ask, "Isn't that against your religion?" I didn't want people to get false doctrine so I used the opportunity to talk about temple marriage but also tell me it's fine to date whomever. No drama.

So then I tried to create drama using my power position in the school. For 90-minutes every other day, I was an administrative assistant in the principal's office. Frequently I would use the pink hall passes (I was able to get people out of class with them to come to the principal's office) to get Sam out of class. We'd find an empty room and just chill for the period. After once getting caught from my speech teacher (who held in his hand the power to revoke me from the traveling team), I decided the drama wasn't worth it. Little Sammy and I only lasted a month.

He's now got himself a hot Jewish girlfriend, a bachelor's from University of Texas and a stable job at Microsoft in Seattle.

Stay tuned tomorrow when we examine Brandon, who filled my desire to date a jock...and subsequently helped me learn why I hate that.